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WCG Newbie - Test run

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Hi there,

wow, I've heard about "crunching" and WCG here on TPU, but never really knew what it was all about. I got interested in what it actually does when I read about how @Knoxx29 joined the WCG and how he was so enthusiastic about it... little did I know! :) Today, I read about what it's good for, and... I am totally amazed! :rockout:WOW! Please excuse my "noob-ie" questions here, but I'd really like to know how I could contribute to this project in the best way I can. My situation is as follows:
My system is used primarily for heavy video editing, emulation, encryption and compression purposes, as well as for running multiple VMs. These tasks are performed on an occasional basis and - let's be honest about it - for most of the remaining time my system is really bored and sitting on idle with 0 to 1 percent of CPU usage. So why not use all that unused computing power for something that really matters for a change? Use your hardware for something meaningful instead of letting it get bored and fall asleep? ;) So I gave it a test run today... I downloaded the BOINC client according to the tutorial here on TPU, registered and then fired it up! Chose "WCG" and after a short while, it got going. Here's what it's doing now:



I guess this is the first project I'm "crunching" on :) - looks like it is working fine.
It told me at first there were over 12 hours remaining. After I allowed it to use 80% of my CPU power and allowing it to use my GPU as well, remaining time was quickly shortened.
Looking at the Task Manager, it appears to be running very smoothly, average CPU usage is about 80%, while GPU usage is about 22%. I can totally live with that! :)



So here's a few questions for you pros... am I doing things the right way? Any settings that need tweaking? To repeat myself, I think I could be totally in on this! :toast: This is a test run, alright - I'll be running this stuff for 24H now, and then go from there. ;) Here's some further questions:
- Auto-starting of the BOINC client... I usually don't like that... is there any way to get it activated automatically only while connected to the Internet? Yeah, I could disable the auto-start, but I may forget to run it while connected to the Internet. I'm not on the WWW 24/7, but in the hours I am, I'd really like to have it running. If there really is no way around it, I'll let it run at startup, but I don't like to close / click on any programs that pop up during that time by principle :D.
OK, the next project has started now:



Is everything alright with that?

Also, is that 22-percent usage of my GPU OK? Could I increase it? I wouldn't mind at all. Although my system is already burning away over 800 watts according to my power meter now, who cares? It's for a good cause! ;)
Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much in advance :),
Heaven7.
 

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Welcome aboard! :toast:

First question- Have you joined the Team? See the link to the challenge in my sig- there are links to plenty of info in the OP there.

And you can ask your questions on our Team thread here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-wcg-boinc-team.85784/
There is usually a Team member or two around to assist and/or discuss things with ;)

As far as gpu work- there is no gpu work for WCG currently? Are you running a different project as well as WCG?
 
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Welcome aboard! :toast:

First question- Have you joined the Team? See the link to the challenge in my sig- there are links to plenty of info in the OP there.

And you can ask your questions on our Team thread here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-wcg-boinc-team.85784/
There is usually a Team member or two around to assist and/or discuss things with ;)

As far as gpu work- there is no gpu work for WCG currently? Are you running a different project as well as WCG?
I've followed this tutorial to help me along the way: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/how-to-getting-boinc-setup-for-wcg.93395/
I only chose WCG when prompted - and got crunchin' right away ! :D Looks like the second "crunch" is about to be finished soon... I am so glad I learned about WCG, for now it's a 24 hour test run alright, but I think it will be a GO for the future! :D
Thanks for the link! :)
 

manofthem

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So many threads! :eek:
I've followed this tutorial to help me along the way: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/how-to-getting-boinc-setup-for-wcg.93395/
I only chose WCG when prompted - and got crunchin' right away ! :D Looks like the second "crunch" is about to be finished soon... I am so glad I learned about WCG, for now it's a 24 hour test run alright, but I think it will be a GO for the future! :D
Thanks for the link! :)

That looks good as it automatically creates your WCG account under team TPU :)


In boinc manager, go to view and choose Advanced as this what we all use for the advanced options. In those computing preferences, you can select % of CPU load, network usage, buffer (amount of downloaded work), etc.



Also you can go to WCG's site under your account and choose which projects to participate, whether it be all or just 1, all up to you ;)
 
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That was my first thought too :twitch:
What Processor(s) are you running? :respect:
Sys Specs says Dual Xeon X5690. Color me jealous.

I was thinking about going dual Xeon in my next main rig (many years from now). I was really surprised by the horsepower the X5500 and X5600 series Xeons have. Just snappy little things.
 
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Sys Specs says Dual Xeon X5690. Color me jealous.

I was thinking about going dual Xeon in my next main rig (many years from now). I was really surprised by the horsepower the X5500 and X5600 series Xeons have. Just snappy little things.
As it looks, my CPUs will have a new primary use from now on... let 'em crunch! :rockout:

Thanks for all your help & feedback. You know, I just wanted to get started right away and didn't realize there are already lots of helpful threads here about how-to-crunch for newbies like me. I'll definitely check these out, especially the welcome thread to say hi. :) My 24h test run should have been completed soon, but would you believe it - a power outage sometime during the day!!! :mad: I get back home, computer is shut down... well, this can only mean one thing: 24 more hours of non-stop crunching to go! :laugh: After that, I will be a fellow badger from now on, that's for sure. I'm so glad I learned about this project here at TPU -
YOU RULE! :toast:
 
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Well, after almost 2 weeks of 24/7 crunching, I thought about something. Crunching uses your unused CPU resources but - it's kinda the other way around now for me. In the time when I don't actually use my PC, all the other power-hungry components inside use energy for nothing. Power draw is about 650-700W. If I continue like this, I'll need AC as well as someone who pays the electricity bill for me... :) So I decided to build a second, dedicated cruncher re-using some leftover parts I had. No additional, unnecessary components, just to crunch 24/7. Here's the specs:

Case: Lian LI PC-7HB
MB: Intel S5500 BC R
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon E5620 @ 2.4 GHz
Cooling: 2x Dynatron G-17 A (CPU's), 3x Lian LI fans (case)
RAM: 2x4 GB Kingston KVR DDR3-1366
PSU: Corsair RM750
SSD: OCZ Vertex3, 60GB
ODD: Generic LG DVD-RW
GPU: Onboard, 8MB :p
Audio: none :p



I'll have it running by tomorrow. My main machine will do additional crunching while I'm using it. Meanwhile, the new setup can crunch all day long peacefully in my basement ;) I'll have both crunchers run 24/7 for some time though, to test their team performance. :)
 
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So you are running that 2p rig 24/7 under what load percentage? Personally I would have though at 3.6 it would have done a little better. My 2p at 2.67 is averaging just 1k below yours but has here lately hit some weird wu's driving the average down a tad. Maybe it's the windows vs. Linux thing why our two rigs being 1ghz deference in speed yet right with each other.
 
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So you are running that 2p rig 24/7 under what load percentage? Personally I would have though at 3.6 it would have done a little better. My 2p at 2.67 is averaging just 1k below yours but has here lately hit some weird wu's driving the average down a tad. Maybe it's the windows vs. Linux thing why our two rigs being 1ghz deference in speed yet right with each other.
I set it to 90% usage. At 95% it impacted other tasks (nothing serious, but back at 90%, everything works perfectly) - even running a VM is no problem.
I experienced those WU's driving my points down a bit, too. It probably is just a temporary thing - but Windows / my system settings could be the culprit, absolutely! :) That's why I'd like to see how my new dedicated cruncher will fare.
 

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Hey guys i just setup WCG aswell should i be concerned if it runs on 100% on 60 ° C on avarage for long period of times? (I got a 4670k @4.3 GHz)

Ah, I see you joined our team today. Welcome! :respect: 100% is fine and 60C is plenty cool for your CPU, no worries at all.

Check out our team thread for any further inquiries, as this thread is geared more toward @Heaven7's specific experience.
 
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Hey guys i just setup WCG aswell should i be concerned if it runs on 100% on 60 ° C on avarage for long period of times? (I got a 4670k @4.3 GHz)
Welcome and nope.
 
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I set it to 90% usage. At 95% it impacted other tasks (nothing serious, but back at 90%, everything works perfectly) - even running a VM is no problem.
I experienced those WU's driving my points down a bit, too. It probably is just a temporary thing - but Windows / my system settings could be the culprit, absolutely! :) That's why I'd like to see how my new dedicated cruncher will fare.
It's a little misleading when people say that WCG just uses unused resources. That may have been true back in the early days with United Devices but that's definitely not true any more. If you hook up a watt meter you'll see you're usage spike when under 100% load as compared to idle. That's just a fact.

TDP's represent the max power a chip is meant to dissipate but it won't use that much at idle.

A trick for limiting lag when under load is to starve BOINC of memory. It's inelegant but it does work. For example I have 16gig of ram on this machine and set memory when in use to between 1 and 2% - but 10% when idle.

You can also try something like 'process lasso' but even that didn't help me with lagging. So the choice was to either set BOINC to idle when in use or screw with memory allocation. Below a certain threshold, wu's will wait to run. The problem is that different projects and even different wu's will need different amounts of memory, so what happens is that sometimes you will only have 0-1 wu's waiting for memory, other times you might have 3 or 4.
 

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A trick for limiting lag when under load is to starve BOINC of memory. It's inelegant but it does work. For example I have 16gig of ram on this machine and set memory when in use to between 1 and 2% - but 10% when idle.

Very nifty trick there, thanks for the tip ;)
 
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Hi, just wanted to let you know I got a 3rd cruncher up and running! :) A friend of mine volunteered to help crunch here at TPU. He didn't want to set up an account of his own, so we are now crunching as a team. His machine is a Lenovo Z500 laptop, i7-3632QM @ 3,2GHz - 4C/8T, 16GB RAM. That's a total of 48 threads to crunch on now. He's committed to crunching as much as I am, and I'm very happy about that! ;)
 

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Well done man.
48 Threads crunching that's mean I have to setup another 2P Machine:p

Joke:slap:
 
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I tried something new today. I've read a lot in the forums here on how running Linux on a dedicated cruncher might be a better option. So I downloaded Linux Mint, which I heard was easy to get into and a good choice for Windows fanboys like me who have never touched Linux. I set it up in a new VM and - what I saw, I just could not believe! :eek: I was amazed how easy and smooth that install went... I've installed Windows a lot of times, but it never was this easy. When finished, the little shield icon told me to click on it, installed updates way faster than what I'm used to with Windows setups. I was like "wait, that's it???" Unbelievable. Further, I was ready to go with Firefox and all those programs I usually have to add, from the start!
Even for me who has never even touched Linux, it was easy to get acquainted to it immediately. I can now see why it is loved by so many. Absolutely great stuff! :cool:
The reason for me to finally give it a try is that I plan to set up 4 additional crunchers and don't want to waste my time messing again with epic Windows setups and excessive tweaks - had enough of that. With Linux however, it looks like I'll be ready to go without having to worry about all that. Might be just the OS to have for my dedicated crunchers. I may have been reluctant before, but no more. After installing, I just made sure that remote access was no problem - yet again a wonderful, easy setup of TeamViewer in Linux. I then tried accessing my Linux VM from within a Win7 VM, (never did that before) and it worked perfectly!



Then made sure BOINC will run, since this is the only program that will be used on those new crunchers :), again - no problem. Linux is totally great!
I'm off to the basement to install Linux on my cruncher right now! :D
 
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Thanks for the review. I will seriously consider mint for my next build. The extra 2P machine I have running now I don't want to screw around with since it's working and I only care about the amount of cpu time not points at the moment. But when it's time to shut it down - i.e., once I [hopefully] get my 100yr faah badge - I might look into trying mint on that machine.

Did you do a dual boot setup or just a straight install. I could swap in another hdd and do a clean install, which is probably going to be the simplest.
 
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Thanks for the review. I will seriously consider mint for my next build. The extra 2P machine I have running now I don't want to screw around with since it's working and I only care about the amount of cpu time not points at the moment. But when it's time to shut it down - i.e., once I [hopefully] get my 100yr faah badge - I might look into trying mint on that machine.

Did you do a dual boot setup or just a straight install. I could swap in another hdd and do a clean install, which is probably going to be the simplest.
Just got back from the dungeon after a successful system conversion. :D I have to say this must have been the fastest and most fun time I had installing any OS. Yes, I did a straight install, Mint asked me if I wanted to install it alongside Windows however. Completely hassle-free (take that, M$!), also, for some reason it runs at a higher screen resolution than Windows. I only had to add TeamViewer manually as a startup item, that was all. It was a very positive experience, give it a try sometime on your spare HDD. :) As for faah - well, it's a silver badge for me atm... :p
 
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Just got back from the dungeon after a successful system conversion. :D I have to say this must have been the fastest and most fun time I had installing any OS. Yes, I did a straight install, Mint asked me if I wanted to install it alongside Windows however. Completely hassle-free (take that, M$!), also, for some reason it runs at a higher screen resolution than Windows. I only had to add TeamViewer manually as a startup item, that was all. It was a very positive experience, give it a try sometime on your spare HDD. :) As for faah - well, it's a silver one for me atm... :p
I don't know how familiar you are with bash, but you may even consider doing without TeamViewer. I have my Linux dedicated WCG systems set up to boot to a text-based login prompt and not even display the GUI. Then I have a SSH serve installed so I can do all of the checking and tweaking that I need (or at least want) to do via SSH from my desktop. Saves a little bit of CPU power :)

What is the HW for these new systems?

Is it the dual-E5620 that you said is taking 600W? That seems like quite a lot--I have three dual-E5620 systems that use about 250w each, fully loaded, each with one HDD, some sort of nVidia Quadro, and a 80+ Silver 850W PSU.
 
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I don't know how familiar you are with bash, but you may even consider doing without TeamViewer. I have my Linux dedicated WCG systems set up to boot to a text-based login prompt and not even display the GUI. Then I have a SSH serve installed so I can do all of the checking and tweaking that I need (or at least want) to do via SSH from my desktop. Saves a little bit of CPU power :)
Well, that's way over my head... to be honest, I'm glad to even know how to use TeamViewer :oops: Thanks for the info, though. I use TV now and then to check on my cruncher in the basement, since it has no screen. Aside from that, my goal is to have those future crunchers running with minimal maintenance, just the occasional check-up. With Linux, they should run well.
What is the HW for these new systems?

Is it the dual-E5620 that you said is taking 600W? That seems like quite a lot--I have three dual-E5620 systems that use about 250w each, fully loaded, each with one HDD, some sort of nVidia Quadro, and a 80+ Silver 850W PSU.
I stopped crunching on my main system (see specs), since it uses up to 800W with all stuff installed and is far from efficient. I only let it crunch now when it's getting too cold in my apartment... ;) My dungeon cruncher is the dual E5620 you mentioned. Dedicated w/o graphics and peripherals it uses around 200W at load. You can take a look at it HERE
As for the new HW - I got my hands on a used SGI 827-14 server recently. 8x X5675 CPU, 96GB RAM. It was a good deal, system is like new.


It should already be up and crunching by now, but the noise it makes is unimaginable, can't have it running like this even in the basement. :banghead: So, I plan to let the 4 nodes run separately and out-of-case after being properly modified. I've already ordered heatpipe CPU coolers and a second backplane to do so. It will take some time to complete, being out of funds ATM, but I'm looking forward to seeing its performance. ;)
 
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I tried something new today. I've read a lot in the forums here on how running Linux on a dedicated cruncher might be a better option. So I downloaded Linux Mint, which I heard was easy to get into and a good choice for Windows fanboys like me who have never touched Linux. I set it up in a new VM and - what I saw, I just could not believe! :eek: I was amazed how easy and smooth that install went... I've installed Windows a lot of times, but it never was this easy. When finished, the little shield icon told me to click on it, installed updates way faster than what I'm used to with Windows setups. I was like "wait, that's it???" Unbelievable. Further, I was ready to go with Firefox and all those programs I usually have to add, from the start!
Even for me who has never even touched Linux, it was easy to get acquainted to it immediately. I can now see why it is loved by so many. Absolutely great stuff! :cool:
The reason for me to finally give it a try is that I plan to set up 4 additional crunchers and don't want to waste my time messing again with epic Windows setups and excessive tweaks - had enough of that. With Linux however, it looks like I'll be ready to go without having to worry about all that. Might be just the OS to have for my dedicated crunchers. I may have been reluctant before, but no more. After installing, I just made sure that remote access was no problem - yet again a wonderful, easy setup of TeamViewer in Linux. I then tried accessing my Linux VM from within a Win7 VM, (never did that before) and it worked perfectly!



Then made sure BOINC will run, since this is the only program that will be used on those new crunchers :), again - no problem. Linux is totally great!
I'm off to the basement to install Linux on my cruncher right now! :D
I have used linux on crunchers for awhile now. The only thing that use to bug me was the having to do manual dumps eveynight as the was now set pattern with Boinc under linux as when it was going to upload Wu's. Now with the newer versions of boinc that is a thing of the past. I too love the ease of install. You can have a rig crunching in 15 mins or less from start of the os install. After install I just do a couple preference things then load boinc and walk away.

I did do alot of customizing to the Linux install on my 3930k rig though.
 
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You can have a rig crunching in 15 mins or less from start of the os install. After install I just do a couple preference things then load boinc and walk away.
+1! It's a pleasure to install and use. And I mean that, even being new to Linux. It never has been this easy to get a system up and running, ready to crunch! I'm curious to learn about how to customize it, got to take a close look at that in the future.
 
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