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Category: Active Research
Forum: OpenPandemics - COVID-19 Project
Thread: OpenPandemics - COVID-19 on Raspberry Pi |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 35
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BobbyB
Veteran Cruncher Canada Joined: Apr 25, 2020 Post Count: 638 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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@olebole
What was the total cost of those 12 Pi4's, the fans, heat sinks, tower, and anything else I may not have thought of?? |
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mwroggenbuck
Advanced Cruncher USA Joined: Nov 1, 2006 Post Count: 85 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I went with the Raspberry Pi 400. There are two options. Get the kit, which cost $100 (US). It includes everything you need--16 GB SD card, mouse, HDMI cable, and power supply. It also has a nice little book, but you can download that if you want to.
----------------------------------------The second option is just the Raspberry Pi itself for $70 (US). You will still need to buy at least an SD Card and a power supply if you want to run in headless mode. I think you would also need a SD Card Reader to program the card, although you may be able to buy a card with Raspberry Pi already on it (the kit comes that way). You may also already have a card reader in a different computer. If you want to hook up a monitor and mouse I think the kit definitely is worth it. I thought the kit was worth the extra $30. I might have wanted a larger SD card, but so far I am only using about 1/2 of the 16 GB and the system runs 4 threads of open pandemics. The 400 also has a huge heat sink built into the keyboard. I was able to overclock it quite easily. With the kit, I am running in headless mode, and therefore have an extra mouse and HDMI cable. If you go with the 400 compute unit only, you could trade that extra $30 in for a power supply and bigger SD card. I cannot speak for other versions of hardware besides the 400. I should add that the 400 runs at 1800 MHz right out of the box, while I believe other Pi 4 versions run at 1500. I would need to verify that. I hope this helps. P.S. I am running four Raspberry Pi 400, each in headless mode. [Edit 3 times, last edit by mwroggenbuck at Feb 7, 2021 2:24:06 PM] |
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BobbyB
Veteran Cruncher Canada Joined: Apr 25, 2020 Post Count: 638 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Was thinking more like option 2. So to price the setup above from olebole (12 Pi4s) this is like 12x$70 and I guess about 12x$5 for the fans/heat sink and about $60 for the tower which makes it $960 USD. This is like 2 million CAD
---------------------------------------- Kidding. $1200 CAD @1.29 exchange rate.Hmmmm what kind Ryzen/Xeon CPU and motherboard and could I get for that amount. [Edit 1 times, last edit by BobbyB at Feb 7, 2021 3:46:16 PM] |
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mwroggenbuck
Advanced Cruncher USA Joined: Nov 1, 2006 Post Count: 85 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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You left out power supplies and SD cards. However, if you go with the 400, you will not need fans/heats sinks...
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KerSamson
Master Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Post Count: 1684 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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@TonyEllis
----------------------------------------I thank you for the details regarding the SD/SSD configuration of your RPi's. I am currently operating my RPi's with SD only and since 2.5 months, I do experience from time to time some unexpected crashes caused by a suddenly "read-only" filesystem. I guess that the SD cards - after 9+ months 24/7 (4 threads) - slowly become weak. Before I order new SD cards and having to reinstall the RPi's, I was interested by some recommendation / ideas ... Cheers, Yves |
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KerSamson
Master Cruncher Switzerland Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Post Count: 1684 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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@BobbyB
----------------------------------------For a configuration with 12 RPi's, I would consider to devote one of them to act as a file server for the 11 others RPi's. Likewise, I would consider to use an adapted PC PSU as a central PSu for all RPi's. It would surely be more efficient in terms of electricity consumption. Installing the RPi's in a shared case would help as well to secure a better cooling with some large ventilators. You can build an "RPi-based blade centre"  Cheers, Yves |
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olebole
Cruncher Joined: Nov 25, 2004 Post Count: 12 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I have to tally it up. Ill get back to you.
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ChristianVirtual
Advanced Cruncher Japan Joined: Jan 11, 2014 Post Count: 55 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I have one USB power block with 8 USB-A connector and a display showing me the draw for each slot. Then connect with short-enough USB-A2C cables to my rack of Pi. Unfortunate two Pi have own power adapter; thinking getting a second of the 8-port block. Works nice and still reduce the overall cable chaos.
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Active with WCG, GPUGrid, F@H
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Landorin
Cruncher Germany Joined: Apr 28, 2007 Post Count: 31 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I built a tower with 12 PI4's. All with heatsinks and 3 120mm fans to keep them all cool. They boot and run diskless off of one of the PI's who serve as boot and fileserver (while crunching itself). This uses in total 66 Watt. 5,5 Watt pr. PI. Each Pi crunches 4 WU's at a time, taking around 9 hours per unit. I have tested a few desktops and laptops, and for OPN1 points per watthour, nothing beats the PI4. Hm at first I thought that would be interesting if one's own electricity prices are rather high. Yet around 8 full results per day? I rent a vserver for almost 3 Euro/month that achieves 11-12 results per day. Seems somewhat cheaper and more effective. Or did I miss something? Okay, in the loong run the hardware at home has paid off (yet there is still the electricity). Haven't done the maths but at least for a year a vserver might be cheaper I suppose.  [Edit 3 times, last edit by Landorin at Mar 15, 2021 2:06:58 PM] |
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Bryn Mawr
Senior Cruncher Joined: Dec 26, 2018 Post Count: 384 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I built a tower with 12 PI4's. All with heatsinks and 3 120mm fans to keep them all cool. They boot and run diskless off of one of the PI's who serve as boot and fileserver (while crunching itself). This uses in total 66 Watt. 5,5 Watt pr. PI. Each Pi crunches 4 WU's at a time, taking around 9 hours per unit. I have tested a few desktops and laptops, and for OPN1 points per watthour, nothing beats the PI4. Hm at first I thought that would be interesting if one's own electricity prices are rather high. Yet around 8 full results per day? I rent a vserver for almost 3 Euro/month that achieves 11-12 results per day. Seems somewhat cheaper and more effective. Or did I miss something? Okay, in the loong run the hardware at home has paid off (yet there is still the electricity). Haven't done the maths but at least for a year a vserver might be cheaper I suppose. I make the PI4 tower around 130 results per day. Twelve processors with 4 WUs per processor gives 48 threads with 24/9=2.67 WUs per thread day = 128 / day. |
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