Hello guys.

I crunch with 2 machines. I have a home computer i-7 4770 with an nvidia geforce 660, and an older dual xeon server with no graphics card. I am very dedicated and will never not crunch. If I could afford to do it, I'd like to buy a machine for each project perfectly optimized for that project. Oh, did I mention I crunch for 15 projects?

Yeah, I crunch for 15 projects. I love most types of science.....I personally love astrophysics a little more than the rest, but I can't deny that looking for treatments to cancer might be a little more important right now.

HOWEVER, I do run the 15 projects, and I run them all equally. I don't like to do ramp ups or anything - I like to be equal. I think almost all projects have some value, and have tried to do the most important ones.....the 15 I am doing. Some, like Primegrid, I think are pointless.....

I am no credit whore either. I don't give more or less resources to any project depending on credit given. I am totally equal.

How do the rest of you decide on which projects to "donate" to, and to spread around your resources? I feel like I spread myself too thin with 15 projects. I think around 4 or 5 split time with the GPU. Do you guys have any advice?

http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=userbycpid&cpid=fa4cc5e166d567a0fe6d803f1349d958

Hello guys.

I crunch with 2 machines. I have a home computer i-7 4770 with an nvidia geforce 660, and an older dual xeon server with no graphics card. I am very dedicated and will never not crunch. If I could afford to do it, I'd like to buy a machine for each project perfectly optimized for that project. Oh, did I mention I crunch for 15 projects?

Yeah, I crunch for 15 projects. I love most types of science.....I personally love astrophysics a little more than the rest, but I can't deny that looking for treatments to cancer might be a little more important right now.

HOWEVER, I do run the 15 projects, and I run them all equally. I don't like to do ramp ups or anything - I like to be equal. I think almost all projects have some value, and have tried to do the most important ones.....the 15 I am doing. Some, like Primegrid, I think are pointless.....

I am no credit whore either. I don't give more or less resources to any project depending on credit given. I am totally equal.

How do the rest of you decide on which projects to "donate" to, and to spread around your resources? I feel like I spread myself too thin with 15 projects. I think around 4 or 5 split time with the GPU. Do you guys have any advice?

http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=userbycpid&cpid=fa4cc5e166d567a0fe6d803f1349d958

I have 15 pc's and tend to focus on one project until I hit a goal then move to another project to reach a goal/milestone there, etc, etc. I do have some pc's that at some projects take FOREVER to crunch a unit so they are one of the few exceptions to the above. For instance I am now running WCG until I reach my next badge, most of my pc's take in the 4 hour range, but one was taking in the 8 hour range so I moved it over to another project where it is more efficient.

I did not go out and buy 15 pc's, I fix pc's for friends and they give me their old parts in payment, I have a basement full of old parts!! I also pick up pc's on the side of the road, FIRST wiping any hard drives then either striping them for parts or making them into crunchers. I do buy new parts, last year for instance I picked up 5 brand new 160gb ide hard drives for $25 apiece. They make great drives for crunchers! I use mostly free software for my antivirus but do use Windows as my default OS right now. Linux Ubuntu works just fine too, I have just been using Windows for so long I can be crunching in about an hour from parts to crunching. I do the initial Windows updates but then no more, once the pc is working and it is a cruncher only why do I need to update it, it already does what I want it to do.

In short if your way works for you, then stick with it, my way works for me so I am sticking with it. I will let my signature come thru so you can see what I have been doing, and where I am at the moment. I am close to another milestone though and will be moving my gpu's elsewhere early next month. And as soon as my cpu's reach my WCG milestone they too will be moving to another project.

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I live in an apt - older pcs tend to be less efficient.......so that would kind of be the thing for me. I don't think I could plug 15 pcs in in here without blowing a fuse. I blow a fuse when I have my xbox 360 and my space heater on at the same time.

Newer cpus and gpus......are more efficient. Whereas, I see what you mean with the low startup costs, and maybe not considering electricity - just my apt only has so much electric capacity.

And I guess - How do you decide which projects are worthy is more of the question I'm getting at. Or is it totally just a challenge to try to hit goals?

I live in an apt - older pcs tend to be less efficient.......so that would kind of be the thing for me. I don't think I could plug 15 pcs in in here without blowing a fuse. I blow a fuse when I have my xbox 360 and my space heater on at the same time.

Newer cpus and gpus......are more efficient. Whereas, I see what you mean with the low startup costs, and maybe not considering electricity - just my apt only has so much electric capacity.

And I guess - How do you decide which projects are worthy is more of the question I'm getting at. Or is it totally just a challenge to try to hit goals?

Yes electricity IS a major problem, for years I spread computers around my house using all the different circuits just so the circuit breakers wouldn't blow, but I bit the bullet and finally got an electrician in here and he gave me 3 20amp circuits in my basement that can run multiple pc's on each and I am now good to go. My basement is in the low 80's even when it is near freezing outside. I liver in an all electric home and my bill is easily twice my neighbors due to my pc's.

As for projects for me it is a combination of things...I started at Seti pre-Boinc and kept at it for a LONG time. But they started playing fast and lose with the units and did some other things that I won't go into and I left them. I now try to get every project I crunch for above the numbers I have for it.

Another of my goals is to crunch using my gpu's, since that is a small list of the total Boinc projects I have been working on getting them up to 1 billion credits each. I have done one and am almost done with a second one, and am already trying to decide which will be the next one I concentrate on. I have previously crunched for each gpu project, so I do have some credits at each one already. I have mostly AMD gpu's and they work much better at some projects then at others, and they won't even work at one project, GpuGrid.

I totally understand about the older systems, I have shelves full of old dual core machines that are just sitting there not running. They are too old for me to put a pci-e gpu in them and I do not need anymore cpu cores on line right now, I have around 30 or so online right now. Some machines have 6 core cpu's in them and one even has an 8 core cpu in it, so running another old slow dual core machine just isn't worth it to me. I do have 3 dual core machines running 24/7 right now, one is my Server, one is my backup machine and one is my old personal machine that still has alot of my stuff on it.

I backup all of my pc's every month to a local hard drive inside the backup machine, otherwise it probably wouldn't be online either. But it gives me peace of mind and does crunch when it isn't busy doing backups. The Server is online because I used to have 20+ machines online and when you get that many they fight for who is in charge of stuff, a Server is ALWAYS in charge so the infighting stopped.