I'm gonna put this in here for now until someone sees fit to move it elsewhere....The reason? well, I think it is a good long term test of a rig's performance and I believe that if everyone were to run this, even if only for a few hours whilst they were just browsing etc. then the world would be a better place.

Somehow or other most people who mess with computers and forums will have heard of Folding @ Home and perhaps they understand the basis on which it works... the idea is that you donate your spare cycles to benefit medical research.

I partook of this project for a while racking up a total of some 23million points but I found that running GPU's on this was expensive on power and hard on equipment so I started looking for alternatives. What I found was World Community Grid and it that which I want to talk about here.

WCG has a number of projects in which people can participate ranging from cancer and aids to clean energy and clean water research and all results of this research are published so this is not for any financial gain. These projects use the cpu of a machine to do small segments of the research and report the results back to the scientists.

For those interested this is how I do it....

First I go to my HD and open a new folder called BOINC (more on this later) inside that folder I place another called BOINCDATA then I go to http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php and pick the Recommended download to suit the operating system. It is an .exe file so let it run and when you get to the bit about where on your computer it will install then direct it to the two folders that you made earlier. Doing it this way makes it a lot easier to remove or update things in future

The next bit is something I did a long time ago so bear with me.

I think you next have to select a project to run so go down the list till you come to World Community Grid, select and it will ask for a password and nickname or ask you to sign up, obviously, choose sign up and upon completion of this process you get to choose which projects to run the projects will download some work for your computer. Done. it is that simple.

Teams
There are loads of them if you want to join one, I crunch for XS (a brilliant bunch of really helpful and knowledgeable types on the team) but you can just do it for yourself ...many do

Now then, BOINC is the platform used by this and many other projects to run on and is a separate but necessary part of this

A few links:

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ But don't download from there cos the boinc version is usually the wrong one...it works but...well if you have to then do it but it is better if you overwrite the boinc version asap

http://www.poppageek.com/ Have a look around for some more insight and info

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=224817 really old info that I used and ended up with the wrong (32bit) boinc version but it does show screenshots of the various steps of the process and a few performance enhancements too


So, boys and girls, that is it pretty much, load and forget unless you use very intensive programs then it may be necessary to talk about settings some.

Want to join the XS team for supercomputer week (1st - 7th May) you are more than welcome (it is easier than joining XS : ) and you don't have to stay...you can even form a team here.

Power use: 3 example rigs for reference do your own calculations regarding the cost of running for a few hours up to 24/7

q6600@3.6 =275watts from the wall
i7 920 @4.1 =345 watts from the wall
SB 2600k @ 4.88 = 220 watts from the wall

Any other questions I will do my best to answer but I have had very few problems with this so......

for the info Mike.

Thanks mike, I got the email from Fugger the other day and was thinking about it.

I'll probably get it setup tomorrow.

If there are members here that are interested in this type of work for your computer which benefits mankind we can setup a group here.

Is anyone interested?

I am interested...

Mike can you provide any info regarding temps and resources used when this is setup. I browsed some article on it and there was some mention of when setup it by default usea 60% of CPU power but it can be set to use 100%. I may be completely confused on this and maybe you could explain or set me right...

My system is clocked to almost 4.1 at the moment and is running sweeter than ever but I do not want it running at 100% CPU as I would be leary of the temps for 24/7 operation.

If you make no changes to the standard "preferences" then it will run for 60% of cycles by default, which inevitably means that temps will be down and so will output.

To make adjustments you might want to look at this....

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=224817&page=3

have a lookat post 58 and the replies and the results

If you want more I will be back on tomorrow (back to work tomorrow so still a few things to do now)
EDIT
On full water and at 4.1 with around 1.4v on an old x58-ud5 which I have not really played with I run at under 60deg 4c 8t generally those of us running i7 24/7 recommend under 80-85deg
EDIT2
I don't game or do heavy stuff so I have never had any issues with programs competing for resources as crunching is a close to idle process anyway so try setting to the recommendations in that post, when you are there to see the results and let it run.... just watch your temps then try doing your normal stuff like say converting a video and watch to see the effect...I expect it will hardly interfere if at all.

Thanks so much for the reply and the info Mike!
I will read a little more of what you posted and see about getting it setup...

Once this week is over I will come here and put together a graphical guide for anyone that might like to do this.

As I said before the original concept was to run this on computers that were otherwise doing very little work and therefore donate a few unused cycles to stuff like cancer research.

When I set mine up I tend to think in terms of running 24/7 because once I have played around with attempting a good overclock I tend to have very little hard use for my rigs and it seemed a waste.... The trouble is this can get addictive....just now I am thinking of replacing a couple of quads with another 2600K rig which will probably give the same or better output but at near 200watts instead of 450-500watts for the pair...as the number of rigs I have doing this has grown so has my power bill.

I have limited myself to around $150 a month for that so if you do try this out and know yourself to be the sort that gets competitive....well let's just say you have been warned!! :

I'm pretty sure that I pay more for hydro and water than most folks due to the 4 girls... LOL