Had a few spare moments this morning, so I figured I'd see how I could put together a Folding at Home box cheapest with the most amount of power. Quick and easy solution - on board video, LAN and audio. Newegg has a PC Chips Micro ATX board with support for 800 MHz FSB and PC3200 RAM for $42. Throw in the cheapest socket 754 processor - a Sempron 2600+ and 512 MB of cheap (but reliable RAM) and you've got a working board for $165. The price could be brought down by going with 256 MB of RAM and I could pick up a Sempron 2200+ at Fry's for $40, but performance would be hurt and large work units would take a little longer to complete with half the RAM. However, you do get the price down to $105.
Either way, I'm going to go out and get some parts for Pandora's Box 2 tonight. Just some hinges, wood, the basics to start construction (since the Angels game is a day game and won't occupy my time at night). Once I get Pandora's Box 2 up and running, I can then easily swap out whole computers for a new one from Newegg for $165 (or less as prices go down) that will easily double the power of a couple of the boards going into the box.
Current boards:
ECS K7S5A w/AMD Athlon 1100
ECS K7S5A w/AMD Athlon 1700
Soyo w/AMD Athlon 1600
Soyo w/AMD Duron 850
(2 with 256 MB RAM, 2 with 512)
So as you can see - dropping in a new board with a faster FSB and quicker memory access along with a faster processor and more RAM will speed up things considerably for a very cheap price. It'd be pretty sweet to eventually replace all 4 computers with identical boxes to keep things looking good. Now - to just find some cheap hard drives - as the ones I bid on on eBay were lost earlier this morning and I am not going to pay more (TXMicro, here I come).
Other plans for the boxes - a KVM switch to control all four if need be along with a small LCD monitor attached to the top of the box (trying to find one free at work). Also, a USB CD-ROM for quick and easy access if need be (though I'm not sure if I can install Windows off of a USB CD-ROM - in which case I'll just go with the PATA).
URL: Newegg.com - Once You Know, You Newegg
Either way, I'm going to go out and get some parts for Pandora's Box 2 tonight. Just some hinges, wood, the basics to start construction (since the Angels game is a day game and won't occupy my time at night). Once I get Pandora's Box 2 up and running, I can then easily swap out whole computers for a new one from Newegg for $165 (or less as prices go down) that will easily double the power of a couple of the boards going into the box.
Current boards:
ECS K7S5A w/AMD Athlon 1100
ECS K7S5A w/AMD Athlon 1700
Soyo w/AMD Athlon 1600
Soyo w/AMD Duron 850
(2 with 256 MB RAM, 2 with 512)
So as you can see - dropping in a new board with a faster FSB and quicker memory access along with a faster processor and more RAM will speed up things considerably for a very cheap price. It'd be pretty sweet to eventually replace all 4 computers with identical boxes to keep things looking good. Now - to just find some cheap hard drives - as the ones I bid on on eBay were lost earlier this morning and I am not going to pay more (TXMicro, here I come).
Other plans for the boxes - a KVM switch to control all four if need be along with a small LCD monitor attached to the top of the box (trying to find one free at work). Also, a USB CD-ROM for quick and easy access if need be (though I'm not sure if I can install Windows off of a USB CD-ROM - in which case I'll just go with the PATA).
URL: Newegg.com - Once You Know, You Newegg
posted by Blake | 07:36
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