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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Community
Forum: Hardware Chat Room
Thread: Efficient cruncher build |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 123
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I would have to check my wattage. I need to clean the fans out this weekend, so when I plug them back in, I'll make sure to have one going into my killawatt and see what total draw for one is.
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smeyer55
Senior Cruncher Joined: Feb 15, 2009 Post Count: 303 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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sunk818 I'm also running XU4's on ZIKA work units. I have the big cores running at 1.9GHz and the little cores at 1.4GHz. With those settings I'm averaging 10,900 WGC points per day per XU4. I think that translates into 1,559 RAC.
I don't have info for SCC but it should be similar. I bought the XU4Q and put a small Noctura fan blowing down on the heatsink. My temps are in the high 70C to low 80C area. I don't have a way to measure the power. I use the app kernel adiutor (not misspelled!) to set the max frequency to 1.9GHz and use CPU-z to get the temperature readings. I'm using lineage 14.1 Alpha 1.8 Android. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I bought the XU4Q and put a small Noctura fan blowing down on the heatsink. My temps are in the high 70C to low 80C area. I don't have a way to measure the power. kill-a-watt i think is about $20 will measure how much watts you use on the wall. it goes between your wall outlet and power strip. My Dell Optiplex 3010 i5 (4 core 3.2Ghz) runs about 60W @ 75% BOINC... which is ~$13/mo in electricity cost @ $0.30 kW/h (I think). I'm leaning towards ARM units like Odroids MC1 (XU4*4) because the RAC to electricity cost ratio is better. I have bought six TracFone Alcatel OneTouch TracFone. They produce about 1k RAC combined. 1 ODroid XU4 could do same without taking up all that space, usb hub, etc. The other thought too was getting HP Blade Servers. They seem to be under $100 on eBay for Xeon processors, but I am not sure if you need a cabinet, how much they cost, and what kind of power you need... or if you can even have it located in a consumer home. |
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smeyer55
Senior Cruncher Joined: Feb 15, 2009 Post Count: 303 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Byteball
I forgot that my UPS can tell me how many watts are being used. The UPS is powering a 300 watt power supply which powers 16 XU4s. Plus there is a 24 port hub + each XU4 has its own little fan. The UPS reports all that was taking 250 watts which works out to about 15 watts per XU4 + some for the power supply and hub. That's running all 8 cores at full load. So the 15 watt per XU4 seems to be right. Be aware that the Odroid MC1 doesn't have video output. Setting them up might be tricky. They _should_ be able to run Android, but I didn't see any mention of that on the Odroid site. The old blade servers should run ok without a rack. They should just have a regular power cord (or 2 if they have redundant power supplies). They will use a lot of power to run the older processors. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
sunk818- I cleaned out my odroids and plugged one of them into my kill a watt afterwards. I let it warm up for about 5 minutes and at 110v AC, it was drawing 10.5-11 watts average. It did vary a small amount, but not much. Edit: that is with a Noctua 5v 40MM fan, not the stock fan. Not sure how much difference that would make.
----------------------------------------smeyer55- I have looked into the MC1 systems and want to get a couple eventually. You are right about no HDMI. They also do not have EMMC, so you will have to boot off a microSD card. I think they also removed some of the usb ports to save money. I read that the MC1 will still run the same OS as a regular xu4. So if you have an existing xu4, you could probably use that one to set up the OS, shut it down, and move the sd card to one of the MC1 systems. They were meant to run Linux headless, but unfortunately for us, WCG dont support Linux on ARM at this time. [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Jun 9, 2018 8:28:51 PM] |
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smeyer55
Senior Cruncher Joined: Feb 15, 2009 Post Count: 303 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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joneill003 - what frequency are you running the big cores at?
----------------------------------------That will make a difference in the power used. The fans I'm using are the Noctua NF-A4x20 5V. The box says they use 0.5W max. I did have to solder the wires to the board since the on board fan header is not the same as a regular motherboard fan header. So mine run at full speed all the time. On the Odroid web site it says the XU4 fan uses 120ma max, so 0.6W max. If you are using the Noctua NF-A4x10 5V the max on that is 0.25W. [Edit 1 times, last edit by smeyer55 at Jun 10, 2018 3:28:20 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Sorry for the late reply. I was out of town for a few days. The big cores run at around 1.8-1.9GHz. I cannot seem to get them to stay at 2GHz, even with all the added cooling I have. The small cores max out at 1.4GHz, and seem to be happy at that frequency.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I missed the part about the Noctua. I am running the NF-A4x10. I didn't realize they made a x20. My model came with an adapter kit so what I did was took the OEM fan from the Odroid and cut the connector off. I then used the adapter to make the Noctua fan connect to the Odroid header.
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smeyer55
Senior Cruncher Joined: Feb 15, 2009 Post Count: 303 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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joneill003 I think part of the problem with getting them to run at 2GHz is the plastic housing on the cpu which limits heat transfer. If you're really really brave you can try grinding off a layer on the top of the chip to make the plastic thinner.
Not something I'm brave enough to try! Odroid is coming out with an N1 model which uses a Rockckip core and comes in a metal package. This should provide better heat transfer. They mention an N1-Lite model for $75 which will be equivalent to the XU4. The regular N1 will have 4GB ram and a SATA interface and be around $110. Both models will run off 12 volts. Odroid says the performance will be about the same as an XU4. Go here to read about it. https://odroidinc.com/blogs/news/tagged/odroid-n1 |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I think I'll shy away from grinding off any layers of the chip. 1.8GHz is close enough for me, and better than 0.0GHz :)
The N1 looks interesting. It is a hex vs the xu4 being an octo, but it is more powerful. |
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