E30 Folding@Home Team!

[bmwman91]

I updated the stats in the original post. Team E30 is kicking butt and chugging along nicely.

Also, I built a new PC that will be used for folding (and probably some gaming since the selected hardware should be able to shred anything that is thrown at it). The plan is ultimately to run 3 GPUs, ideally ones that are at least as powerful as the GTX 980Ti. Nvidia is launching their Pascal architecture this year, which is supposed to blow the doors off of the current generation of products since the chips will use 3D FinFET blah blah blah and I think 16nm features (vs 28nm now) so I will probably wait and hope that its release drops the price of the 980Ti a bit so I can get 2 more.

Anyway, here's the system spec for our resident PC nerds. This is the first PC that I have built in almost 10 years and it is as fun as I remember (particularly since I am now employed and actually have a little more money than I did back then).

Case: DEEPCOOL TESSERACT WH Mid Tower Computer Case (plus a few extra 120mm fans for additional air flow)
PSU: XFX ProSeries P1-1250-BEFX 1250W
Mobo: MSI X99S SLI Krait Edition LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99 Motherboard
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2620 v3 Processor, 85W TDP
CPU Cooling: DEEPCOOL Gamer Storm Lucifer V2 CPU Cooler 6 Heatpipes 140mm Silent PWM Fan for LGA 2011-v3
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2133
GPU: ZOTAC ZT-90503-10P GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! 6GB 384-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Video Card
HDD: Kingston 240GB SSD. It's a freebie I got with an eBay laptop purchase.
OS: Windows 8.1

The PSU may seem overkill, but remember that I plan to run 3 high end GPUs at 100% load for continuous, indefinite periods. So the idea is to over-spec the PSU so that it is has plenty of headroom for running high loads 24/7/365. The choice of CPU was based on wanting 40 PCIe lanes. The E5-2620v3 is the cheapest current-gen processor with hyperthreading AND 40 PCIe lanes. This means that I can run 3 GPUs with 2 of them getting all 16 lanes and one getting 8. Most consumer CPUs have 20-28 lanes, and you have to buy an i7 Extreme CPU (which are stupid expensive) to get 40 lanes.




Also a shout-out to Click. Thanks for participating and adding your contribution!

[varg]

This still exists? Wow. I remember driving my parent's power bill up with "spare" processor time when I was in high school and my first year of college. My desktop which was top-notch back then is laughable by Today's standards, and my laptop has an i3 so count me out.

[bmwman91]

Haha yeah, these days you sort of want fairly beefy hardware to run FAH. I may or may not be utilizing my employer's electricity for this which helps a lot lol.

I also ended up getting a free E5-2670V3 CPU from a friend who has...sources. 12 physical cores, unlocked multiplier, $free-fiddy. Can't go wrong!

[bmwman91]

Bumping. Team E30 is still going, and we have moved from 500-something'th place to 193rd. It's slow going at this point and we are in the "move up 2 places, back one" area as other productive teams pass us while we pass older less-productive ones.

Assuming anyone with hardware that is good for crunching these numbers is not trying to mine cryptocurrency, jump on in here!

I also had one of my GTX 980 Ti cards take a dump, 3 days before the warranty expired lol. There is a big flaw in the memory voltage regulation system, which has been present since at least the GTX 600 series, and the manufacturers of graphics cards do not seem to be fixing it. Basically, the high-side FET in the synchronous buck converter for this voltage rail overheats and fails as a short-circuit, applying full high-side voltage to the VRAM chips (5+ volts onto 1.35V components). There is no repairing that. I suspect that nVidia's reference design calls for legit FET parts from TI and other companies with good reputations, but that they tell manufacturers "or equivalent part" is OK. So the manufacturers like EVGA and Zotac find the cheapest possible Chinese no-name parts which are low-grade copies of legit parts and use those. I say this because the logos and PNs on the FETs are for companies in China which I have never heard of and their datasheets look like photocopies of TI datasheets lol. So, if you have the extra budget for "Founder's Edition" cards, buy those, because they are built to the specs of the nVidia reference designs with higher quality parts. Usually, anyway. Apparently early GTX 1080 cards were burning houses down.

[superj]

I cannot believe this is still going on, I remember doing this with a p3 computer, way back in the day.

I will try and remember to download and see if my laptop is good enough to run this.

[bmwman91]

Haha nice. These days F@H is mostly optimized for GPUs, but the CPU client still does interesting projects as well. Make sure that the thermal compound on your laptop's heat sink is in good shape.....

Also, funny thing. My GTX 980 Ti which crapped out was approved for an RMA. They no longer have any of those, so they are giving me a GTX 1080. Not too bad, not too bad.....also my use of the three magic words ("class action lawsuit") combined with a detailed failure analysis of their severely lacking memory voltage rail design may have helped. They must really hate it when engineers in the electronics industry run into their products.

[superj]

Damn.

I think my laptop is a no-go. Turns out its not a laptop but some kind of book deal. Its like a laptop but no cd/dvd and only 10 or 12 gigs of space. The video memory is good because it runs zwift (my bicycle trainer interactive online game) but i can load nothing else to it or it says its out of space.

[bmwman91]

Aah yeah if it is a Chromebook or something then it won't work. For the most part, it is not worth trying to fold on a CPU with less than 4 physical cores.

[superj]

Alright.

[superj]

It works on my little notebook but not on my android phones. The site says it should but I think you have to be a computer guy to figure out how.

Anyways, I am on but I don't show up on the team list. Same name as here on team 227800

[superj]

I show up on the team list now. I wiah i could remember my old screen name

[bmwman91]

Nice, thanks!

[robspeed325i]

I was wondering if you thought about promoting it more as a "Team BMW" folding team. As you know it is the highest-ranking BMW-centered fold team on the board and I think it would be cool if we could take it to all social media beyond the R3v forums? Right now would be an ideal time to do it. :)

[bmwman91]

Yeah given the recent surge in F@H participation, it is probably a good idea to try to capitalize on it. It probably has a month or two of steam left in it before people look at their electricity bill and get a little less enthusiastic, and/or the global situation improves. Since the team behind F@H is basically unable to keep up with the supply of processing power, work units are being doled out slowly, and it seems sort of like they are trying to give everyone a crack at units, in effect sort of "taking turns" giving units out. Obviously, for a team like this one with very few members, it is tough to maintain rank and we've been losing places pretty fast. Again, I expect the current surge in participation to be relatively short.

I am up for renaming the team to something with broader appeal, on a temporary basis, to get additional participation. Eventually it is going to go back to the quirky name that it has now because...well, because it is my team and God's Chariot must be honored lol. My presence on social media is less than zero, so I'd need folks here to help coordinate external participation. I could try making a new logo for the team, along the lines of God's Chariot, while not changing the name at first, since some BMW-related humor might help, but I am guessing that the vast majority of BMW enthusiasts out there these days give zero shits about the E30 and probably think that E46's are "too old."

Also, what sort of hardware are people folding on?

I built a dedicated machine for this a few years back. The relevant bits of my rig are:
Xeon E5-2669-V3 (12 core, 2.3GHz)
Zotac GeForce GTX 980Ti AMP! Edition
Zotac GeForce GTX 980Ti AMP! Extreme Edition
Customized case cooling & air flow direction (original case was a cheapo $30 one that had room for everything, and I spent a week machining and laser cutting baffles and guides for some Noctua fans to keep everything cool and quiet)

[E30 Wagen]

Started again. Running a i5 7600, gtx 1070