$425 for >4100 PPD (Ivy Bridge madness)

[Bobsama]

So I was pricing out dedicated crunchers and spotted something very interesting. Apparently, there are new Xeon E3's out--the so-called V2's--that are running Ivy Bridge.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117286
The E3-1230 V2 costs $240 and is a quad-core with HyperThreading. It runs at 3.3GHz (3.7GHz max) but turbo multipliers are 2/3/4/4. It'll run at 3,500 MHz minimum though 3,625 MHz might be the more accurate number. No overclocking and no IGP, but it is a 69W chip so it should work just fine in cheap H61 motherboards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157315
These Asrock H61M-DGS's seem to be pretty often DOA but they're cheap and should be sufficient to run a low-power cruncher. I'm sure there's better options but I can't afford finding them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148538
Cheap DDR3-1333 is all you really need. Here's a single 4GB stick. If you want 8GB, you can grab a dual-channel version for $35. In fact, I'd probably recommend it--if only to setup a 2GB RAMdisk for the BOINC directory and scratch space.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820139257
A cheap and reasonably reliable USB stick is all that's really needed. You can get away with 8GB but these were priced so similarly that I thought, what the heck? More than enough space to install Ubuntu or your distribution of choice. Performance isn't grand but it's only for the OS and possibly backing up a RAMdisk.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151117
Trust the brand, even in lieu of reviews. What I love is the power efficiency. If the system draws 20% (72W--which is possible), 80 PLUS Gold says that it should be at least 87% efficient. How would you like 83W from the wall?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811147122
Finally, a chassis may be required for some of you. As we all know, a cheap chassis can be sufficient. This Rosewill Ranger-M has a couple cheap fans which should get you running for a few years. One day, you'll need to buy replacements--but you'll have plenty of time to find them.

Only thing left out from this build is video. The CPU doesn't have any IGP which means the motherboard can't display anything. Grab your spare graphics card and install--and then run it headless. Or grab a bunch of cheap graphics cards and have at it! eBay usually has Dell Radeon X300's on the cheap ($5-10/ea)--and all you really need it to do is display an image. Regardless of any shortcomings, this is at least $100 cheaper than using a Core i7-3770K. If you could get a solid 4.8GHz out of one of those, you'll have spent 50% more for a 40% gain.



Sticking Sandy Bridge, 3300 MHz, & 32-bit Windows into the old WCG PPD Estimator (v0.6.4b), it comes up with 4,103.43 PPD. Stick in 3500 MHz instead and you get 4,350.00 PPD. Say 3625 MHz and it returns 4,505.36 PPD.

[OldChap]

In view of the fact that trn's e3-1230 is currently getting 6K6 and my 3770K stuck in a gigabyte board that does not allow overclocking is currently getting 6K2 I am tempted to suggest that your ppd estimate is perhaps 50% low.

Does that make this an even sweeter deal??

[masterg]

only if you run linux like a mad man.

im one of like 5 people on WCG running a 1235. i bought mine for 249 last year so price hasnt changed much (1235 has graphical support over 1230). its also where i ran into TD's "5 itx motherboards for 180$" would have been awesome =\

my 1235 V1 on win 7 x64 runs avg of 4500ppd

and bob you can't overclock these suckas mines running 3193mhz (v1 is 3.2ghz)

[Bobsama]

Masterg; the one I suggest is an E3-1230 V2--the Ivy Bridge variation. And yeah, compared to an overclocked chip, it's "slow". The advantage is always price and, for graphical support, it's not worth the cost to get IGP. Of the E3 V2's, only the 1225, 1245, 1265L, & 1275 have IGP enabled. (Tray price on a the 1230 is $215-230, versus $266-273 on the 1245.) Grab your $8 Radeon X300 and call it a day!

Anyone have a more up-to-date version of the WCG PPD Estimator? Because if these things do 6K/day on Linux, it's massively worthwhile!

(I pieced this together when I saw TRN pass DDTUNG: $43K buys 10 rackmount 15A power strips, 4 24(+2)-port 10/100(+10/100/1000) switches, 96 Cat6 cables (half 10', half 20'), and 96 E3-1230 V2's, each with 4GB DDR3, a 16GB flash drive, H61 board, the Seasonic Gold 360W PSU, cheap chassis).

If I was making $1M a year, I'd definitely drop $50-60K on computers annually. At 90W per cruncher, that's about 8.7 kWh. 208.8 kW/day; 6,355 kW/month, 76,265 kW/year. Even at 20 cents/kWh, that's roughly a $1300 monthly electicity bill (assuming you can cool with outside air).

[Bobsama]

Ok so who bought them all?



I was right about to click "Checkout" on 100 of 'em!

[masterg]

MM did