27th of June

Farm status
CPU Only
Running Einstein and Milkyway work.

Nvidia GPUs
Off.

Raspberry Pis
Running Einstein@home.

For more information on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster

Other news
The remaining GPU compute machines have had their hardware upgraded. I still need to install Linux and BOINC on them as well as getting them back into the wire rack that they came out of.

I found a computer shop selling new Ryzen 7900 (non-X) but they won't do delivery and I'd have to drive to Canberra to pick it up. They aren't open on weekends either. I might have to take a day off work and go for a long drive to pick it up. Canberra is around 290 Km away from Sydney.

I returned the faulty 96GB memory kit during the week. Awaiting the supplier to test it. I would prefer a replacement kit but they don't have stock. It cost 1500 AUD at the time so while they might give me a refund if I can't buy a replacement that doesn't help.

I have one support node for the x86_64 machines which I want to look at upgrading, however it turns out its case is designed for (and has) an mATX motherboard so I would need to get a different motherboard for it. It doesn't need much memory or disk space so should be easier to get parts.

 

Hardware revitialisation

Its been about 6 months since the last post but that doesn't mean I haven't been crunching. I've decided to update all the crunchers. I have two standard builds for x86_64 machines, one for CPU compute and the other for GPU compute, but also able to do CPU work if needed. The CPU compute machine were originally using a Ryzen 3900X but had been upgraded to Ryzen 5900X.

 

CPU compute

Motherboard:  ASUS B850-Plus Wifi
CPU:               Ryzen 7900
Memory:         96GB (2 x 48GB) DDR5-5200 MHz
Cooler:            Noctua NH-U9S
SSD:                Crucial P510 (DRAM-less) 2TB 

I opted for 96GB of memory, however one machine locked up so I have put a 64GB kit in temporarily while I return the memory kit. It would boot with a single stick of 48GB memory but as soon as the 2nd stick was added it refused to boot.

 

GPU compute

Motherboard:  ASUS B850-Plus Wifi
CPU:               Ryzen 7600
Memory:         32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5-5200 MHz
Cooler:            Noctua NH-U9S
SSD:               Crucial P510 (DRAM-less) 1TB 

I'm reusing the RTX 3060Ti GPU for the time being. The next step up for the GPU looks like an RTX 5070 but I really don't like the 12VHPWR power connector that Nvidia has switched to using.

 

I have one more Ryzen 3600X machine that wasn't being used and might build it as a CPU compute machine if I can find a Ryzen 7900 (non-X) CPU. All the online stores I buy from seem to be selling the X version which has a higher base clock, higher boost clock and higher wattage. I reuse the case, cables and power supplies. The most expensive parts are the memory followed by the SSD's even though they are RAM-less these days.

Another quirk that I had was the new motherboards have a 2.5G network port built in, however when I connect it to a 2.5G switch they drop their network connection. It works fine when plugged into a 1G switch using the same cable. I thought it might be drivers but I have the correct one installed. The old machines all used PCIe add-in cards so I have simply put them in the new machines. Strange thing is most of the PCIe network cards have the same Realtek chipset as the motherboard and they work fine.

Close of December 2025

Farm status
CPU Only
Running Rosetta@home work.

Nvidia GPUs
Off.

Raspberry Pis
Most running Einstein@home.

For more information on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster 

 

Apart from having an overseas holiday it has been rather hot recently, with the week before Christmas hitting 42 degrees (C). With the weather cooling off for Christmas day I got some of the farm running various projects.

I recently had the old ducted air conditioning system replaced, however there was a lot of activity in the loft where the farm is located, hence the longer than usual shutdown. A large portion of the loft spaces has now been taken up by air hoses and what they refer to as an indoor unit (essentially a large metal box with 2 air hoses coming in and two going out) hanging from the ceiling. Given the lost space I had to rearrange things just to get running.

CPDN and OpenIFS woes

Farm status
CPU only
Trying to run CPDN OpenIFS work.

Nvidia GPUs
Off.

Raspberry Pis
Running Einstein@home work.

For more information on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster

OpenIFS woes
As I alluded to in the blog title I have been trying to run the OpenIFS work from CPDN. These require 26GB of memory and 4 CPU cores to run. Almost all have failed. I have had one or two successful runs (they take 50+ hours). The project will only give one task per machine until its returned. The tasks send trickles as they progress. The trickles are over 7GB so one needs decent upload speed as well.

The two computers I am running these on have 64GB of memory so no issue with memory usage however CPDN have admitted they have a bug with the app freeing memory which they have been unable to track down. This has been the majority of errors.

I had one fail with a disk space error. The project give a disk space limit for each task and it exceeded that by 1.5MB so the task got cancelled, even though the machine has plenty of available disk space.