Whats the current most effective folding farm hardware setup?

Question

I'm interested in getting a folding farm setup but I guess this question can apply equally well to any computation-intensive cluster. Basically the goal is to:

• Maximize performance in terms of (typically) GHz/$ (of course different CPU families have a different value of GHz);
• Minimize space; and
• Minimize power usage.

Suggestions?

Answer 1

If you want to maximize processing, you don't want to be looking at CPU's, you want to be looking at GPU's. GPU's are parallel processing from the start, so you can push a lot more data through them that you can through even the fastest CPU on the market.

Answer 2

Timeshare on a maiframe.

Answer 3

I have seen some of the most powerful folding farms as simply a motherboard, decent CPU nothing to powerful and 4 Nvidia 8800 Geforce cards. And remember a folding farm is going to be power heavy if any real crunching is going to be done and it cant really be avoided.

EDIT: Maybe something to have a look at http://www.overclock.net/overclock-net-folding-home-team/370859-nitteos-f-h-gpu2-farm.html

Answer 4

This chap put together his own system. You might want to check it out.

http://atlasfolding.com/