14th of August

Farm Status
Intel GPUs
Half (3) running Seti and the other half running CPDN plus Seti

Nvidia GPUs
One running GPUgrid overnight.

Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work


Project update - Einstein
They were off for the week while upgrading their web site. Its still got a few issues but its running and the backend BOINC components are also running. In fact the Raspberry Pi's didn't run out of work so I have reduced their cache settings back to a more reasonable level.


Hardware upgrades
I got the two GPU crunchers last weekend. They are both i3 based systems who's purpose is to run a graphics card or two. I'm not happy with them. Sure they work okay, well one does. One has a faulty case fan so until its replaced I can't run the GPU in it. The problem is they are mATX boards in a Fractal Designs ARC Mini case and there isn't enough room to put a 2nd GPU in. Its designed for motherboards up to the mATX size. The motherboard has a 2nd PCIe slot, but its so close to the edge of the board a double-slot card won't fit because the power supply is in the way.

I have ordered a couple more ARC Midi cases and Z170 Pro motherboards (they're ATX size) and will cannibalise the mATX machines for parts.

I picked up one of the two i7-6700's on the weekend. Its up and running. It did some Einstein and some Asteroids work to get a burn-in and is now running Seti work. This brings the Intel GPU part of the farm up to 7 machines.


Wish list
I am waiting on a Pascal-based replacement for the GTX750Ti to be announced by Nvidia. I have no idea if they'll call it a GTX1050Ti or not or if they'll be as good as the 750Ti.

I am also waiting for AMD Zen to be released. They sound like they'll make good multi-core CPU crunchers, but we'll have to wait and see. The teasers we've been given by AMD indicate they'll have a 8 core/16 thread CPU that uses a maximum of 95 watts. What their performance is like we don't know yet.