Need help with folding@home

[paulmohr]

     Ok, so I know pretty much next to nothing about this folding thing. I was watching some older WAN shows and heard it mentioned in one of them. I looked it up and thought this would be a pretty cool thing to get involved in. I personally suffer from some mental problems like Anxiety, Depression, Psychosis and stuff like that. And my mother has Dementia and seems to be getting worse by the week. This a horrible disease to watch someone go through. My mom was a vibrant, smart and kind person a few years ago. Now it is like living with a drunk teenager. She is confused, anxious and angry. It is also very stressful for the caretakers (Me). So really anything I can do to help would be great. And this sounds like somethng I can do, IF I gets some help lol.

 

     I tried reading some of the stickies and faqs, but to be honest right now it is a bit much to wrap my mind around. Sometimes my mind works ok, other times, eh, not so much. Today is "one of those days".

 

       This also seems like some sort of team effort kind of thing? So maybe I can help you guys out as well.

 

      So basically I am pretty sure I have enough spare parts to build another system that I could just dedicate to this task. I just built a new system but re used a few parts but I think I can patch something together pretty easy. What I have is a FX4350 with 16gigs of DDR3. I have a couple GPU's I could choose from, either a 750ti or a Radeon 570. I might need a new power supply but I think I have one I can use, I will have to dig it out and see. I am also not sure if I want to run windows 10 or linux. I am not sure if windows will let me install it on two seperate machines and run them at the same time or not. If not I will probably have to use linux since it is free. If I do this I will need help with that too since I know next to nothing about that either. I did install unbuntu once though and it didn't seem too hard. And since I won't be running much on it, basically just this program and maybe a browser it should not be too hard as long as I can find the drivers and stuff. I also have a few spare small SSDs here. LIke 80-250 gigs. I would hope that would be large enough to do this on? If not I have a 1tb mechanical drive I think is still good.

 

So is this stuff good enough for a dedicated folding machine? What video card of those two would you suggest and what operating system?

 

I will slap it together when I get a chance, re read the stickies when my brain works better, install some software and probably come back with some more questions.

 

Oh, is it possible and/or should I use both my cpu and gpu to run this? It looks like that is an option, but not entirely sure.

 

Or any other info I might need would be a great help.

 

Thanks in advance,

Paul

 

 

Edited August 12, 2018 by paulmohr
hand twitched and posted before I done LMAO

[SansVarnic]

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What I have is a FX4350 with 16gigs of DDR3. I have a couple GPU's I could choose from, either a 750ti or a Radeon 570. 

You can F@H with this but your FX will be a bit warm for the effort and I am not sure if the Radeon is still supported but you can use the 750ti.

F@H most uses your GPU any how but you can elect to F@H on your CPU but its not efficient to do so. F@H is designed to run efficiently on GPU architecture.

 

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I am also not sure if I want to run windows 10 or linux. I am not sure if windows will let me install it on two seperate machines and run them at the same time or not. If not I will probably have to use linux since it is free. If I do this I will need help with that too since I know next to nothing about that either. I did install unbuntu once though and it didn't seem too hard. And since I won't be running much on it, basically just this program and maybe a browser it should not be too hard as long as I can find the drivers and stuff.

You can run the program on either, I dont use linux so you'll have to get instruction from one of the other members on that but windows will operate it just fine. You can also run in the browser but your folds wont be part of the big projects. 

Downloading and running the F@H software is pretty straightfoward these days as it is most ready to go with some very minor tweaks.

ANd you can run on multiple machines all you have to do is enter your information on each machine and your points will counted appropriately.

 

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I also have a few spare small SSDs here. LIke 80-250 gigs. I would hope that would be large enough to do this on? If not I have a 1tb mechanical drive I think is still good.

Storage is not a factor as F@H only requires what it needs to install the application which is fairly small.

Most of the folds are kpet in Ram and/or the VRam of your graphics card. [as far as I understand].

 

I do suggest reading up as much as you can but as I mentioned F@H is pretty much self maintained, it automatically detects what hardware you have and delegates work appropriately.

 

@Ithanul and @Whaler_99 have more knowledge on this than I do.. lol

[paulmohr]

 

That is odd, I thougth the RX 570 was a much newer card than the 750ti. I know it was a LOT more expensive lol. I replaced it with a GTX 1060 not long ago because it didn't play well with Microsoft Flight Sim X. So now I have this video card I paid way too much for just sitting in a box not being used.

 

Not worried about the CPU either, it has an aftermarket cooler on it and always ran super cool even when I overclocked the crap out of it.

 

Oh, and you know what I just remembered, you don't have to activate windows 10 if you don't want to. It will still run I guess, just puts a little watermark or something on your desktop.

 

Guess I should just get the software and take a look at it, then do some research on the card. I am sure that will come up in a simple web search.

 

Thanks for the help.

[GOTSpectrum]

18 hours ago, paulmohr said:

 

That is odd, I thougth the RX 570 was a much newer card than the 750ti. I know it was a LOT more expensive lol. I replaced it with a GTX 1060 not long ago because it didn't play well with Microsoft Flight Sim X. So now I have this video card I paid way too much for just sitting in a box not being used.

 

Not worried about the CPU either, it has an aftermarket cooler on it and always ran super cool even when I overclocked the crap out of it.

 

Oh, and you know what I just remembered, you don't have to activate windows 10 if you don't want to. It will still run I guess, just puts a little watermark or something on your desktop.

 

Guess I should just get the software and take a look at it, then do some research on the card. I am sure that will come up in a simple web search.

 

Thanks for the help.

The Rx card will do fine, but you can't run the gtx card in the same box as they have far too many issues. Also don't fit to hit up the community board where we hang out and talk about folding and such, I'd suggest following that thread. 

 

Also, Welcome into the fold <- bad pun alert

 

 

[paulmohr]

Oh, I am not going to run two cards. I was only trying to get an opinion on which one would be better. I also have a GTX 9800 and 250, but I figured the 750ti and RX570 were much better cards. I have some older cards as well. Over the years I upgrade cards as the prices drop and just never re sell the old ones, same with CPU's. I think I could actually build about 3 extra pcs with the parts I have laying around. Just none of them would be worth using lol.

[Ithanul]

The Radeon cards are still supported and depending if you get one of the newer WUs (Work Units) with the updated core, the output is a bit better compare to some of the previous WUs.

GPUs will put out the most PPD (Points per Day), but CPUs do different WUs than what the GPUs do.  So, not a total waste as the WUs the CPUs do still contribute.  You just won't get as much PPD.  Though, the newer WUs for CPUs give better points than the previous ones, but no where near the levels of bigadv back in the heyday of 2P and 4P behemoth setups (really hope bigadv comes back since TRs are allowing for consumers to have easier access to a lot of cores and threads).

 

On the support of Nvidia cards, last I looked, the support is for 4XX and above.

 

Also, your fine with a small SSD.  My main cruncher runs on an old Intel SSD that is like barely 60-80GB and that thing taken a beaten for five to six years of F@H and BOINC.