26th of April

Farm status
Intel GPUs
Running Rosetta work overnight

Nvidia GPUs
Two running Rosetta work overnight

Raspberry Pis
Two running Rosetta. Six running Einstein work.

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Parts orders
All my orders came at once. Computer parts that is. That was Noctua 140 MM fans, memory kits and a replacement X10SRi-F motherboard.

I installed two of the memory kits (2x16GB)  into the two Nvidia GPU machines that are running Rosetta work, leaving them with two free memory slots. I didn't realize they had HyperX Predator originally which meant I couldn't use all 4 memory slots because the heat spreader on them is so tall it gets in the way of the CPU fan. The new kits are HyperX Fury which has a lower profile heat spreader.

I installed a Noctua fan in the front of one of the Intel GPU machines and it was louder than the one it replaced. I went back to using the original case fan. The Noctua fans run at 1200 RPM but the original fans run at 1000 RPM. I didn't try the low noise or ultra low noise adapters that the Noctua's come with because they simply slow down the fan reducing its air flow. I might try the Noctua's in the back of the case where its not so loud.

I haven't even looked at the Supermicro X10SRi-F motherboard yet.


Another build
While checking my usual PC parts online shops I noticed the Ryzen 9 3900X is on sale, so I decided I would build one as a CPU compute node.

Part	Desc
Case	Fractal Designs Meshify C
CPU	Ryzen 3900X
Cooler	Noctua NH-U12S
Disk/SSD	Samsung EVO Plus 1TB
Graphics	ASUS GT710 2GB
Memory
Motherboard	ASUS X570-P/CSM
PSU	Seasonic Focus Gold 550

I didn't buy memory. I will use the two 32GB memory kits that were going to go into the Nvidia GPU machines. The GT710 is a passively cooled card but it only needs to display a desktop.

19th of April

Farm status
Intel GPUs
All running Rosetta work

Nvidia GPUs
Two running Rosetta

Raspberry Pis
Two running Rosetta. Six running Einstein.

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Other news
As you can tell most of the farm is running Rosetta as much as possible trying to help out with Covid-19 research.

I have ordered six Noctua cooling fans to replace the case fans in the front of Fractal Designs ARC Midi cases. They contain the i7-8700 motherboards. They all work fine and I even have a couple of spares, however the Noctua fans have a higher airflow, are quieter and last longer.


Storage server
The first part of the storage server upgrade was to increase its disk capacity. I posted about it in March. When I did that upgrade I found the motherboard had a problem with one of the memory sockets (or the controller). I ordered a replacement motherboard but I am still waiting for it to be shipped.

The second part of the upgrade will be CPU and memory. I want to give it 128GB of memory (it supports up to 256GB). It has a Xeon E5 2620v3 CPU at the moment that I will upgrade to a v4 Xeon, which is the latest the motherboard supports.

Easter Saturday 2020

Farm status
Intel GPUs
All running Rosetta work

Nvidia GPUs
All off

Raspberry Pis
Two running Rosetta, Twenty running Einstein.

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Rosetta
I have all the Intel GPU machines running Rosetta, along with a couple of the Pi4's. They've been running 24/7 for the last couple of weeks. Rosetta are looking at proteins in relation to Covid-19. While they have recently had a large influx of users they can always use more computers.

Its a single thread CPU based app available for x64 machines (Linux, OSX and Windows) and they also have an app for ARM64 also known as aarch64 (Android and Linux). The Pi4's are running the aarch64 app.


BOINC 7.16
The BOINC developers have released the 7.16.5 app for Windows and 7.16.6 for Linux and OSX. I have been running 7.16.1 on all the farm for a couple of months now. I only had one issue which is listed as having been fixed, however I need to wait for Debian to make the later version available.

4th of April

Farm status
Intel GPUs
All running Rosetta work

Nvidia GPUs
All off

Raspberry Pis
One running Rosetta work, Six running Einstein BRP4 work

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Replacements
After running memtest86+ on the i7-8700 that was giving memory errors it seems I have a failed stick of memory. I bought another couple of memory kits (4 x 8GB sticks) to replace all the memory in it. The failed pair were sent back under warranty. The remaining pair were removed once the replacements arrived. That got the machine back to 32GB which it needs to run some of the Rosetta work.

I have an order in for a replacement X10SRi-F motherboard that is in the storage server. It has a failed memory socket or controller. Hopefully its not the controller because that is built into the CPU. Its been delayed. I have been told it won't arrive for a fortnight but suspect it will be much longer. In the mean time the machine still works as long as I don't use the failed socket.


Project news - Rosetta
They have been overwhelmed by the number of new users (much like Folding@home). They released an updated app along with a new app they refer to as "Rosetta for Portable devices" which has both Android and Linux (aarch64) versions.

I have all six i7-8700's running Rosetta at the moment searching for various proteins to do with Covid-19. I could run the Ryzens as well but some of the work units need 1.5GB of memory each and the Ryzens only have 16GB installed. I would have to limit them to running on half the cores or upgrade the memory.