Hello from Dallas!

[BlackFox1]

Hey there everyone!

My name is Josh and I'm pretty excited to be a cruncher. I think SETI is an awesome project (considering all going on in the space news/community) and as I get the hang of things I will be joining other projects. Right now I only have my laptop crunching and then I'll be adding my machines with MUCH better specs and equipment once I'm comfortable with everything. My typical completion rate (per work unit is it called?) is roughly an hour, although a few have taken 3-4 hours. I have completed 15 so far (woohoo)! A couple of questions for you seasoned crunchers:

How can I speed up crunching? I suspect it's hardware based, cpu/gpu
Where are member rankings for the curious?
Any other add ons to the program or other projects members highly recommend or consider a "must"?

I look forward to being a helpful and contributing member here at good ol SETI.USA team and community!

[Duke of Buckingham]

Welcome Josh.

We have a lot of great crunchers that can have many good ideas for you to improve crunching and I am not one of them.

[Bryan]

Hi Josh ... glad to see you here and thanks for joining the team. BOINC is a lot of fun and it is irrelevant whether someone is a big cruncher or small cruncher. You can set personal goals that are within your capability and then shoot for them. There are challenges that you can enter and participate in -or- not. You can chase credits or "badges" or none of the above :D

Almost all of us started with Seti when we 1st started crunching. Some still mainly run that project but most of the truly active crunchers run other projects as well.

With regards to team ranking you can view them on Free-DC stats: HERE (http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=userteamcomb&team=SETI.USA). There are 2 primary stats sites FreeDC (run by BOK a SUSA member) and BoincStats run out of Germany.

With regards to crunching faster, the absolute highest paying project, Bitcoin Utopia, uses ASIC miners and pays extremely high credits. Relatively speaking it also one of the higher paying CPU projects. There are projects that use GPUs and they will pay much hihger credits than CPUs because they do much more work for a given time. There are a couple of exceptions to that like Asteroids and Einstein that pay better than CPU but not all that much better.

One project that you want to run on ALL of your computers is WuProp. That is a project that gathers information about the WU and projects that you crunch. It will keep track of the total hours that you have spent crunching a project and then award "stars" when you have completed 20 projects of at least 100 hours on each. This project is NCI, non cpu intensive, meaning that although it is running on your machine it requires very very little CPU time. You can add WuProp to your project list by attaching to: WuPROP (http://wuprop.boinc-af.org/)

One word of caution ... crunching on laptops is very hard on them due to the heat. There is a finite life to the fan in your laptop and crunching causes the fan to run at 100% RPM for extended periods.

If you have further questions please feel free to ask. We do actually have some folks on here that know what they are doing on almost any project, OS, GPU, CPU, or MM (MegaMilestone) chasing.

EDIT: BTW, one of the easiest ways to get paid higher credits is to run something besides Seti ... the payout there really sucks =))

[Mumps]

Well, don't forget to mention that running the Optimized Apps for SETI helps get more work done (leading to better credits as a side benefit.) The "Lunatics Universal Installer" works fairly effortlessly for most Windows based systems.

http://www.arkayn.us/forum/

[Bryan]

Well, don't forget to mention that running the Optimized Apps for SETI helps get more work done (leading to better credits as a side benefit.) The "Lunatics Universal Installer" works fairly effortlessly for most Windows based systems.

http://www.arkayn.us/forum/

You're correct! I forgot cause I don't do Seti :D

[DrBackJack]

I just loaded up seti..man been years. Where is the opti app for this new version 7 at ?

[FourOh]

Lunatics Optimized Apps installers here: http://lunatics.kwsn.info/index.php?module=Downloads


I just loaded up seti..man been years. Where is the opti app for this new version 7 at ?

[BlackFox1]

Well thanks for the reassurance, Sir Duke of Buckingham :)

I see you have a good sense of humor. That's a good thing. Nice to meet you.

[zombie67]

I hope you live in a boat this weekend!

[BlackFox1]

Bryan and Mumps,

I really appreciate the input. Bryan, I will be looking into all you suggested. As far as my laptop goes, it is an old one I bought while in the Marines in 2010. The room I keep my laptop in is set to 60f, I have a cooler master laptop cooling pad and I have the main cover to the ram off of it. I use an air compressor on it once a week for dust and usually take it apart every couple months to clean the fan and check for small accumulation of dust bunnies and such. My temps are monitored with real temp and core temp programs and usually floats around 48c while the max temp of the chip (T4500) is about 105c. I am pretty much a PC enthusiast in my spare time so I take care of my machines. I really do appreciate the advice :)

Mumps, I'll take a look into what you were referring to. I want to make this laptop as quick and efficient as possible as hard as it may be on Windows haha. Thanks.

[BlackFox1]

FourOh,

Thanks for the link!

[BlackFox1]

zombie67,

Luckily I am away for work so I get the pass. But my wife has to deal with the traffic haha.

[BlackFox1]

All,

What are all the blocks of symbols is everyone's signature?

[shiva]

those are badges that are given out by different projects. not all projects give badges, but most do anymore. by the way welcome to the team. one site you can find those at is http://signature.statseb.fr/

[BlackFox1]

Shiva,

Thank you for the clarification. Also, are there certain member rankings? I see platinum, silver and diamond members. Thanks!

[Mike029]

Shiva,

Thank you for the clarification. Also, are there certain member rankings? I see platinum, silver and diamond members. Thanks!

Those are based on how many posts you have made on the forums. Welcome to the team!!

[BlackFox1]

Mike029,

Thanks for the heads up and for the welcome!

[Dave gpu]

Welcome ( BlackFox1 ) glad you found our team, great bunch of crunchers. :cool:

[BlackFox1]

Dave gpu,

Thanks for the welcome! Do you know of any forums among the SUSA group that discusses pc builds, mods and etc.?

Nice avatar, do you have a 980ti? I am buying a 980 and am curious as to how it's going to perform after being used to using a 270.

[Dave gpu]

Yes go to, Forum: Hardware: Tech Discussion.:cool:


Do you know what you are going to crunch? If you are going for GPU's like me you can use a small CPU Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G3258 @ 3.20GHz
This is ample for 2 GTX980's which i use for GPUGRID, SETI, PrimeGrid, Collatz Conjecture. But not good for CPU crunching.

" do you have a 980ti?" No over my price limit, i run 750ti's 960's 970's & 980's, the best bang for buck is the GTX970

"how it's going to perform after being used to using a 270" Your be very happy.=))

[BlackFox1]

Awesome, thanks Dave gpu. I imagine that's where I'll be spending a lot of my time. I am not sure what I'll be crunching just yet. The 980 will be in my new build paired with a 5820k, so I probably won't use it for crunching. I will be using that pc for heavy multiple VMWare labs, 2k gaming and 3D rendering/design. What I will be using is a SLI'd pair of 8800 GTX's from an old alienware system and the current R9 270 I'll be overclocking when I get home to get the most out of it since it's pretty old.

See I want to get a GTX 970 and SLI it in the future, but not sure if it is worth it now because when overclocked to *almost* match the 980 performance, it would require more power than just a 980 alone. Plus 970 SLI'd will cost about $100 more than the 980. That's why I opted to just get the 980 and SLI in the near future maybe 6 months or so. What do you think?

[Al]

For a pure crunching rig, SLI really offers no benefit unless things have changed in the last year or two. Many crunches actually prefer to run mixed ati/Nvidia systems to give more project options per rig. Just throwing that idea out there to help keep your upgrade juices flowing. :)

[Shandia]

Hi Josh. Welcome to the group. Everyone has given really good advice. The laptop is always good for occasional crunching. Unfortunately, it's not built for it. Even an old PC can over power a laptop's performance. I managed to test drive a fairly new one last year. Even though it was able to do the work, my oldest PC was just slightly worse when it came to time and points. I only bring that computer out when points really count during competitions. I agree with Sphynx. Running an AMD and Nvidia gpu together has it's advantages, There are a few projects that only run one or the other. In those instances, having a gpu free to do whatever is nice. Different projects that run both often run different on the different gpus. Once again, it's nice to be able to have the balance of the differences due to the versatility. No one project ever runs the same way as another when it comes to gpu. Having a good AMD that can do double precision math is almost a must. Even though there is only one project that requires it, they can do twice the work that one without can do. A good nvidia also can't be taken for granted or overlooked either. Adding and crunching the different projects is a great way to learn the capabilities of your hardware. Just keep in mind that even the most intense games out there today has nothing on running Boinc. If you really want to push your system as hard as it can go, Boinc is a great long term stress test. It has been known to break a many systems as you will find out. That's actually THE reason why not to use a laptop too much. They are much more costly to repair/replace and will stress it out super quick.

[BlackFox1]

Sphynx, I think you may have saved me a hundred bucks. Thank you! ^:)^
Also thanks for the advice. I have an old AMD 270 I have in my main computer that we use as a family. I was thinking of replacing that anyway with a GTX 960 since it performs better and takes less power. I'll post that on the other forum. Thanks again.

Shandia, thank you for the insight. I will keep that in mind and turn down the percentages on the laptop. The thing is I want to keep building up my numbers crunching while I am away from home. I also don't want to break the only system I have available to Skype back home, internet, etc. after reading your advice. Do you think by lowering the percentages of CPU usage, that will be enough to minimize hardware failure while still being an active cruncher? This is kind of addicting for some reason :D

[Shandia]

Turning the cpu usage down will help a little if you are running other stuff or using the computer. What helps more is turning the memory usage down and swap file lower than normal. Boinc when running gpu apps tend to use it all. That is one reason to run a mixed system. Most of the time I'll let my nvidia crunch while leaving my amd free to run the computer. Computers rely on gpus far more than most people realize. If I'm using both cards, the internet on the computer is totally unresponsive. Using only one I usually can run full bore and the computer is still useable. Keeping he check mark on suspend gpu tasks when computer is in use is a good idea for when you are away.

As for hardware failure, there are several reasons for it. The main killer is heat and dust. If you don't have tools that you can use to disassemble the housing on a gpu or other stuff from time to time, it would be good to pick them up. Within the last few weeks I lost my best gpu due to that very thing. It was the first time I pulled it apart and the dust was totally blocking the air passage inside. Cleaning it out after the fact is kinda pointless but it strengthens the notion 0f doing a proper cleanout on a regular basis. Another killer is a power supply that doesn't give enough power to what it needs. Spending the extra on a good hi wattage psu is more than worth the cost. Of course there is another killer.....oversight. We all do it. If it hasn't happened to any of us yet, it eventually will. Most of us who are really active tend to push our systems as hard as they will go. By the time they give an indication that something may be wrong, it's too late. I had just gotten in a few parts from a team mate. One of the boards was cooked but still useable. Upon further inspection, there were pins pushing through the insulation of the metal cpu cooler back plate and touching the metal. Not sure how long it took to burn up the 4 pin port. As it is, I had to trim those pins down and give the back plate a little insulation to make sure the pins wouldn't be doing that again. The second board in that batch I got had the same thing with the pins. It showed no signs of being burnt.....but some of the onboard things refused to work like a chip or two had fried. In this case, the oversight of the original owner was to believe assembling it without giving any thought to the eventual outcome.....the pins on the back going through and touching a metal place, is what caused damage. According to the owner it also took out his power supply. Some of this can be taken care of being a little more mindful instead of just assuming that things are good right out of the box. Of course, the last killer......stupidity.....can hit at any time and without warning of when and where. lol Sometimes, this is the easiest one to fix but can be very time consuming. Having to re-install an OS while in the middle of a competition is not out of the norm.

[BlackFox1]

Shandia,

I am not really running anything at all other than the OS programs like antivirus, etc. I will look at the memory usage and turn that down a little, but my temps stay constant around 48c full load so it is less than half of my max CPU temp. My room is about 58-60f with a laptop cooler. My laptop doesn't have a discreet GPU so I'm not sure if it uses the integrated graphics on the mobo or not. When I get home I will be trying to run a mixed system and it will be dedicated to crunching so I won't have to worry about much other than optimum cooling and dust/dirt.

Yea, the first thing you learn in IT is that heat and dust are not your friends lol. I actually take my builds and laptops apart every couple of months, including the GPU, PSU and fans. I am obsessed with proper case airflow and consider myself a pc enthusiast so I'm a little OCD and I like to make sure everything is running cool and optimum. I just haven't ever crunched before. It seems like a constant stress test but not sure how it compares to running Prime. Usually my PSU has about 10-15% headroom with overclocking. Stupidity... Lol. I can vouch for that one. I have definitely done some stupid things building my first machine haha. So what competitions are you referring to?

[Al]

So you know how the other half lives, I clean my machines once a year. Usually during the FB downtime in December. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never lost anything but 1 PSU and it died quietly and it was a piece of crap I bought cheap and it still lasted 4 years. I pay little attention to temps except when I initially build a system. After it has proven worthy I don't really look at it until it starts erroring out wus. That goes for cpu and gpu. I'm of the group (probably a minority) that feels if it's working, don't muck around with it. Not everyone can do that, but I'm mostly lazy and don't want to create work for myself. Maybe that's puts me in the stupidity class, but it's served me well up till this point.

I will say, when I hear about all the work others are doing I feel sort of guilty and think "maybe I should do that" and then I think better of it and go have a beer. =))

[Shandia]

The normal team vs team challenges are the main thing that keep some of us occupied. Then there is the Pentathlon. It's the most intense of all competitions. There is a little time before the next one so you have some time to get broke in on that one. lol Like anyone is really prepared for THAT!

Prime?? Um.....if it passes Prime, you may still fail on Boinc. Some of the projects are touchy as hell. This is just an example. I have adequate air flow on my core i7. Side is off and have some nice cooling fans installed running 100%. Right now the only thing I'm running is Bitcoin Utopia.....my gpu temps with blower on max is 90*C. My cpu cores are bouncing between 92*C and 96*C. I do have my cpu overclocked as it just runs better at these settings. I do not have my gpu overclocked. None the less, I'm probably running about normal temps. I will admit the a/c is off and have one of my computers doubling as the fan system for the room. (open window--2 120mm fans sitting in window) It really wouldn't matter if the a/c was on or not. It pretty much remains hot in this room. ;-)

One of the better pieces of software to monitor your system and output is called Afterburner. It doesn't matter if you have MSI hardware or not. It still works and works with multiple gpus and cpus. It's a most valuable tool to see if one is not using a gpu to it's limit and also shows OC so one can easily adjust if needed.

[Shandia]

So you know how the other half lives, I clean my machines once a year. Usually during the FB downtime in December. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never lost anything but 1 PSU and it died quietly and it was a piece of crap I bought cheap and it still lasted 4 years. I pay little attention to temps except when I initially build a system. After it has proven worthy I don't really look at it until it starts erroring out wus. That goes for cpu and gpu. I'm of the group (probably a minority) that feels if it's working, don't muck around with it. Not everyone can do that, but I'm mostly lazy and don't want to create work for myself. Maybe that's puts me in the stupidity class, but it's served me well up till this point.

I will say, when I hear about all the work others are doing I feel sort of guilty and think "maybe I should do that" and then I think better of it and go have a beer. =))

LUCKY! I use to do a deep cleaning at least once a year. It's easy to see I can't do even half that. Lost my gtx 580 in less than 9 months of continuous use and lost an r-box in 6 months. It's something about running 24/7 that just collects the dust around here. When I'm feeling lazy I will take a toothbrush and quickly scrape some of the crap out. I've also found a nicely washed mascara brush works very nice. It's small, flexible and will fit into some really tight places. Not to mention, it's designed to grab hair. It also fits between fins and goes down into holes a normal brush won't fit. (just a tip) Ask wife/gf/ or someone your in the friend zone with for a used up thing of mascara just for the brush......I myself am amazed at how well it works and can't believe I didn't have a tool like that before.

[Al]

LUCKY! I use to do a deep cleaning at least once a year. It's easy to see I can't do even half that. Lost my gtx 580 in less than 9 months of continuous use and lost an r-box in 6 months. It's something about running 24/7 that just collects the dust around here. When I'm feeling lazy I will take a toothbrush and quickly scrape some of the crap out. I've also found a nicely washed mascara brush works very nice. It's small, flexible and will fit into some really tight places. Not to mention, it's designed to grab hair. It also fits between fins and goes down into holes a normal brush won't fit. (just a tip) Ask wife/gf/ or someone your in the friend zone with for a used up thing of mascara just for the brush......I myself am amazed at how well it works and can't believe I didn't have a tool like that before.
Wow! I really do suck! My cleaning consists of blowing out the computer with an air compressor and on gpus, I hold the fan while I do it which I thought was a lot of extra effort. Yeah...I'm not sure I can fit all that into my busy schedule. I like the 30 seconds and done. I can work that in yearly. Besides, I need my mascara brush. :rolleyes:

[BlackFox1]

Sphynx, I don't think there is anything wrong with cleaning your machines once a year! In fact a lot of my IT buddies swear by that. I think you're part of a bigger minority than you think at least from the people I know. Half of the IT guys I work with don't even like computers! =)) Personally, I just like to tinker and mess with things. Not at work, just my own stuff at my house otherwise I wouldn't have a house. I haven't lost anything yet and I'm hoping the PSU isn't one of them. Did it take out anything else with it? I've only heard horror stories about people (here comes the stupidity part Shandia) building their first computer not realizing they got a PSU too small for the system to run on. (Definitely not me :p) I honestly think your plan is a good one and maybe I should tone down and have a few beers myself :-bd

[Mumps]

Actually, rumour has it you can ask cineon_lut about undersizing power sources. I heard he's got a recent story to share about that. :D

[Al]

Sphynx, I don't think there is anything wrong with cleaning your machines once a year! In fact a lot of my IT buddies swear by that. I think you're part of a bigger minority than you think at least from the people I know. Half of the IT guys I work with don't even like computers! =)) Personally, I just like to tinker and mess with things. Not at work, just my own stuff at my house otherwise I wouldn't have a house. I haven't lost anything yet and I'm hoping the PSU isn't one of them. Did it take out anything else with it? I've only heard horror stories about people (here comes the stupidity part Shandia) building their first computer not realizing they got a PSU too small for the system to run on. (Definitely not me :p) I honestly think your plan is a good one and maybe I should tone down and have a few beers myself :-bd

Nope, took out nothing else. Actually the PSU was still good. One of the fan blades fell off and got jammed. The PSU overheated and shut itself down. Could have been worse. It wasn't worth fixing and I got a replacement from DrPop that he wasn't using. All is good now.

[shiva]

So you know how the other half lives, I clean my machines once a year. Usually during the FB downtime in December. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never lost anything but 1 PSU and it died quietly and it was a piece of crap I bought cheap and it still lasted 4 years. I pay little attention to temps except when I initially build a system. After it has proven worthy I don't really look at it until it starts erroring out wus. That goes for cpu and gpu. I'm of the group (probably a minority) that feels if it's working, don't muck around with it. Not everyone can do that, but I'm mostly lazy and don't want to create work for myself. Maybe that's puts me in the stupidity class, but it's served me well up till this point.

I will say, when I hear about all the work others are doing I feel sort of guilty and think "maybe I should do that" and then I think better of it and go have a beer. =))I will second that, course things do wear out so after years of 24-7 you are going to have to replace stuff. :) pass me a beer

[BlackFox1]

Shandia, I think I get it now. Are the challenges what determine the team rankings? Lol when is the pentathlon and where can I find more information about it?

Oh crap so crunching is way more taxing than prime on the CPU? I had no idea! Is Bitcoin Utopia only using GPUs? I didn't see that on the list of projects from the project manager. Sounds like a great place cool off :p I've heard of afterburner. It's a great overclocking tool. I have only overclocked through bios so I haven't tried this out yet. Thanks for the insight about monitoring your GPU with it :-bd

[BlackFox1]

Cineon_lut huh? lol When I see him I will ask him about it :D

[BlackFox1]

Nope, took out nothing else. Actually the PSU was still good. One of the fan blades fell off and got jammed. The PSU overheated and shut itself down. Could have been worse. It wasn't worth fixing and I got a replacement from DrPop that he wasn't using. All is good now.

Wow sounds like you somehow got lucky then. I can't imagine a PSU fan falling off haha. You must have been pushing that thing for a while :D Well DrPop sounds like a pretty good guy then!

[Maxwell]

Shandia, I think I get it now. Are the challenges what determine the team rankings? Lol when is the pentathlon and where can I find more information about it?

Oh crap so crunching is way more taxing than prime on the CPU? I had no idea! Is Bitcoin Utopia only using GPUs? I didn't see that on the list of projects from the project manager. Sounds like a great place cool off :p I've heard of afterburner. It's a great overclocking tool. I have only overclocked through bios so I haven't tried this out yet. Thanks for the insight about monitoring your GPU with it :-bd
Challenges are just little side competitions between teams. They don't determine overall team rankings, but are a lot of fun. The Pentathlon happens in May, so keep an eye out for that.

Bitcoin does work on the GPU, but it works best on the specialized hardware for bitcoin mining. Ask around here if you're interested in that.

Also, welcome! And glad to have you around the message boards!

[BlackFox1]

Challenges are just little side competitions between teams. They don't determine overall team rankings, but are a lot of fun. The Pentathlon happens in May, so keep an eye out for that.

Bitcoin does work on the GPU, but it works best on the specialized hardware for bitcoin mining. Ask around here if you're interested in that.

Also, welcome! And glad to have you around the message boards!

Thank you Maxwell! I'm pretty excited to be here. Everyone has been really helpful. I'll be ready in May :D

Oh I see. I don't know about specialized hardware. Sounds like it would be expensive and I'm just a poor IT guy :P Also I keep forgetting to ask, but what is the little alien looking people under everyone's name and title? I have two green ones and you have green and purple?

[Justgeo1]

The Little Green Men, are part of the tracking of our posts on the forums, so the more you get the more you've posted... And replying to posts in a thread always counts as another good post! :)

[Bryan]

The Little Green Men, are part of the tracking of our posts on the forums, so the more you get the more you've posted... And replying to posts in a thread always counts as another good post! :)

And it is a matter of quantity not quality. For example, look at Maxwell's little green men and number of posts =))

[BlackFox1]

The Little Green Men, are part of the tracking of our posts on the forums, so the more you get the more you've posted... And replying to posts in a thread always counts as another good post! :)

Got it, thanks Justgeo1 :D

[Maxwell]

Thank you Maxwell! I'm pretty excited to be here. Everyone has been really helpful. I'll be ready in May :D

Oh I see. I don't know about specialized hardware. Sounds like it would be expensive and I'm just a poor IT guy :P Also I keep forgetting to ask, but what is the little alien looking people under everyone's name and title? I have two green ones and you have green and purple?
I have purple ones because I'm an Admin here. Comes with the title. Not sure why...

And the specialized hardware isn't too expensive, at least at the entry level. I picked up a couple little Ant miners a while ago for ~$20 each. Not sure what they are now, but there are some cheap entry options if you're interested. Of course, if you're not interested, then this is a moot point. :p

[Maxwell]

And it is a matter of quantity not quality. For example, look at Maxwell's little green men and number of posts =))
I'd REALLY like to argue this point, but I'm not sure I have much evidence to contradict Bryan's point... =))

[denim]

Welcome to the team.

[cineon_lut]

Actually, rumour has it you can ask cineon_lut about undersizing power sources. I heard he's got a recent story to share about that. :D

Oh no you didn't!

hey it was the first test of the rack under load.

Turns out it was actually the 30a 208v circuit I blew.

[cineon_lut]

Cineon_lut huh? lol When I see him I will ask him about it :D

Yeah, had everything up and running nice and neat in the new datacenter. Distributed between some 30A 208v circuits. (or so I thought). I'm nicely remoting in that night with a cold beer, getting stress tests underway to make sure the HVAC and power are good under stress. Loaded up about 80% of the machines on SAT@Home until they disappeared on me. Poof they vanished from my remote desktop windows.

Then I got everything fixed up the next day. I was minding my own business winning the Denis@Home challenge until Mumps came in and ruined it for me. Again. =))