planning to spend arround 500€ for a gpu-crunsher.

But tbh havent any idea how to get max performance out of it. Was thinking about 2x460 768MB for 300€ i found (read they have a good €/folding rate)
but not sure if i can get rest whats needed for 200€.

Im not really sure how much cpu/ram and how big power supply would be needed to supply the 2 460's for gpu tasks.

would be other gpu('s) better?

P.S. sry, english isnt my native language and im a gpu-folding noob :)

Hi ralle030583,

it's been a while since I've last built so I'm not up to date with all the components. But a quick google search got me this $500 Gaming PC when I look at this & see that you've already committed €300 & only have €200 set aside for the rest, I can't see how it's possible, when the 850W PSU on the list costs $130 or €100, leaving only €100 for the CPU, motherboard, RAM, HDD, & chassis, even if you plan to use Linux as the OS. It's best to have a bit of balance, as the lack of balance with hardware components will have an undesirable affect on performance &/or stability. Even if you do go cheap on the motherboard, CPU, RAM, & use a USB stick instead of HDD, would you go cheap on the chassis & PSU when heat has such an affect on stability & so does the power?

I'm not offering you a solution, but rather asking you the question, if you're willing to build a PC from scratch, cutting corners, only to be disappointed because you cut corners. I'd suggest that you either start with one GTX460 & leave open the possibility to add one later, or that you instead consider spending $600(€465) instead of €200 on non-GPU components.

Here in Danmark, I've noticed that PC's that cost around DKr.5000(€675) are best bought as a preassembled PC's, where you get the best bang for the buck. It's when you intend to spend DKr.10000 (€1350), that you yourself can get that best bang for the buck. In Danmark things are generally more expensive then in other EU Nations & we pay 25% VAT here, so what gives the best value in your Country is something I know nothing about. Just make sure to look at what the shops have to offer, before you decide if you can do it cheaper.

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How about a €625 ($806) PC? I took this from link listed in $ & not including shipping or OS. If what you want is to crunch 24/7 as cheap as possible, you can save on the OS by running Linux. You'll have to install via a USB pen or from an external optical drive (if you have one)

AMD Athlon II X3 445 3.1GHz Triple-Core 95W $78
ASRock EXTREME3 870 CF 8x/8x SATA6Gb/s USB3.0 ATX $90 YES it's CF NOT SLI, but you don't use SLI for GPUGRID & only need 2 PCIex8 which you get.
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 $80
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 460 768MB $170 which you'll need 2 of.
SAMSUNG F4 320GB SATA $43
SeaSonic S12D 850W 80PLUS SILVER Certified $130
Rosewill CHALLENGER ATX 2 x 120mm + 1x 140mm fans $45

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@liveonc
its cheaper for me here to buy the parts instead of buying a preassembled pc.

pherhaps you are right and i should spend more on the non-gpu parts and start with one gpu.

but the parts for the 806$ build you posted seems also to be ok and its only a bit over my planned budget, need only to check local prizes. :)

As OS i wanted try a DotschUX 1.2/diskless client and setting up the server on my debian machine.

hmm after thinging about last posts
the current plan is building a nice base and adding up to 3 gpu's later

- Asrock 890GX Extreme3 140,-€
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Prozessor Black Edition
(Sockel AM3, 3.20GHz, 8MB L2+L3 Cache) 140,-€
- Kingston 4GB RAMKit 2x2GB DDR2 90€
- S1000W Xilence Redwing Gaming-Edition 138€
- Sharkoon Bandit Big-Tower - black (180mm fan top , 120mmfan front) 80€

thats:
588€ for non-gpu parts... argh

+ first gt460 .. 130€

~700€ in total for base system with first gpu...

pherhaps i should replace some parts through cheaper ones ...
any suggestions to reduce costs, are some parts oversized?

IMO "Budget" DOESN'T mean what you'd like, but what you need. It's not about planning ahead, but getting away with the minimum of what you possibly can. I can't recommend anything that my heart wouldn't also tell my head is best for me. But if my head tells my heart that I can't afford it, it's never a nice feeling.

But if you do have to cut costs, RAM would be the place, the chassis you can always get later (if you can stand the mess & be very careful), & the GPU will require a core per GPU (also it doesn't mean that it has to be super fast as long as it's not super slow) so you can go cheap(er) there too. BTW, are you sure that you're looking at the correct RAM? I can't see the model you mean, but if it's this, it uses DDR3. I hope you're very confident with your software skills too, because I couldn't get DotschUX working the way it was supposed to the normal way & you're going to run it over the network to save on the HDD. Be sure that you can cool this PC (also when it uses 3xGTX460) & find out if you can manually set the fan to 100% either via software, or by flashing a modified ROM. The very last thing is confidence in the quality of PSU. I have no experience with Xilence, but SeaSonic has always given me a nice(r) one.

NOTE: If you had in mind to use the Onboard GPU on the Asrock 890GX running Linux, I can't get that to work either when I'm using Nvidia GPU(s), but you had in mind to run yours over the ethernet (just to point out, if you had in mind to use a HDD), of course it's probably because I'm such a Linux N00B.

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Keep thinking about power efficiency for a GPU Crunching system.

That is a DDR3 based system; the way to go, but it needs DDR3 RAM!
Good motherboard with 3 PCIE slots - will allow you to add more cards later.

The PSU is key; it will need to be able to support more cards in the future - be prepared to spend big on a good PSU. The better PSU's are also more energy efficient. Is that the best one?

You should also look carefully at the CPU. If you can get a 65W CPU rather than a 95W TDP CPU then do it, even if it costs a bit more.

By using more energy efficient components (CPU, RAM, HDD) your overall systems power requirements will drop, keeping the running costs lower, and putting less strain on the PSU. GTX 460 (768MB) TDP = 150W. You might get away with an 850W PSU, but check the 12V rail supplies enough AMPs.

was only a typo in the list, i mean ofc DDR3

cost safings:
if 2GB is enough, for one crunsihing gpu its already one thing i can safe some
money now :)
do you think a AMD® Athlon II X3 445 (82€) is enough for a three gpu system?

if so i would be at:
- Asrock 890GX Extreme3 140,-
- MD Athlon II X3 445 82,- (shound't the 890GX unlock the 4th core? not sure about that UCC feature)
- Kingston 2 GB (1066 MHz NON-ECC) DDR3-SDRAM 43,-
- S1000W Xilence Redwing Gaming-Edition 138

total: 403,- instead of the 588,- for non gpu part
+ 130,- gt460
533,- .. goal meat


you are right i can purchase the case also later, have still somewhere an old which should be able to handle heat of one gpu xD , would need the new one when i already have 2 or all 3 gpu's

Upgrade list for later:
- Sharkoon Bandit Big-Tower - black (180mm fan top , 120mmfan front) 80,-
- Kingston 2 GB (1066 MHz NON-ECC) DDR3-SDRAM 43,-
+ 2 other GT460 xD

and 33,- over the planned 500€ won't give me a bad feeling i hope :)

Dotsch/UX:
i played already a bit arround and think i can get configured to run as network boot. and if not.. i can still ask for help at work from our sysadmins xD and if it doesn't.. i can still use a spare HDD from my other computers until i get it as diskless client to work

That looks like a very good system.

The AMD® Athlon II X3 445 will be good enough for 3 X GTX 460, so long as you just run GPUGrid (no seperate CPU cruching, especially on Linux).
Core unlock might depend on Bois Ver, and not sure its a good idea even if it's doable.
PS. Think GTX 475 might be an upgrade option too ;)

now i only need wait 2 weeks and then i can go shopping :)
pherhaps i have some luck and get better prizes in two weeks.

P.S does my sig work now?

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Your sig sort of works, but I imagine it will look better in a few weeks ;)

btw can you say me if that are good numbers for my NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT (997MB) driver: 25896

Task...... Runtime...... CPUTIME .... Claimed .... Granted  
1887922 .. 49,048.17.....3,256.44 ... 4,535.61 ... 6,803.41  
1882766 .. 64,698.37.....5,591.70 ... 5,764.79 ... 8,647.18  
2950582 .. 62,623.64.....5,812.74 ... 5,764.79 ... 8,647.18  
2929334 .. 52,622.30 ... 2,907.53 ... 4,535.61 ... 4,535.61  
2929279 . 174,102.97 .. 23,367.00 .. 14,159.83 .. 14,159.83  
2922547 .. 90,433.09 ... 3,075.45 ... 4,535.61 ... 5,669.51   
2898789 .. 90,018.77 ... 5,898.32 ... 5,764.79 ... 7,205.98  
2895631 . 245,675.42 .. 22,029.15 .. 14,159.83 .. 14,159.83   

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I make your 9800GT about 38% slower than my GT240's, so I would say your times are slightly on the low side, but not bad.
CC1.1 is about 33% slower than CC1.2. You'r shaders are 700MHz while mine are at 600MHz. My GT240's are on Vista x64, a reasonable comparison to your Win7 x64 system.
You probably dont keep one of your i5 750's threads free to expedite the GPU tasks. I have a Phenom II 940, with one core free to support the GPU's.

You did miss out on the bonus credit a few times. I expect this was to do with your setup. Better to keep a small cache (0.01days), otherwise tasks just sit in the queue eating away at the bonus time; 50% for task completion within 1day or 25% for task completion within 2days (deadline 5days).
- Unless the scientists changed this?

My concern with your cards would be the failures. Not the immediate failures, but the failures after say 3h. Unfortunately this is all too common with CC1.1 cards. Fortunately you have the solution, a Fermi.

the one failure after 3h was my fault.. oc during the task was in progress.. think was a bad idea xD

should i set boinc to use 75% cpu's so i have 1 core free for the gpu?
set also swan_sync=0 in system properties.. read something about it.. thaught would be a good idea, or was that also a fault?

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75% might be a good idea for your i5. Set it at 75% (or any number between 75 and 99 - seems to make no difference) and run a few tasks to see what improvement you get. It migth only be 5%, but even that helps; you would be happy with another 5% OC. You might be interested in this post.

I expect swan_sync would make little or no difference for a 9800GT, or any other CC1.1 card; it is mainly for Fermi's.

Hi, not really low budget, but finally got aGTX480 & 470 running on an ASUS P5E with an 850Watt (4x 12V;17A) running. And that's bearly enough, for these cards.
12V has dropped to 11.55, which is acceptable. I run it whithout a case, since the amount of heat is enough to heat a small room ;)

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Knight Who Says Ni N!

Certainly not low budget, but definitely more efficient.
Two big cards in one system is much more economical than running them on seperate systems. Your CPU alone could draw 130W. With the motherboard, RAM and drives you would be close to 200W. Overclock even slightly and you are talking the same as a GTX470 (215W). So you are saving on the running cost of a full system, less the second card. At the same time you are almost doubling your contribution. It’s the best way to do it, if you can.

so after my OC attemps of my 9800GT failed and resultet in graphic errors (which seems also cause CUDA errors now...)
i just ordered a new GPU for my main-pc which should arrive before weekend

GigaByte GeForce GTX460 OC
715MHz/900MHz/1430MHz • Chip: GF104 • 40nm •

hopeing it was a good choice

the additional 500$ crunsher has to be deplayed for 1-2 months cause of that,
but thanks for all advises

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The GTX 460 is a reasonably good card, and still has potential to be more productive. It is presently almost as powerful as a GTX260, for crunching here, but I would expect that to increase, perhaps to about the same as a GTX285. It is also quieter and less power hungry; an all round good card. It should serve your needs well, even if it keeps you away from your crunching system. Perhaps not a bad thing either - In a couple of month’s prices may have fallen and we should see the GTX475.

i hope the few extra $$$ for the gigabyte OC version was a good idea, atleast its one with a good dual fan cooling and should be at full load still under 60°C (from what i read)

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