Folding farms
 

Imagine you had a budget of a €1000, how would you spend it to build a folding farm?

VIA C3 procs are slow, but you can't beat the price!
My first attempt: VIA C3 all-in solutions with 128mb sdr ram. Folding doesn't use much mem, so I think 128mb is enough.

+ SNOGARD® K7-M787 CLR, INCL. VIA 1Giga PRO CPU und KÜHLER, LAN, SOUND, VGA onboard, ATX 79.90 EUR
+ 128MB-SDRAM, PC-133, 7ns, OEM 15,90 EUR
+ recycled PSU 0 eur
+ old floppy 0 eur
=> 86 eur a piece :o

Folding rigs: 10*86 => €860
Home-mad alu rack with plexi front: 20 + 8 => €28
4*120mm silent papst to cool the whole thing down: 4*21= €84
cheap keyb & mouse => €10
Old 14" CRT => 20 eur
Grand total: 1002 eur.

How would you build your Folding farm? Cheap durons? Affordable 2000+'s? Or just 2 killer P4's? Let your imagination go wild! :D

I would just place an add :

"I'll buy your old mobo + cpu + memory + graphic card + floppy + PSU. Must be PII300 and up and at least 64MB RAM. You can keep the case + cdrom + hd if you want."

.... and see what comes in

Don't know the performance of a via 1ghz, how quick does it fold ?

Hmmmm... no idea whatsoever. It must be quicker than a P3 sub 500Mhz... no? So it must be better price/performance wise.... i think.

This would be a far less destructive ans more usefull hobby than hardcore overclocking. = D

Edit:
Hmm... according to Sisoft, a VIA C3 1Ghz performs less than a P3 500Mhz, and a bit more than a P2 400Mhz. Damn that's slow. :wtf:

An XP2000+ is 4x as fast, but not 4x as expensive. Oh well, i'm just dreaming. :)

1 GigaPro != VIA C3 as far as I know :)

VIA C3 is the only available product they have for the moment... i can't imagine what else this would be.

They'll prolly mean it uses the PROsavage chipset from via.

http://www.pcchips.com.tw/M787CLR.html

gigapro 1ghz = 733 mhz C3

How do you derive that out of that link? ???

I can't find "733 mhz C3" anywhere?

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba.../1gigapro.html

There are several other googlelinks with the same 733 mhz in the title ... the one posted being the most nerdish :^)

1GigaPro is very , uhm , confusing, since it is NOT a 1ghz CPU at all!



UPDATE: Beim aufgelöteten Prozessor handelt es sich mitnichten um einen 1GHz-Prozessor. Vielmehr ist es ein 667 bzw. 733MHz Samuel 2. Die verwirrende Bezeichnung 1Giga Pro wurde vermutlich vom Hersteller des Boards (PC Chips) zum Kundenfang gewählt.

Same thing, but better mobo (?) and duron 900Mhz:

ECS K7SEM V3.0 SIS730S mATX 2SDR AGP4X 2PCI LAN VGA Audio + Duron 892MHz + cooler €105,00

Looks like a nice solution for a backup/folding rig.

aha, that is indeed a KICK *** solution
where did you find that?

crazycamel.be

You can get it without the proc & cooler at funcomp for 62 euro's. So if you want a Duron 1.3Ghz (40) + cheap cooler (8) on it, it's only 110 euro's. Add a stick of 128mb SDR and you've got an (almost) complete rig fot 125 eur. :o

We can't find "crazycamel.be".


:(

all the fuss about the micro/mini atx mobo's
shall i make a review?
examns done 16th december - going on vacation 20 december

4 days, 4 reviews :p

oops, it's .com

DURON, only one a day? Getting old are we? :)
Best bang for the buck miniATX folding rig article would be interesting!

url funcomp please ? i hope that is not a shop in germany ,
i stille have a spare duron 800 and a silverado noisecontrol cpucooler , so this would be an excellent solution for me..

Funcomp = shop in germany :)
but they send stuff over for a pretty low fee

maybe i better buy stuff secondhanded , allready got spare vga and lan , and i dont need sound..

They have a gigabyte all in one solution at tones. mini-atx
http://tw.giga-byte.com/products/8simlp_product.htm
101 eur
vga - lan - sound

Did you forget the HD or don't you need it to run Folding?

check info thread, folding without HD :-)
it should work also like this:

- 512Mb ram
- CDrom drive
- bootable CD with ghostimage of minimal install W95

boot from CD, create 400mb ramdrive, ghost to RAMdrive
- boot :)

will take about ~10min to get system running
but then it's speedy all the way

just make sure the power don't fall out during the 99% of that 400 frame WU :)

I see
interesting..
Ow: isn't W2K more interesting (faster) than W9x? (I know it was with rc5..) But that won't fit on a CD I guess..

Thanks for the info

it will fit onto a CD
but don't think it will fit onto 400mb ramdrive + swapfile :-)

unless you put in 1gb RAM
but then you might as well install a 2gb HD and be done with it

that's what I'm doing anywayz :)
I bought a new socket a cooler, Volcano 7 @ 20€ , since noone in VL. seems to have a spare one :-/

next up a 900mhz SDR Duron system :)

blast, i've got some cheaper socket cooling
thought you needed a decent one for a XP

Just made a comparison:

Mini-atx mobo with integrated Lan and VGA, PIV 2000, cooler, 256MB DDR, 15" TFT, 40GB Seagate, floppy, cdrom, small case, cherry keyboard, W2K pro uk

1.000 eur

Equivalent with Dell or Compaq => 1.800 to 2.000 eur
Choice = made

- next day HW replacement
- 3 year warranty
- SOFTware support

comes at a price :)