even like top 14 or so, and that was even with missing a few days due to a stupid client-banning thing that most people run into the 1950X is fast enough to get top 1% in Sheep-it (rendering farm). If you can find cheap X399 boards, look for cheap Threadrippers. Other than that, is doesn't have to be anything fancy. A bonus if there is a fan int the front, positioned so that it blows cold air from outside the chassis right into the CPU cooler. Good air-flow is very important for 100% load 24/7 systems, make sure there are air filters for intake fan positions to minimize dust build-up. Either one can go cheap with some Hyper 212 cooler or go fancy with a Noctua-cooler and Noctua fans to get the best of the best in terms of quality, reliability, noise, temperature, OC-ability.įinally, chassis. I would choose an air-cooler for such a system since they have much higher reliability than water coolers. On the other hand, if you are going to do GPU work outside of WCG then you must check if those tasks are CUDA or OpenCL to find the best GPU for you. If you are not going to run GPU projects, or will invest in GPUs once projects will become available here at WCG then right now you can buy cheap passively cooled GPUs just to be able to connect to a monitor if need be. Better ratings than GOLD exist (Platina, Titanium for very high efficiency ratings which will help lower the electricity cost but the up-front investment make them pass the point of diminishing returns). If you are going to run CPU and GPU under load at the same time choose >= 750W. Choose a Corsair, Seasonic, BeQuiet, CoolerMaster and such brands with 80PLUS GOLD efficiency rating at >= 500W if you are going to run only CPU tasks. Pretty much any HDD/SSD >= 120GB for OS install, BOINC and its data directory. Good value for money right now would be something like:ĪMD Ry+ and OC (or 2700X if you do not want to apply OC yourself)Īsus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming (Decent VRM for this price class)ġ6GB RAM CL15-16 3000Mhz are pretty cheap (2x8GB for Dual Channel preferred) So either the motherboards of choice must have something like BIOS-flashback to be able to flash a new BIOS without CPU installed or it must come with a newer BIOS at delivery, or you must have a 2000-series CPU that is compatible with the board at an older BIOS version to then be able to flash all the boards you buy to a newer version and then swap the CPU for the 3000 series one. however, it is possible to install a 3000-series CPU in an x470 motherboard (cheaper), but you need to have a correct newer BIOS version for it to boot with those newer CPUs. 3700X is more expensive, but has higher performance per core and the new motherboards are more expensive due to PCIe 4.0 implementation in the x570 boards. 2700 is of previous generation but very nicely priced right now and has cheaper motherboards. I would probably go for AMD Ryor 3700X (both 8C/16T). If space and such is not of a concern, then you might want to go for sweet-spot price/performance per machine and many machines instead. Also, get a good motherboard with decent VRMs so that they wont wear out fast due to high temperature. CEP2 project that ran on WCG earlier had huge RAM requirements for instance. The more threads your CPU will run, the more RAM you need. Beefier cooling will also be required to tame such beasts att 100% load and perhaps some OC. I would go for AMD ThreadRipper systems running for instance AMD TR 2950X (16C/32T), 2970WX(24C/48T) and 2990WX(32C/64T). If you go for few machines but more powerful ones, then you probably will pay a price premium for the CPU to get a lot of cores (you will spend beyond the sweet-spot for price/performance ratio) but instead fewer machines will take up less space and you will need fewer motherboards, PSUs, cases etc. How large of a farm did you have in mind?
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