chriscambridge wrote:Hi Mark,
I just re-read that last reply; when I said I was "on the tablet", I of course meant tablet computer, not some other pharma type tablet :@
Hi Chris,
Of course, I never thought anything else
chriscambridge wrote:If you could add some photos it would be very interesting but not essential; I guess us smaller players are always interested in what boxes the big cruncher's are running and how they have these setup.
Well I took a couple of photos but they're not all that informative. I'll see about taking the motherboard out of the box next week, things might be clearer then.
chriscambridge wrote:Typically I could have sworn I had saved the URL for that 9 Titan-x GPU Monster but I cannot seem to locate it anywhere; if I remember rightly it had been built, I think by Boxx, as a bespoke GPU box to show what is possible, for some trade show in America.
I will try and find it if I can because it looked quite impressive. However noticing that the other link shows 8 Tesla cards then perhaps it was 9 Tesla's instead of Titan-x's but I could have sworn it was these.
Not a big deal, it looks like they might be bespoke boards anyway so no chance of the normal cruncher (is there such a thing?) getting their hands on one.
chriscambridge wrote:I do wonder if PCIE is a bit outdated now, given our discussion of heat expulsion as well as air flow inwards - but also outdated especially if you take the fact that there is a Full A.I deep learning Compute Accelerator built as a USB Stick eg The Movidius Fathom; perhaps this shows the way that Boinc projects could go in the future instead of Graphics cards, as Bitcoin mining boxes have shown.
PCIe is just the interface specification and it's still evolving (upto revision 3.2 at the moment), you could plug whatever you like into it. It does have it's limitations which is why Crossfire and SLi evolved with their own busses. That does look like an interesting concept though, I'll have a deeper look into it.
chriscambridge wrote:In terms of building that box, I will have to wait a few months until I get my monies back up, and to be honest being more software than hardware I would have to do some research to find out if it is just a case of connecting every thing, inserting the Windows CD, and then booting up; if not then I would have to get someone else involved that had a more hardware experience than I.
After a break, I've recently built three boxes up, two from all individual components and one starting from a motherboard already populated with RAM and CPUs and each of them was just a case of putting everything in the box, connecting them together, turning it on and installing an operating system. These days, unless you're going for a more exotic, cutting edge build, it's pretty straightforward.
chriscambridge wrote:Perhaps I will post it into this forum to see if anyone has the skills and confidence to build one of these - or even better to build one, and then do a post with clear examples on how to do this; clearly loads of these running will help CPU crunching as well of course credits
I could do with another project so I might price it up and look at the availability of components. Who knows, you might get your step by step build guide
chriscambridge wrote:Talking about credits! Tim just gave me a heads up explanation on Bitcoin Utopia and why you guys got involved, as well as what kind of numbers these dedicated boxes can produce; wow!
Thanks for the reminder, I spent a pleasant couple of hours re-reading the thread last night, fun times
chriscambridge wrote:Found out from Tim that a RBox2 would only consume a small amount of electricity, about the same as an i3M laptop - and should only cost about £30 + PSU; so did a quick search on ebay but no RBox2's available, only a Antminer S3 + PSU, which was costing around £160 including 2x p&p, which was the cheapest out of all the listings that I could find. Way to expensive for my current budget..
So perhaps I will take you up on your offer; Thank you soooo much! :}
How would we go about doing this so that it definitely did not get damaged in transit from you to me, and me to you back later? Also I am pretty reclusive so would it just be a matter of popping it back in the packaging it arrived in, and then taking it to the post office and getting it sent back to you via Royal Mail recorded/registered delivery?
Let me know how you think this could best work? Would you also provide a PSU as these seem quite expensive on Ebay.
Also let me know if you perhaps you would want to sell me a unit? Especially an RBox2 + PSU.
Chris
The original RBox 32 used a 12 volt supply rated at 3 amps so less than 40 watts and about a kilowatt per day if left on all the time, I never had an RBox2 so can't vouch for that and the R4s were a LOT more power hungry!
When bought, they came pretty well packaged in expanded polystyrene and I still have the original packaging so posting it shouldn't be a problem if you have a destination address? Otherwise, there's a few drop-off-and-collect schemes going on (I've picked up quite a few EBay bits from the local Argos shop or Shell garage) so I can have a look into them. Same for returning it I guess? I believe I've got a couple of stand alone PSUs knocking around, I'll sort one out and wire it up to a connector.
As mentioned, I don't have an RBox2, I have four original RBox 32s and a couple of R4s (but I doubt you'll want them ... yet!
) you're welcome to buy any or all of them as I've stopped BU for the foreseeable future and would probably restart with new miners if I took it up again.
I'm out of town this weekend (back Monday evening) so no rush to decide anything.
Regards,
Mark