A Folding Farm PC Made of Lego

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stingstang

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I doubt the heat would melt legos. I'm a former lego master myself, and this was a terriffic idea. In fact...I'm willing to bet that with a little ingenuity, a desktop case maker could make a winning design which lets the user create the shape of his or her case to fit what's inside, sorta like legos. In the meantime, I may actually try to do something like this.
 

winterblade

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Maybe I'm just not hardcore enough but... why in the world would anyone want 3 complete computers in one case?? isn't it cheaper to virtualize??
 

bennaye

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Well, I'd never thought of using lego as a material. Guess I really can build my own pc in a more literal sense of the phrase. And I think using lego is fantastic, as you can customise it the way you like, and can be made very strong by supergluing the pieces together, allowing for less supports and thus more ventilation space/fan space. And it's pretty cheap as well. My cousin has enough spare lego to build 5 of these things.
 
[citation][nom]winterblade[/nom]Maybe I'm just not hardcore enough but... why in the world would anyone want 3 complete computers in one case?? isn't it cheaper to virtualize??[/citation]

You obvious miss the key detail in the title.

"A Folding Farm PC Made of Lego"

virtualizing 3 folding@home clients/computers is not ideal for the project.

To understand the folding@home project, Come to our team thread and learn more about F@H.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/268010-28-folding-home-thgc-team-40051

Team 40051!


 
[citation][nom]warmon6[/nom]You obvious miss the key detail in the title."A Folding Farm PC Made of Lego"virtualizing 3 folding@home clients/computers is not ideal for the project.To understand the folding@home project, Come to our team thread and learn more about F@H.http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] team-40051Team 40051![/citation]

Well, tom's forgot to mention this was a World Community Grid computer.... Although points are still valid between WGC and Folding.
 

admiral_grinder

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[citation][nom]winterblade[/nom]Maybe I'm just not hardcore enough but... why in the world would anyone want 3 complete computers in one case?? isn't it cheaper to virtualize??[/citation]

Virtualizing is great for consolidating servers that don't eat up all the resources of a single box. Folding and Boinc run full blast so virtualizing will only cause unneeded overhead and cause each "computer" to get 1/3 of the resources on that the host.

This single box would be called a cluster.
 

K-zon

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To say, that all is for whats being said, is probably as well said for what is said of it all, but to say of the article though, Its is interesting. Given the fact of folding and etc as well, to say. The thought of idea within lego and interest of use with choices a hardware probably, without saying that a specific interest is in mind but maybe more of one then none to say. Legos are modular.

I would say in terms of concepts and works applied very practical. Cause what lego project was something that was an actual finite? You could do the Shuttle i think and Saturn Rockets of course, but still was left without the Hangars, and the some of the docks sometimes. But were all still nefty, right? So of the thought at least, if ever placed really on the fact of legos alone, to say, that this isnt done or finished is probably an understood value of the fact of it.

So with what is there, is more then none, right? So of that idea should be something at least. Otherwise i would think in the whole terms of idea within it all, outside the fact of folding@Home or whatever. Be fairly placed for what it all is.

Obviously the parts of taken are in lack on all parts though. But of the system though what probably isnt, is something to fold with.

But of all, usually takes fund or money to work with, yes? Somehow someway, and better off your then someone elses? Well, in terms of some gains against others, someone elses is always better.
 
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strange:
"3X DDR3 for each system"
isn't Sandybridge dualchannel?
 

Taylor422

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[citation][nom]dj_nin[/nom]strange:"3X DDR3 for each system"isn't Sandybridge dualchannel?[/citation]

DDR3 works fine, and it's cheaper. DDR2 is old and gone.
 
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I'm curious how 1 power supply would work with 3 different systems. I know you can get splitters for the the 24pin connector but for the ATX power switch, does that mean 1 m/b would power them all on and off.

Would it also mean any one of the 3 motherboards could send a shut off signal to the powersupply. Not that many of us would have a need to try this but I'm curious how it would work.
 

blackened144

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[citation][nom]brutus1234[/nom]I'm curious how 1 power supply would work with 3 different systems. I know you can get splitters for the the 24pin connector but for the ATX power switch, does that mean 1 m/b would power them all on and off.Would it also mean any one of the 3 motherboards could send a shut off signal to the powersupply. Not that many of us would have a need to try this but I'm curious how it would work.[/citation]
We have several 1U Twin Supermicro servers.. There are 2 full i7 based servers in the 1U chassis sharing 1 700w PSU in the middle.. These units come with a little PDU that shares the power supply and each server can be powered individually from the controls on the front. I'd guess that this has something similar.
 
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Taylor, dont think u got my question =)
I'm talking about two or four modules when running dual channel
3 memorymodules whould make the memoryconfig asymetric
It says 4x on the source page.
Guess it's just a typo here.
 

winterblade

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[citation][nom]warmon6[/nom]You obvious miss the key detail in the title."A Folding Farm PC Made of Lego"virtualizing 3 folding@home clients/computers is not ideal for the project.To understand the folding@home project, Come to our team thread and learn more about F@H.http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] team-40051Team 40051![/citation]

Wops, you're 100% right, I miss the important part of the topic entirely, sorry about my previous post. Still... wouldn't it have better a triple SLI than a triple CPU?? As far as I know GPU's are better suited for folding, isn't it??
All in all I have to agree in that is a very very nice looking case, and the fact that it is made of Lego... +1
 
[citation][nom]winterblade[/nom]Wops, you're 100% right, I miss the important part of the topic entirely, sorry about my previous post. Still... wouldn't it have better a triple SLI than a triple CPU?? As far as I know GPU's are better suited for folding, isn't it??All in all I have to agree in that is a very very nice looking case, and the fact that it is made of Lego... +1[/citation]

It truthfully a mix relationship on the arguments between cpu's and gpu's. While i cant vouch for WCG, for F@H while they use both, cpu's (to me) appear better overall.

The main issue with folding on a gpu is that your limited with what you can run on it. Memory size on a gpu is smaller than what on the system (F@H has there client setup to mainly run there WU's on the faster gpu memory), you have to run a client per gpu instead of one client for all gpu's, and the way some proteins needed to be folded.... is just not possible to run a simulation on gpu. Forcing a CPU to take the job.


CPU's, there slower than the gpu but unlike the gpu clients, the cpu clients can take all the cores that are thrown at them. You'll be amazed there are folding nuts out there that will run multi-cpu servers just for folding. Common big servers for folding are AMD quad-g34 socket, 12 core cpus servers. Having this many cores at your disposal can be just as fast as a mid to high range gpu (on small multi-core wu's) while requiring far lower power. (although most guys running an enhanced version of the multi-core F@H client and thats call bigadv. Which are huge wu's (100+ MegaByte) that needs powerful computers and needs these WU's done very quickly.)

As pointed out above, cpu's use less power than gpu's. Which probably is why this fellow able to run multiple motherboard off 1 PSU.
 
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