Fluxmaven

Now that it's finally cold out, I've been spinning up more systems to run Folding@home. I already have a 42u and a couple 12u server racks, so it makes sense to build a few rackmount rigs to better utilize space. This one is the combination of all the cheapest stuff I've acquired in the past year. Motherboard - Supermicro X12STL-IF $39.64 - This was miscategorized and listed in the watercooling section on ebay. Seemed to be BNIB. CPU - $34.98 - Pentium Gold G6500 Used ebay find. PSU1 - $34.98 - 1u HP 1200w platinum that came with the breakout board and some PCIe risers. (decommissioned mining system). PSU2 - $20.09 - Mean Well LRS-100-12 powering a PicoPSU that came with some board I bought to benchmark a couple years ago. GPU - $194 - RTX 4070 Ventus. Got lucky and snagged this from Microcenter. Typically I get decent deals on open box stuff there. This was actually a new card that was in the clearance section. I've seen a couple of times where a last gen GPU will pop up for for crazy cheap. Maybe they find a random box in the back and the SKU is so old that when they scan it in it instantly goes to super clearance pricing? Case - $7 RackChoice 2U. Appeared new and unused. Got from an auction place called BidFTA that has several warehouses around here. This is the 3rd rack case I've picked up cheap from there. Any other tidbits were things I already had in the spare parts bin. The V1 proof of concept using a 170w PSU I salvaged from the e-waste pile. The SATA to PCIe power adapter was a little too ghetto for my taste. Mocking up with an old Quadro. Finally found a home for the slime green 80mm Gelid fans that have been sitting in the OnlyFans pile for way to long. Finally decided to toss everything together and get it up and running. The look on the kids face when he saw what this rang up at was priceless. Realizing I bought it in July and am just now doing anything with it makes me want to quit my job even more. Being out of town for work all the time makes it hard to work on my computer projects. Nice thing about using a server board is it has IPMI so I can manage the thing headless. It's running Linux Mint XFCE because I'm not enough of a nerd to use CLI. I'll play around with LACT to dial in an undervolt. Already doing pretty decent.

I don't own anything with an electronic parking brake and don't want to. I have three cars with manual transmissions and standard hand brakes. I do my own maintenance. I have a Cobb Accessport in the Mustang that can read/reset codes. If I need to change anything more advanced, I have a USB to OBD2 adapter and use a program called FORScan that can interface with just about every module in the car. Eventually when it gets too hard to find vehicles without all that crap, I guess I'll move somewhere that stays a bit warmer all year and go back to riding a motorcycle every day. Granted, even bikes are starting to get loaded up with extra fluff these days.

It's almost cold enough out to fire up my FX9590 HD7990 rig. I installed W11 on it just for the lolz and it was surprising how good the system feels just derping around. I built it to play games from it's day which it does fine aside from the massive heat output. No interest in trying to run modern stuff but it's cool that it still can.

Later years of the Cobalt SS were turbo which would be the most desirable if going that route. This will be the most different experience from what you already have. MX5/Miata for under $9k could get you into anything from first gen through early 3rd gen. NA or NB will be more like a go-cart than a car. The NC would have more overlap with your Camaro. Even with my bias of owning one and loving it, I wouldn't chose one as the daily driver. The Civic will be the best daily driver, but the least special feeling. If you just want to make it to work every day and not have to worry about tinkering with things the Civic is going to make the most sense. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Cobalt SS will be the crappiest car on the list. They are just hopped up throw away economy cars and fairly old at this point. I thought they were pretty cool when they were new. I still wouldn't mine having one or an SRT4 to tool around in as a project but not a daily. Realistically, given that you already have a Camaro for the fun car, I'd be looking at something more practical as the daily. Honda Fit or Mazda3 hatch.

I've been using Makita brushless for several years now just about daily for work. I love them. I tried just about every common brand and they felt the most comfortable to me. I also specifically wanted to avoid Milwaukee tools since that's what a lot of people in the trades use and I don't want to worry about batteries or tools "walking away".

These chips will keep boosting as long as there is thermal headroom. Those temps seem a bit on the warm side but within expectations. If you have some time to fiddle with it you can dial in a negative offset in curve optimizer under the PBO settings in the BIOS. Pair that with the 105w Eco mode and you'll end up with higher performance than stock at lower power draw. You can also use the more aggressive eco settings to further reduce temps and power draw without losing too much performance.

That's a really solid combo. For a gaming PC that typically just has a GPU and an SSD or two, there's really no need for anything more than a B850. That RAM kit is a great "turn key" option for Ryzen. Single CCD chips benefit less from faster RAM and the X3D V-Cache further negates the need for it. There are still performance gains, but not really worth the added cost unless you just really want to spend time tuning it.

It's not a V8. I wanted a manual RWD turbo car... Never thought I'd own a Mustang but there really aren't many newer cars that fit that description. Makes a nice daily. They wake up nicely with the usual mods (intercooler, downpipe, accessport etc). Quicker than most regular traffic but can get good fuel economy when you're cruising down the highway. I love the Grom for running errands or just farting around the back streets. I keep thinking I'll get another "real" bike again but people drive like idiots here too. The distracted driver that plowed into me when I was in the Mazda6 wagon would have killed me if I'd been on a bike.

Interesting combo. I briefly considered a 500 Abarth because they make all the right noises and were pretty cheap a couple years ago. Ended up with a Mazda6 wagon for the practicality. Now I have a Mustang for the daily. Miata is the weekend fun car, and a Grom for when I don't want to struggle to find parking.

Outside of storage servers, I don't use spinning rust for anything anymore. SSDs are faster and plenty reliable. I've had way more failures with HDDs over the years. I was an early adopter of SSDs too. First was a 32GB IDE lol. For many years I'd run a smaller SSD for a boot drive and a HDD for storage. Now I typically just load up the m.2 slots with fast NVMe drives. It obviously depends on what your actual needs are. If you need over 4TB of capacity, HDDs start making more sense.

I've been traveling a lot for work and haven't really been paying attention to the rigs. Looking through the logs, I see several of those 149** units that failed. In my case it didn't reboot the rig and it eventually pulled another but it's downtime on the 5070 Ti rig which is the highest PPD machine I have running right now so I'd obviously like for it to not get hung up.

Yes, you actually need to fold next time. The 6950XT was originally purchased so I had a modern AMD card for reviews... Back when I thought I'd be doing more of those. Sat on the shelf most of the time I've owned it. Still a good card and I'll find something to do with it. The 5070 Ti just fits my needs better for that system.

I'd love to pretend that they're at least binned higher, but I'm sure it's just a plain Jane 9070XT with twice the VRAM for twice the price.

@pio stop being a wimp The Radeon AI PRO R9700 is only a 300w card. They also have the power connector at the rear of the card so no issues with a tight bend against the side panel. Really the only cards I'd be concerned about at all are 4090 and 5090's and only if you're pushing them pretty hard. The card I've had the longest with a 12VHPWR is my 4070 TI I got a week after launch and it's been plugged in at least a dozen times in half a dozen systems. Using the included adapter or dedicated 12VHPWR cables with no issues at all. I've run everything full bore for extended periods of time, but lately I undervolt everything just to minimize heat dumped into the room. I'd be curious to see what sort of PPD the AI Pro does stock and with a decent undervolt. My 6950XT sucked in general for folding, but at least didn't lose much even with a pretty significant UV. Being Mr. AyyyMD, you'll probably be sad to hear that I have retired that card and am now fully team green for the fleet of things that actually get used every day.