Home Super Computer Build - We need your numbers!

[Imakuni]

 

Say no more.

That wasn't a distributed computing build log. That was "let's gather a bunch of high end parts that ours sponsors gave us, throw them together and install FAH, so we can call this a distributed build log".

 

While it will do good enough, it's a huge waste of money, if you can jus buy whatever you want.

[zkt72]

Yes I'm aware of the 1 core per GPU. When I said 4 GPU's I was referring to two 295's, bringing 2 physical cards with 4 physical processors. And that leaves me with a question. Because the 295 has two GPU's, do you think one card would require 2 CPU cores?

Using newer Haswell CPUs at 3.2GHz+ Clock Speeds you can go by number of threads, instead of number of cores.

 

Some points....

 

99% of people do not have a Kill-o-Watt so are guesstimating usage. Also, every single system gives different numbers, even is very close in hardware config. Hence one main reason we have never bothers with a database. At any time your 970 may be getting 70K PDD or 200K PPD... it varies...

 

Right now, best bang for buck, 970's, esp with the the updated Core18 projects. Haven't seen results from 980ti yet though.

 

GPU's do not run on Linux, you will need to install windows, on each system. No central boot solution. Except if running something virtualized, but then you be srewing yourself over for various other reasons I won't go into to.

 

For each GPU you only need a x1 slot. You can use x1->x16 expanders if needed. And don't need to be PCIe v3 or anything like that. Pretty much any board will work that has the proper number of slots and electrical signalling (read my GPU Build Guide).

Ever heard of bitcoin mining? They use linux based operating systems to power gpus, and I am sure he will have the help of the linux communitys, and tweak his choice of linux OSs to his desires.

 

Edit: Lol, I made a account for this forum just to pipe in on this.

[The Official Czex]

You guys have been helpful thus far. But remember, I'm not looking for pure computational output. Im looking for highest computational output per watt of power used. This is an essential detail as this will be the mindset the entire computer is built around. 

I am planning on getting a good cheap SSD, just looking for pointers towards sales.

 

OCZ 120 Gb.

[Whaler_99]

Using newer Haswell CPUs at 3.2GHz+ Clock Speeds you can go by number of threads, instead of number of cores.

 

Ever heard of bitcoin mining? They use linux based operating systems to power gpus, and I am sure he will have the help of the linux communitys, and tweak his choice of linux OSs to his desires.

 

Edit: Lol, I made a account for this forum just to pipe in on this.

 

Did you even bother to read the OP on this?? He is talking about Folding... which is only in Beta on Linux and doesn't work very well. Hence, you can only reliably Fold in Windows. Next time you bother to "pipe" in, at least know what we are talking about.

[zkt72]

No that guy said GPUs do not work on linux and I wanted to state, yes GPUs do work on linux

[evilarceus]

I know nothing about super computers, so...

 

 

XeonQuadroXeonQuadroXeonQuadroXeonQuadro

 

Oh wait, home super computer...

 

5960XTitanX5960XTitanX5960XTitanX5960XTitanX5960XTitanX5960XTitanX5960XTitanX5960XTitanX5960XTitanX

 

brb watching some vids about super computers

[zkt72]

          Is the Titan X technically worth it for what he is trying to do, he is trying to be power/performance but if the 980 ti is supported by Folding at home. That would probably be the better way to go, and cheaper, meaning he can build more modules to the computer at once. The i7-5960x may or may not be what he needs for FOH, because idk if FOH uses CPU also but if it does just for the sake of it i7-4790k would probably be put to better use untell i7-5960x's and ddr4 become better priced but the i7-4790k is at 88w TDP, and i7-5960x at 150w TDP so cooling the i7-4790k would be easier than the i7-5960x. The i7-4790k goes by the rule of thumb of 1 GPU per core, however I have heard that on the i7-5960x's people are getting 1 GPU per thread easily so you might experiment, or research on this to see if this is something you would do in a 24/7 running network of computers. I myself have no idea if the xeon phi's are compatible with FOH but if they are then you can put these on the computer motherboard and I do beleive they actually have a xeon CPU on the PCB, just something I searched up and thought would be super computer worthy and at this point you might go looking for server motherboards with dual sockets to put Xeons in these sockets, or a quad socket(which might actually be overkill. Tianhe-2(the most powerful supercomputer in the world as far as I know) has 2 Xeon proccessors for every module and one xeon phi and I think 128GB of ram per each module. 

 

Link to the wikipedia on this super computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianhe-2

 

Ok so each module has 2 Xeon E5-2692 v2s

and one Xeon Phi 31S1P

 

I have no idea if this would be put to proper use in a module for folding at home so you may have to search it up on a compatibility list, but it seems like something that you would be interested in.

 

Edit: the Xeon E5-2692 v2 is also 115W TDP CPU just to give you a general idea on the power efficiency and how much heat it will put out

[GlassBomb]

If I were doing a dedicated Folding system, then I would have probably gone with a cheaper motherboard and CPU (or use my current X79 system). And fill it up with GTX 970's, along with a 1200 Watt power supply.

 

When working on decent WU's, a system with four 970's can reach above 1 million PPD. But I also ask myself what a system with four 980ti's could do.

[Vavetti]

If I were doing a dedicated Folding system, then I would have probably gone with a cheaper motherboard and CPU (or use my current X79 system). And fill it up with GTX 970's, along with a 1200 Watt power supply.

 

When working on decent WU's, a system with four 970's can reach above 1 million PPD. But I also ask myself what a system with four 980ti's could do.

Four 980ti's will do something around 1.5 million ppd I think. 

A single titan X does 400-450k PPD and the 980ti should peform about 10% less clock for clock. 

 

But I don't know much about the improved maxwell WU's, so that might change things.

[LinusLoveMe]

          Is the Titan X technically worth it for what he is trying to do, he is trying to be power/performance but if the 980 ti is supported by Folding at home. That would probably be the better way to go, and cheaper, meaning he can build more modules to the computer at once. The i7-5960x may or may not be what he needs for FOH, because idk if FOH uses CPU also but if it does just for the sake of it i7-4790k would probably be put to better use untell i7-5960x's and ddr4 become better priced but the i7-4790k is at 88w TDP, and i7-5960x at 150w TDP so cooling the i7-4790k would be easier than the i7-5960x. The i7-4790k goes by the rule of thumb of 1 GPU per core, however I have heard that on the i7-5960x's people are getting 1 GPU per thread easily so you might experiment, or research on this to see if this is something you would do in a 24/7 running network of computers. I myself have no idea if the xeon phi's are compatible with FOH but if they are then you can put these on the computer motherboard and I do beleive they actually have a xeon CPU on the PCB, just something I searched up and thought would be super computer worthy and at this point you might go looking for server motherboards with dual sockets to put Xeons in these sockets, or a quad socket(which might actually be overkill. Tianhe-2(the most powerful supercomputer in the world as far as I know) has 2 Xeon proccessors for every module and one xeon phi and I think 128GB of ram per each module. 

 

Link to the wikipedia on this super computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianhe-2

 

Ok so each module has 2 Xeon E5-2692 v2s

and one Xeon Phi 31S1P

 

I have no idea if this would be put to proper use in a module for folding at home so you may have to search it up on a compatibility list, but it seems like something that you would be interested in.

 

Edit: the Xeon E5-2692 v2 is also 115W TDP CPU just to give you a general idea on the power efficiency and how much heat it will put out

For our purpose the cpu just needs as many threads as we have cards. Gpu folding is more efficient than cpu folding from what we've concluded

[zkt72]

For our purpose the cpu just needs as many threads as we have cards. Gpu folding is more efficient than cpu folding from what we've concluded

   Ok then, in that case all we would need then is a haswell GPU that is above 3.5 GHz for per thread, some have been saying 3.0 GHz has been working and some 3.2 and other 3.5 so I would go with 3.5 GHz just to be safe.

[Pizzatime6]

Mobo doesn't have enough pcie 3.0 slots to do 4 way sli. Also LGA 1150 socket cpu's don't have enough pci lanes on the cpu to do 4 way sli. Master Yoda says "Super computer this is not. 100TFlops you will not have."

[zkt72]

Mobo doesn't have enough pcie 3.0 slots to do 4 way sli. Also LGA 1150 socket cpu's don't have enough pci lanes on the cpu to do 4 way sli. Master Yoda says "Super computer this is not. 100TFlops you will not have."

We can do 1x slots with risers, and use that new gigabyte motherboard that provides power to all the PCIe lanes from some molex ports on the bottom of the board and as I said before we could use a haswell CPU 3.5 GHz and up for a  GPU per thread.