new user with some hardware and technical questions

[baksheesh]

I recently built a new rig and aim to use it, and other machines I have around, to do Folding@Home. Machines are:

 

- main workstation: Ryzen 9 3950X (16c/32t) with NVidia GTX 1080, running variously Linux and Windows 10

- headless home NAS server: Intel Sandybridge 3960X (6c/12t), no GPU, Linux

- MSI laptop with Intel Core i7-8750H (6c/12t), NVidia GTX 1070 Max-Q, Windows 10

An NVIDIA GTX670 I have lying around

 

I have a few questions:

- What CPUs do I have that are worth using for folding? The Ryzen seems to get about half as many points a day as the 1080 GPU which seems pretty good, wondering if any others are worthwhile?

- Is the GTX670 worth using? If someone has a spreadsheet of graphics card models and average points/day that would be helpful as I might be able to scrounge up others

- For a GPU doing folding, whats the safest temperature to run if the GPU will be crunching numbers all day? How is this sort of thing configured for NVidia GPUs?

- Anyone using a Ryzen 3950X, what CPU temps do you get? I have a Noctua NH-D15 cooler and run around 68-70, default bios settings except to enable virtualization and XMP (3200 DRAM). I wonder sometimes if it should be a bit cooler (which of course gives me insecurity on my thermal pasting :P)

- On Linux, if anyone has some technical details on how the FAHClient running as a service gets notified that the OS user is idle, I'm trying to troubleshoot why this isn't working on Regolith Desktop (which is a hybrid of GNOME 3 and i3wm on top of Ubuntu).

 

 

[DoctorNick]

Maybe post on overclock.net https://www.overclock.net/forum/55-overclock-net-folding-home-team/

[Crunchy Dragon]

I would say all of your CPUs can run this. I ran Folding@home on 2 cores of my Ryzen 5 1600 24/7, which still left me 10 processing threads to do whatever I wanted.

 

670 ain't bad, I ran a GTX 780 for my purposes. I didn't have it folding during gaming sessions, but it did the job.

 

80 degrees Celsius is the highest I was willing to go, you can set a fan curve in MSI Afterburner.

 

Temps will vary by CPU, cooler, and how many cores are running Folding@home. My Ryzen 5 1600 was overclocked to 3.8Ghz and never saw over 70C, but I again only had 2 cores actively folding. 68-70 seems about right for you, those are normal load temperatures.

 

The way I saw it was simply this:

Points per day don't really matter unless you enter in a competition. At the end of the day, what really counts is that you're contributing to medical research and every little bit counts.

[RadiatingLight]

8 minutes ago, baksheesh said:

Is the GTX670 worth using?

unless your electricity is free, probably not.

It's compute powers are laughable compared to modern hardware, and you'd just be using up electricity for nothing.

EDIT: not a F@H expert, so maybe it is worth it? Performance per watt is bad, but if you want to contribute I guess it's a good way?

 

8 minutes ago, baksheesh said:

Anyone using a Ryzen 3950X, what CPU temps do you get? I have a Noctua NH-D15 cooler and run around 68-70

I don't have a 3950X, but those seem like very normal temperatures. Very good actually. the 3950X can probably go up to 90c before it starts to get scary

 

8 minutes ago, baksheesh said:

whats the safest temperature to run if the GPU will be crunching numbers all day? How is this sort of thing configured for NVidia GPUs?

The GPU should regulate itself, and will downclock above 81c in order to stay cool.

You can use MSI afterburner or many other GPU tuning tools in order to set a custom fan curve if you want the GPU to stay colder at the expense of noise.

In general though, you can't hurt the GPU from crunching too many numbers.

[minibois]

16 minutes ago, baksheesh said:

I have a few questions:

- What CPUs do I have that are worth using for folding? The Ryzen seems to get about half as many points a day as the 1080 GPU which seems pretty good, wondering if any others are worthwhile?

- Is the GTX670 worth using? If someone has a spreadsheet of graphics card models and average points/day that would be helpful as I might be able to scrounge up others

- For a GPU doing folding, whats the safest temperature to run if the GPU will be crunching numbers all day? How is this sort of thing configured for NVidia GPUs?

- Anyone using a Ryzen 3950X, what CPU temps do you get? I have a Noctua NH-D15 cooler and run around 68-70, default bios settings except to enable virtualization and XMP (3200 DRAM). I wonder sometimes if it should be a bit cooler (which of course gives me insecurity on my thermal pasting :P)

- On Linux, if anyone has some technical details on how the FAHClient running as a service gets notified that the OS user is idle, I'm trying to troubleshoot why this isn't working on Regolith Desktop (which is a hybrid of GNOME 3 and i3wm on top of Ubuntu).

- CPU folding, looking at PPD and Points per watt, is kind of lackluster. The 3950x probably does pretty well, just because of the sheer magnitude of cores, but don't expect numbers close to the GTX 1080

If you have the motherboards, it might be worth it to try out folding for a day to see the power consumption and points.

Although I do have to mention CPU's can get different WU's which GPU's apparently can't complete, so CPU folding doesn't have a large output, but does still help. Just don't assign all your cores to folding. I don't remember the exact idea, but I think it was something like 'when folding on an Nvidia card, be sure to have 1 or 2 threads available for each Nvidia GPU'.

 

- GTX 670: at around 88K PPD (source: see spreadsheet linked below), it's probably not very much worth it for the power consumption. To give some perspective, for similar power consumption an RX 580 does around 330K PPD and RTX cards blow both of these out of the water (in terms of power consumption and PPD). Up to you though.

 

- GPU temps: check what Nvidia/AMD lists as Max temp for the GPU and try to stay a bit below that, to make sure you are always at the max boost level.

 

- CPU temps: looks good. I don't have that CPU, but assuming you have around 20 C ambient temps, that should be good.

 

- Linux: this is where you hit the boundary of my F@H knowledge. Sorry, I just don't know anything about that to help you.

 

Spreadsheet of different GPU's and their PPD:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vcVoSVtamcoGj5sFfvKF_XlvuviWWveJIg_iZ8U2bf0/pub?output=html

Looking at this spreadsheet, the only cards really worth it to get (for efficient folding) are likely the Nvidia GTX 970, 980, 980 Ti, but probably more the GTX 10-series, 20-series and maybe Vega 56/64. Although power consumption on Vega and Nvidia 900 series is higher than on the newer Nvidia stuff, if memory serves me right.

AMD RX 5700(XT) Folding is still in it's infancy, so can't comment on that.

 

At the moment I am not at home, but I made a small sheet which has some current GPU offerings' PPD, power usage and thus also the PPD/Watt. I would be able to share this, if interested.

 

be sure to read the FAQ in the sticky of this sub forum. Don't forget to get a Passkey! That can give a lot more points.

 

Thank you for considering to run F@H

Happy folding!

[Nine Tailed Fox]

My 1070 blower never goes past 80c full power