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Blerg. Not only would that machine's power supply not support the second card, the hard drive then failed and I have an OEM reinstall disk but (as a custom build) no activation key. So, I got a previously-gutted Dell XPS with an i7-3770 (3.4GHz clock speed) and fired that up barebones, it's on 4GB of RAM that I can probably double if it ends up mattering, and at the moment just motherboard video but will try to get that GTx 650 Ti going too. We'll see in the next couple days whether it can at least do sustained CPU folding. Being as it's sitting in the basement, I can leave the case open and just point a big box fan at it; I don't much care if it sounds like a Cessna taking off.

Anyone willing to help with getting the older big-fans machine folding with a Linux OS (ideally Mint)?
 
What's the trouble? The config file?

On the 'old' machine? Hard drive went south, essentially. On the new(er) machine, it's slower than grim death for things like file transfer (I think I need to add some RAM), but Radioactive_Monkey just got a unit sent in.
 
4 GB Machine

At least for Alzheimer's, 4 GB of RAM, theoretically, is probably enough if folding is all its doing. My Alzheimer's CPU unit is using about 330 MB of RAM, and the GPU one varies a lot more but I've yet to see it exceed 1 GB. It may well be too little for some other types of folding though, so you might have to set preferences to avoid too much RAM usage.

The 3770K should be able to do sustained CPU folding so long as the mobo and cooling are in good enough shape. It should be able to fold until the cows come home, or at least until the CPU fan gives out. Of course neither one of our CPUs will do half as well as a modern CPU...

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Big Fans Machine

About the extent of my ability to support Linux is "try it and see if it works". I've run into some issues with support for older graphics cards on Linux over the years, but that's more like 2021 Linux having issues with 2007 nVIDIA cards, or switching Radeon drivers resulting in the display no longer working. I guess I would say if the default drivers work, don't change them, if they have issues, try the proprietary drivers (especially if you have an nVIDIA card). Switching to the proprietary nVIDIA drivers took one of my mates' Linux Mint installs from literally unusable for gaming to not-quite-as-performant-as-Windows-but-satisfactory.

I'm guessing given the age it's probably on Windows 7 currently? I'm not sure that Microsoft ever actually closed the upgrade-Windows-7-and-8-to-10 pathway, initially it was going to be one year but I know they left it open after that. So if the concern is running an outdated version of Windows, it might be worth checking if you can just upgrade it to 10 and not have to worry about Linux compatibility with integrated Intel graphics from the early 2010s.

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I see you're climbing the lists, just passed Louis Rogerson! You must have found the old passkey?

I've roughly tripled my point total this month, and have climbed from 17th to 14th. Still not getting any bonus points, but it's hardly noticeable relative to the points from 10 years ago. The RX 480 finishes one or two 70K point units per day, the 2500K throws in several thousand more, and the old Mac Mini gets 865 points about every day.

The real question is what is @Naskra running to get those beastly point totals? A few beefy graphics cards? An underutilized server rack or two? I don't expect to hit those numbers even after rebuilding my rig later this fall, and even if I go towards the higher end of the specs I'm considering. Though admittedly I'm definitely not buying an RTX 4090.
 
Currently folding:
1 Win11 headless box with 1 rtx 2060 & 1 rtx 2060 super
1 Win11 box with 1 rx 6700
cpus do not fold.
linux box offline.
 
4 GB Machine

At least for Alzheimer's, 4 GB of RAM, theoretically, is probably enough if folding is all its doing. My Alzheimer's CPU unit is using about 330 MB of RAM, and the GPU one varies a lot more but I've yet to see it exceed 1 GB. It may well be too little for some other types of folding though, so you might have to set preferences to avoid too much RAM usage.

The 3770K should be able to do sustained CPU folding so long as the mobo and cooling are in good enough shape. It should be able to fold until the cows come home, or at least until the CPU fan gives out. Of course neither one of our CPUs will do half as well as a modern CPU...

---

Big Fans Machine

About the extent of my ability to support Linux is "try it and see if it works". I've run into some issues with support for older graphics cards on Linux over the years, but that's more like 2021 Linux having issues with 2007 nVIDIA cards, or switching Radeon drivers resulting in the display no longer working. I guess I would say if the default drivers work, don't change them, if they have issues, try the proprietary drivers (especially if you have an nVIDIA card). Switching to the proprietary nVIDIA drivers took one of my mates' Linux Mint installs from literally unusable for gaming to not-quite-as-performant-as-Windows-but-satisfactory.

I'm guessing given the age it's probably on Windows 7 currently? I'm not sure that Microsoft ever actually closed the upgrade-Windows-7-and-8-to-10 pathway, initially it was going to be one year but I know they left it open after that. So if the concern is running an outdated version of Windows, it might be worth checking if you can just upgrade it to 10 and not have to worry about Linux compatibility with integrated Intel graphics from the early 2010s.

----

I see you're climbing the lists, just passed Louis Rogerson! You must have found the old passkey?

I've roughly tripled my point total this month, and have climbed from 17th to 14th. Still not getting any bonus points, but it's hardly noticeable relative to the points from 10 years ago. The RX 480 finishes one or two 70K point units per day, the 2500K throws in several thousand more, and the old Mac Mini gets 865 points about every day.

The real question is what is @Naskra running to get those beastly point totals? A few beefy graphics cards? An underutilized server rack or two? I don't expect to hit those numbers even after rebuilding my rig later this fall, and even if I go towards the higher end of the specs I'm considering. Though admittedly I'm definitely not buying an RTX 4090.

I didn't find the Radioactive_Monkey passkey, I just set the folding client with a blank one - I'm not sure one was ever even created for it in the first place. And the nVidia driver install fails every time, possibly because of RAM limitations, or because I can't patch the machine (Win7 patching has been a game of long-term whack-a-mole with Microsoft over the years). I might just bite the bullet and see if I can upgrade it to Win10, but I suspect the 4GB RAM impact will be even worse at that point. So I'll first see if I can buy some older RAM to stick in it. I also will need to get another wifi adapter if I spool the superfan machine up, I've only got one and it's now in the low-RAM Dell (and I'm not running cat-5 to my basement).

*waves at Naskra*
 
fahclient and fahcore combined use less than 1GB ram. (~900MB); if the system is for folding only, you can shut down many of the windows services.
 
see if I can buy some older RAM to stick in it
DDR3 DIMMs? As soon as I get around to putting the new 8 GB DIMMs I ordered in, and validating they work okay, I'll have some spare 4 GB DIMMs. 1600 MHz, 9-9-9-24 clocks. Oughta have three of them assuming all three 8 GB replacements work as expected.

Two of them are fairly low height, one has a somewhat taller heatspreader.

Can't help with the WiFi adapters but it looks like the RAM is only worth about $18-$22 with free shipping right now, so pretty much if you cover shipping, I'll send them along if the new ones work. Which they should, but I did have a 4 GB DIMM fail earlier this year, hence why I'll have 3x4GB spare, so I want to run memtest86+ on the new ones.
 
DDR3 DIMMs? As soon as I get around to putting the new 8 GB DIMMs I ordered in, and validating they work okay, I'll have some spare 4 GB DIMMs. 1600 MHz, 9-9-9-24 clocks. Oughta have three of them assuming all three 8 GB replacements work as expected.

Two of them are fairly low height, one has a somewhat taller heatspreader.

Can't help with the WiFi adapters but it looks like the RAM is only worth about $18-$22 with free shipping right now, so pretty much if you cover shipping, I'll send them along if the new ones work. Which they should, but I did have a 4 GB DIMM fail earlier this year, hence why I'll have 3x4GB spare, so I want to run memtest86+ on the new ones.

I appreciate the offer. I just had a great idea and took some 2x4GB RAM DIMMs out of a different Dell XPS I have running as a home machine and temporarily plugged that into the folder and it still wouldn't run the nVidia setup, so I suspect my issue isn't low RAM after all. So, more troubleshooting required. It's a good thing that troubleshooting something like this sorta qualifies as fun for me.

Once I returned its RAM to it, I also just fired up that home machine for folding, at idle processor usage, so we'll see what it can kick in.
 
If people are throwing ram about help a brother! 😂 I'm rocking some very limited old gear.
 
I can't get the F@H client to un-disable the GTX650 card in my spare XPS (the Foldell) machine, even after getting the correct driver installed (I had to find an older driver since at some point nVidia decided to make driver installers that were incompatible with Win7). So... I'm going to take down that machine and (per recommendation on the F@H Discord) install Ubuntu server on it and run it that way, then do the same for the superfan PC. If everything works out as expected (which seems unlikely but whatever) in a week or so I'll have three older i7-CPU PCs with older GT nVidia cards all in the basement happily folding away at their max capabilities.
 
Igloo, are you Monkey too?

1664838912380.png
 
Igloo, are you Monkey too?

View attachment 640881

You betcha!
And I might still fold a few points under my IglooDude account - it's very unlikely to move up or down out of 4th place on the team regardless - but I do think starting relatively fresh with IglooDame will be nice.
 
Okay, I'm more or less at cruising speed now, I haven't gotten the superfan machine going again yet but two Dell XPSs with GTX650ish GPUs are in the basement going at full throttle, and my actual home PC will do some occasional CPU folding. No more for IglooDude after tonight, though; IglooDame and Radioactive_Monkey will share the point output for awhile.
 
Oops, power outage rebooted the folding PCs in the basement a few days ago. Time to get them working again, though the client running on my actual home PC (and retagged with Radioactive_Monkey again) is going to stay sporadic.
 
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