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Personal Folding Server Rig - Project Steamroller

**Renamed topic from "Possible future personal folding rig idea" to "Personal Folding Server Rig - Project Steamroller".**

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On 5/4/2017 at 1:59 AM, SansVarnic said:

This is a stretch, well quite the stretch but I came across this today and I am possibly considering adding it to my build project. I have not yet been able to fully figure out how to fit in as it is a different concept to what I am used to. If it is what it appears to be I can definitely save a lot of space and have plenty of slots to slowly upgrade the folding capacity over time in addition to the first server I build. This is the first system I have found that is designed specifically with a consumer GPU in mind instead of Tesla's and Quadro's.

 

http://www.onestopsystems.com/4u-compute-accelerator-geforce-gtx1080-gpus

This thing holds (I kid you not) 16 GPUs. :o

[click photo to enlarge]

Capture.JPG.c07b87aa6e750503dbaf55e296bdf5e4.JPGCapture.JPG.7ebedf641db65f5d181239895b488f82.JPG

Datasheet: http://www.onestopsystems.com/sites/default/files/pdf/454-4u_gtx1080.pdf

 

Supposedly if I read the data sheet correctly it either will be a stand alone machine or expands the current server setup to an additional 16 GPUs, I am leaning to the latter as it has on board IPMI &  SYSMON2 but no processor information is disclosed. I have made an inquire to the company that makes these and hopefully they will get back to me soon.

 

 

*edit

This product might be something of interest that could be reviewed by @LinusTech ? Just a thought.

That would be an absolute beast :D bout time to follow this topic :) 

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Will be a while before I post again on this subject. I have to put this on hold for a little while, not indefinitely but because of current situation with priorities.

Trying to sell old home, still have a few things to tidy up to make the sale but when that is over I will come back to this. 

:) 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Still waiting to hear back from One Stop Systems, will attempt to contact again here soon. Maybe next week, this week I am fairly busy. Gosh so much going on.

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  • 1 month later...

*Update*

Nothing significantly new to add unfortunately, I have made no head room on this due to continued priorities over this project. [postponements and delays. ]

*Frustration showing*  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I really hope to get back to this inside the next month or so. Time not spent on this is pushing back my expected finish date. Funding has also dried up on this so that is another factor I need to over come here, I am only a fraction into what I need and that really sucks, family is no longer interested in helping out with this so it is a solo act at this point. Hopefully things will turn around soon. 

 

One thought I would like to add is I may take up some mining after this is up, from time to time to help fund the project's expense ... hmm don't know but it is just a thought.

 

Also looking into these "mining" cards coming out. Interesting but I don't see a real advantage to them just yet. I will keep my eye out for numbers and cost before jumping on that band wagon.

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  • 2 weeks later...

After much research, I have concluded that GPU "mining" cards are not at this time worth the effort to use with F@H. This may change down the road but I will be discontinuing the idea of using then with this project. 

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8 hours ago, SansVarnic said:

After much research, I have concluded that GPU "mining" cards are not at this time worth the effort to use with F@H. This may change down the road but I will be discontinuing the idea of using then with this project. 

What specifically made you change your mind about these? I haven't seen much info on them at all :/

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Are you still hardset on making your rig a combo server + miner, or do you just want to make a mining rig?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/20/2017 at 8:18 PM, 2bitmarksman said:

Are you still hardset on making your rig a combo server + miner, or do you just want to make a mining rig?

This project was not intended for mining cryptocurrency.

The main focus is to F@H and BOINC. I have not yet decided fully on how I plan to implement a server in this project.

I have not decided yet if I will do any mining on the side.

 

On 7/17/2017 at 2:16 AM, Nicnac said:

What specifically made you change your mind about these? I haven't seen much info on them at all :/

Mostly resale (warranty is limited more), availability, and something else I cant remember ...

I plan to reassess these cards later down the road when they finally become available and I can get some hard numbers to see if their potential to fold is as good as the potential for mining. I have a feeling that I may change my mind and get some anyhow.

 

 

Well either way though I have had to continue to put this project on hold due to my schedule. I may be changing jobs in the near future as I was recently offered an exec position at another company so I guess we'll see how that goes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ better hours more pay at least.:) 

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15 hours ago, SansVarnic said:

This project was not intended for mining cryptocurrency.

The main focus is to F@H and BOINC. I have not yet decided fully on how I plan to implement a server in this project.

I have not decided yet if I will do any mining on the side.

 

Mostly resale (warranty is limited more), availability, and something else I cant remember ...

I plan to reassess these cards later down the road when they finally become available and I can get some hard numbers to see if their potential to fold is as good as the potential for mining. I have a feeling that I may change my mind and get some anyhow.

 

 

Well either way though I have had to continue to put this project on hold due to my schedule. I may be changing jobs in the near future as I was recently offered an exec position at another company so I guess we'll see how that goes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ better hours more pay at least.:) 

Main reason I ask is if the main focus is F@H/CureCoin/BOINC, the building in essence a mining rig is going to give the highest contribution per dollar spent. While you can fold with the CPU, it doesn't provide even close to the contribution of a GPU. Basically, by saving money on the CPU, RAM, and Case by buying cheaper parts, you could then build a second (or third) rig with the saved dollars and increase your contribution towards them. That is, if you are willing to give up the ability for it to function as a server.

Alternatively, because F@H you can choose to only fold with the GPU's and leave the CPU untouched, you could go build and run your server with the F@H software running in the background utilizing your GPU's and then turn the CPU folding on and off as you need to.

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On ‎8‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 6:34 AM, 2bitmarksman said:

Main reason I ask is if the main focus is F@H/CureCoin/BOINC, the building in essence a mining rig is going to give the highest contribution per dollar spent. While you can fold with the CPU, it doesn't provide even close to the contribution of a GPU. Basically, by saving money on the CPU, RAM, and Case by buying cheaper parts, you could then build a second (or third) rig with the saved dollars and increase your contribution towards them. That is, if you are willing to give up the ability for it to function as a server.

Alternatively, because F@H you can choose to only fold with the GPU's and leave the CPU untouched, you could go build and run your server with the F@H software running in the background utilizing your GPU's and then turn the CPU folding on and off as you need to.

Huh? What are you are getting at? Folding with the CPU is a waste and not part of the plan. Why are you suggesting that I would use any of the processors for folding?

And why would curecoin be a part of your question when I said from the get go mining is not the focus of this build? I have no plans to mine with this system, I only mentioned mining as a optional possible thing I could do down the road but I have no real plans to implement it presently. I am not building a mining rig. The title of this thread is pretty self explanatory.

 

Do you understand the point of this build and how it works? with intel processors you have to have 1 core per gpu to fold compared to amd you don't need the same. At the time I designed this build was a year and half ago initially. I had no plans to use anything other than Intel processors unless AMD released something worthy to look at. Now that they have I now have a reason to consider an AMD build instead. 

 

I am not following your line of thought I need you to explain your inquire of my project better.

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19 hours ago, SansVarnic said:

Huh? What are you are getting at? Folding with the CPU is a waste and not part of the plan. Why are you suggesting that I would use any of the processors for folding?

And why would curecoin be a part of your question when I said from the get go mining is not the focus of this build? I have no plans to mine with this system, I only mentioned mining as a optional possible thing I could do down the road but I have no real plans to implement it presently. I am not building a mining rig. The title of this thread is pretty self explanatory.

 

Do you understand the point of this build and how it works? with intel processors you have to have 1 core per gpu to fold compared to amd you don't need the same. At the time I designed this build was a year and half ago initially. I had no plans to use anything other than Intel processors unless AMD released something worthy to look at. Now that they have I now have a reason to consider an AMD build instead. 

 

I am not following your line of thought I need you to explain your inquire of my project better.

1) I've looked into the '1 core per GPU' claim you've made and I can't find anything that suggests this is true. If you can point me to somewhere on the F@H site that mentions this I'd like to see it

2) I'm suggesting that, assuming the core requirement per GPU isn't necessary, that you can do this project for either a lot less money, or possibly even build another one with the saved costs (depending on the parts)

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39 minutes ago, 2bitmarksman said:

1) I've looked into the '1 core per GPU' claim you've made and I can't find anything that suggests this is true. If you can point me to somewhere on the F@H site that mentions this I'd like to see it

2) I'm suggesting that, assuming the core requirement per GPU isn't necessary, that you can do this project for either a lot less money, or possibly even build another one with the saved costs (depending on the parts)

It is not really a claim but a common thing that is passed around the forums. Go to LTT folding area and you will see what I am talking about. @Imakuni, @Whaler_99

 

To answer (2) I am looking into doing an AMD version of the build to save in costs. Anything I can do to cut down the cost of this build is happily received info to me. Atm and afaik nvidia produces better folding results than amds gpus so I will most likely stick with nvidia gpus, also for wattage per ppd nvidia is way better efficient (for now) than amd.

 

Since I have had to step away from this project for a while a lot of stuff has changed in the short time so I need to do some catch up and reinvest time to determine what direction this project is going to take. Since I cannot do this right now or for the near foreseeable future I will have to wait some more. This is quite unfortunate because I really wanted to get further along than I am know.

 

I should point out that the largest cost is here is the GPU's not the processors anyhow. The CPUs are pretty cheap aas far as what I am going for. $200 USD for Xeons. Also the server boxes are pretty expensive but that has more to do with form factor and I am sure I can find something else to go with like maybe a custom box of something or another brand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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On ‎8‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 1:53 AM, 2bitmarksman said:

1) I've looked into the '1 core per GPU' claim you've made and I can't find anything that suggests this is true. If you can point me to somewhere on the F@H site that mentions this I'd like to see it

2) I'm suggesting that, assuming the core requirement per GPU isn't necessary, that you can do this project for either a lot less money, or possibly even build another one with the saved costs (depending on the parts)

The one thread per GPU is for Nvidia GPUs.  AMD GPUs can get away with less processor cycles.

The F@H client and a good chunk of BOINC GPU projects require some processor cycles for the units when feeding the GPU the calculations.

 

To be on the safe side when folding with a rig, the advice is one thread per GPU, one thread for OS.  Keeps the computer able to respond to user input.

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Let me just throw in my two cents on all this since I got tagged. :)

 

First off, as some have mentioned "compute" cards, that brings to mind things like the Intel Phy, the NVidia P100 and others. They cannot be used for F@H or mining. Those are specifically designed cards for running custom software, usually a cluster based solution, used for rendering and massive compute solutions. Not something you can run Windows on nor do they even make a F@H client that will recognize those cards.

 

Now, you have to look at the F@H client itself before going nuts on video cards. The folding on Linux builds is still iffy and a lot of work, so I won't even go there. When it comes to Windows, getting more than 5 GPU's supported and running correctly in Windows is pretty much impossible. It can be done, but for the work it isn't really worth it. So, since you need to run Windows you are pretty much looking at a max of 5 GPU's for a stable system. Sure, you could buy 16... and that won't work at all. :) And again, you need to look at your motherboards and such as many of them have limitations on the number of PCIe slots active because of electrical wiring. All in all, getting a 5 GPU solution to work is very doable if you do your homework. More than 5 GPU's and you are looking at probably a lot of issues. :)

 

The recommendation to leave at least one core per GPU free was mostly for NVidia, due to the way their drivers work, but was also good advice for AMD cards as well. The client when initially setup would original default to use all CPU cores (hence the issue with NVidia cards) and then was changed to use all but one. But then if you had two GPU's you still needed to modify it and... some projects didn't like an odd number of CPU cores, blah blah... Overall, for the heat it generates and the extra cooling you need, don't even bother folding on the CPU. Just fold on the GPU(s) and you will pretty much maximize you solution. If you have a monster CPU you don't want to go to waste, just do "light" folding with the Chrome NACL client and voila.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Whaler_99 said:

Let me just throw in my two cents on all this since I got tagged. :)

Thanks for the input :D !

I just needed a second someone to confirm what I was saying about the # of cores matching the # of gpus in a system plus one core for system use.

 

I do have a question for you though on this part of your comment;;

11 minutes ago, Whaler_99 said:

Now, you have to look at the F@H client itself before going nuts on video cards. The folding on Linux builds is still iffy and a lot of work, so I won't even go there. When it comes to Windows, getting more than 5 GPU's supported and running correctly in Windows is pretty much impossible. It can be done, but for the work it isn't really worth it. So, since you need to run Windows you are pretty much looking at a max of 5 GPU's for a stable system. Sure, you could buy 16... and that won't work at all. :) And again, you need to look at your motherboards and such as many of them have limitations on the number of PCIe slots active because of electrical wiring. All in all, getting a 5 GPU solution to work is very doable if you do your homework. More than 5 GPU's and you are looking at probably a lot of issues. :)

I know that in the past the number of gpus have been limited by the F@H software (5) but the project I have been working on here will be using 8 because of the design of the server case I chose, the mother board having 8 PCIe slots designed to hold those gpus.

The 16 gpu box I found is something I am unfamiliar with and is just an intrigue I found that was pondering in using. It is my understanding that the gpus in that system can be split in 4 groups of 4 to be used with separate systems via the 4 PCIe x 16 connectors on the case.

I need to look into and find out how some people have been able to do a setup with more than 5 gpus at a time and this is how I got the idea to use a server box designed to hold up to 8 gpus and the expansion box with 16 gpus.

 

If you have any suggestions or direction that I can take in my research I am happy to accept it.

If I have to limit my builds to 5 cards then I shall focus on that instead.

 

 

As for the mention of compute cards, I have glanced at the "mining cards" but that so far is about it. I have no idea if they will be supported and whether or not they perform similar to normal gpus in that respect for F@H. If they are capable of folding and I am sure someone will try it, I may consider them in a future build or not I dont really know for now.

 

Thanks. ;) 

 

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Hmmm, I am not sure if I seen any other folders go beyond five GPUs.  I do know of a few who push near that level, but they mostly run Linux distros.

 

I don't know where the whole it is hard to setup F@H in Linux comes from.  Yes, there are a few extra steps, but the quickest setup I done was with Mint Mate 18 (it will even find Nvidia GPU drivers).  The biggest deal is doing a few terminal commands to setup XServer for overclocking ability and to get the extra files for F@H to run correctly.  Probably the most tedious was modifying one file so XServer sees all the GPUs so you can overclock them, but there guides all over the place for that.

 

May have to ask an individual on the other forum board I frequent, who is far more knowledgeable in folding in Linux with GPUs (said individual actually runs AMDs and Nvidias together under Linux).  I know of a few BOINCers who run some monster multi GPU server setups.  May see how they have theirs setup.

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On 8/9/2017 at 7:14 PM, SansVarnic said:

Thanks for the input :D !

I just needed a second someone to confirm what I was saying about the # of cores matching the # of gpus in a system plus one core for system use.

 

I do have a question for you though on this part of your comment;;

I know that in the past the number of gpus have been limited by the F@H software (5) but the project I have been working on here will be using 8 because of the design of the server case I chose, the mother board having 8 PCIe slots designed to hold those gpus.

The 16 gpu box I found is something I am unfamiliar with and is just an intrigue I found that was pondering in using. It is my understanding that the gpus in that system can be split in 4 groups of 4 to be used with separate systems via the 4 PCIe x 16 connectors on the case.

I need to look into and find out how some people have been able to do a setup with more than 5 gpus at a time and this is how I got the idea to use a server box designed to hold up to 8 gpus and the expansion box with 16 gpus.

 

If you have any suggestions or direction that I can take in my research I am happy to accept it.

If I have to limit my builds to 5 cards then I shall focus on that instead.

 

 

As for the mention of compute cards, I have glanced at the "mining cards" but that so far is about it. I have no idea if they will be supported and whether or not they perform similar to normal gpus in that respect for F@H. If they are capable of folding and I am sure someone will try it, I may consider them in a future build or not I dont really know for now.

 

Thanks. ;) 

 

The 1 CPU core per Nvidia GPU is interesting, thanks for sharing :D

As for windows not liking more than 5 GPU's, I believe its annoying but can be done up to 8 GPUs. Something I really want to try is using one of those 12 or 13 GPU motherboards, and use unRAID to run multiple windows instances and utilize GPU passthrough to give windows the cards and see if it works :P

Also, if you want a server idea, here's my very bad experiment of seeing if I could repurpose a 4U server case to be a folding/mining rig:


https://www.dropbox.com/s/jjkqngm9ol0fk7d/20170707_214846.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sgq84qlew57q3fi/20170708_203701.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yrc2op9sipnjj3c/20170712_204702.jpg?dl=0

 

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  • 1 month later...

Self Bump to keep active, (I don't want to necro my own thread). Maybe I should have done this a blog instead... hmm

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To consider 1 thread for 1 NV gpu plus 1 thread for OS is important.

Also consider that they have to be connected by at least with PCIe 3.0 x4. Otherwise fast GPUs are limited by PCIe bandwith. 

Also consider that although it applies to both windows and linux it seems that linux can provide better PCIe transfer which means that folding is faster on linux than on windows. 

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On 9/23/2017 at 11:19 AM, foldinghomealone said:

To consider 1 thread for 1 NV gpu plus 1 thread for OS is important.

Also consider that they have to be connected by at least with PCIe 3.0 x4. Otherwise fast GPUs are limited by PCIe bandwith. 

Also consider that although it applies to both windows and linux it seems that linux can provide better PCIe transfer which means that folding is faster on linux than on windows. 

I will vouch for the Linux part.  I run both a W7 and Mint Mate 18.  Another advantage to the linux, system don't need a whole lot of RAM to run.  Fair warning, the newer Linux OSes can be a pain to get the folding client GUI to play ball.  The command line will work, but some command line and files will have to be run to get the GUI to work.

 

I run a GTX960 with an AIO under my Mint Mate 18 rig.  Around 1.7-1.8GB of RAM is used while the GPU crunches and most of the cores on the FX8120 crunch BOINC units (I keep one open for the GPU and one open for the OS to be on the safe side).

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On ‎9‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 6:19 AM, foldinghomealone said:

<snip>

2 hours ago, Ithanul said:

<snip>

Both good points I will note these. Thanks :) 

 

ATM the project is currently still on hold :( , started a new job so I need to get new job kinks out of the way ...

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Have you considered a theadripper? high number of pcie lanes, quite cheap, even the 8 cored would work, 16 threads should be more than enough.

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  • 2 months later...
On 9/27/2017 at 9:21 AM, Ben Quigley said:

Have you considered a theadripper? high number of pcie lanes, quite cheap, even the 8 cored would work, 16 threads should be more than enough.

I have, but I have not yet found a case and board that supports the scope of this project currently.

 

 

Apologies to anyone following but I have been extremely busy to post any updates here in a while and as it is this project is on hold for the foreseeable future. I just dont have the time to invest... I really wish I did.

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Character is like a Tree and Reputation like its Shadow. The Shadow is what we think of it; The Tree is the Real thing.  ~ Abraham Lincoln

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  • 6 months later...

Sorry for no updates, for personal reasons I don't wish to go into, I have to continue to put this project on hold. Hopefully someday I can get back to it.

 

:( 

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Character is like a Tree and Reputation like its Shadow. The Shadow is what we think of it; The Tree is the Real thing.  ~ Abraham Lincoln

Reputation is a Lifetime to create but seconds to destroy.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.  ~ Winston Churchill

Docendo discimus - "to teach is to learn"

 

 CHRISTIAN MEMBER 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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