Hey guys!

I'm a fairly new cruncher and am very enthusiastic about what Rosetta and what it does. Currently crunching on my laptop 24/7 and my desktop whenever I'm not sleeping. I was thinking of putting my old desktop to use since its just sitting around but its not the fastest thing around! It has a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz. I'm wondering if its worth running it 24/7 (cost vs credits) or should I get a new CPU/mobo. I'm thinking of running it headless but I have never done this so I was hopefully looking for experience/tutorials. The desktop only has CPU, mobo and 1 GB of RAM and I've heard of people running everything from USB and possibly just controlling everything remotely.

Any help is appreciated!
Thanks guys,
Good crunching!

Hi Carlo

It's good to hear that you want to get stuck in! My honest opinion is that it isn't worth running Rosetta (or other BOINC projects) on a P4 on a cost vs credit basis, or on an environmental basis (unless you're running on renewable power!?).

As an indication, I believe that P4 will get a RAC (which is representative of work throughput) of somewhere around 200, using around 100W for the CPU. In comparison, this $70 CPU will get a RAC of around 1800 while using around 50W, and this one will get a RAC around 3500 (might be a bit more or might be a bit less) for around 80W.

If you were to buy a new motherboard/CPU/RAM combo, I believe the best bang-for-your-buck is either side of the Intel i3's because while they add hyperthreading over the Pentiums, they don't increase the amount of cache which Rosetta is quite heavy on, so I'd recommend Pentium, i5 or i7.

You might need to check whether your PSU has the appropriate connections for a new motherboard - I think it should be fine if it's from a P4 though. It needs to have a 24-pin main plug (rather than a 20-pin) plus a separate 4-pin "mini fit JR".

Also, for a pure cruncher, check out Dotsch UX - it's a version of Ubuntu that's all set up and ready to run BOINC. Very easy to set up and get running - no linux knowledge needed. It can run from a USB flash drive too so no need for a hard disk.

Any questions then let us know.
Danny

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