What Hardware Should I Buy? - October 2009

Folding Rig

Since we've recently educated you all in what makes the perfect folding farm, we've folded James's arm and got the in-house guru's help to spec this month's dedicated folding rig.

It's not the GeForce GTX 295 ppd behemoth that some of you have, we admit, but its price-for-ppd output is excellent and perfect for either getting started or adding to a farm that needs to grow. And don't forget... every farm needs to grow.

UK Price | US Price: MSI 790FX-GD70 motherboard

We've dropped MSI's multi-PCI-Express-slotted K9A2 Platinum, because it's getting harder and harder to source, instead opting for the latest DDR3/AM3 alternative. MSI's 790FX-GD70 is a great board, and has those all-important four 16x PIC-E slots to house four graphics cards. It's a bit more money than the old K9A2 Platinum, but there's more quality to the design and construction too.


UK Price | US Price: AMD Athlon II X2 240 CPU
UK Price | US Price: 4GB 1,066MHz DDR3 Memory

We've used a cheap dual-core Athlon II X2 240 to give the system enough processing power to keep the graphics cards loaded with work units while also keeping the system price down. The Athlon supports DDR2 and DDR3, but with the MSI board recommended above we needed some cheap 1,066MHz DDR3 in there too which should suffice.

UK Price | US Price: Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 512MB GDDR3 Graphics Card

Now for the core of your farm: Nvidia GPUs. Previously the GeForce 9600 GSO GDDR3 was the king of ppd output per pound, with its 96 stream processors and GDDR3 memory, all for very little money.

These have now been replaced by the GeForce GTS 250 cards that are now equally cheap and have 128 stream processors instead. Each cards costs £78 in the UK but a little more at $135 in the US. As you can see from the folding graphs, a GTS 250 can certainly churn out the ppd.

UK Price | US Price: Seasonic M12D 750W

To power four graphics cards, you're going to need a weighty and reliable PSU - for that we've chosen a 750W Seasonic M12D. While this might be the most expensive single component on the list, you need a quality PSU to power four hungry GPUs that are going to be under 100 per cent load 24/7. Any power flake-out will cost you ppd. The M12D has plenty of PCI-Express power connectors too, which also a key factor to consider when installing so many graphics cards.

UK Price: Akasa AK-876
US Price: Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro

The Akasa AK-876 is certainly able to cool the Athlon II X2, especially as we won't need to overclock this CPU for a folding rig. Furthermore, the Akasa cooler isn't so big that it impedes the use of memory slots either. For our US readers who aren't able to buy Akasa products, there's the similar Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 which does pretty much the same job. Finally, there's the case and hard disk to consider.

UK Price | US Price: Seagate 7200.12 250GB SATA Hard Disk

Any old hard disk will do really, so we've gone for the cheapest 250GB model we could find which is actually luckily a single platter Seagate 7200.12 that keeps down the power consumption and excess heat ever so slightly more.

UK Price | US Price: Antec Big Boy 120mm

After listening to our readers and trying to find a case to fit four graphics cards, without creating an oven to kill them, we've simply given up and opted for a simple Antec Big Boy 120mm fan to lay on top of the graphics cards while they sit on a shelf somewhere. If you can recommend us a high airflow case that will fit a fourth card and doesn't cost the earth - we're all ears!

That's all for this month. As always, your feedback in the comments is very much appreciated!