EXTREMEHW 3RD ANNUAL 96-HOUR FOLDING CHALLENGE April 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, STARTING April 26th 00:00 UTC

[damric]

 

How to participate:

During the competition you must be folding for Team 239902

 

 

 

Stats: You can view the stats for the foldathon here: https://ehwfoldingstats.lazypenguin.com

 

Mind the EVENT START TIMER as it is UTC time zone.

 

Note: Stats are updated as soon as possible, but less frequent than desired. Just keep folding!

 

Folding is stressful on hardware, and will often break an overclock unless it's been tested with folding. I do not recommend overclocking high end GPUs as the power draw can be extreme while folding. If anything, try tuning for energy efficiency. Casualties happen and EXTREMEHW can not be held accountable if you destroy your hardware while folding. 

 

Thank you for your participation!

Edited April 13 by damric

[pio]

If we can get enough interest before we start, I might be able to offer up a hardware prize or two.  Probably nothing TOO terribly fancy, but I can see what I can come up with.

I'll have something going so I can get some points too this time.   

I'll also need to figure out how to provide that postbit like has been done with every other annual fold-athon.  This one might be interesting, but I will make sure postbits are handed out too at the end once I can figure that part out on site.

[Sir Beregond]

Oh a contest. 

 

in, sirb

 

 

[pio]

If we can get 50 INDIVIDUAL people on board for this fold-athon, top prize can have their pick between an Intel Arc B570 graphics card (used / open box), my personal old lapped 7900x that @Fluxmavenlapped during Computer Camp Week (was his prior), or a 32GB kit of GSkill DDR5 that I used for about 6 months before I decided 32 wasn't enough.  3 prizes total for the top 3 places.

Shipping will have to be paid by the winner and can be arranged with the site owner @LabRat.

I've also updated the postbit awards to be relevant this year, and they're ready to be handed out!

[Fluxmaven]

It's finally getting too hot to fold around here and now we go and have a good ole hootenanny.

 

I'm obviously in  

[Kaz]

Out of curiosity, how much electricity are those of you who fold using?  What is the overall benefit of folding?

[pio]

  On 08/04/2025 at 02:22, Kaz said:

Out of curiosity, how much electricity are those of you who fold using?  What is the overall benefit of folding?

Expand  

Depends on what equipment you run it on.  "How much electricity" depends on how many 4090's or 5090's you throw at it.  

Last year I ran it on my 7900XTX, 6900XT, 5700XT, and my Vega64 for the 96 hour event.  My apartment was getting VERY hot and my AC was running nearly 24/7 during those 96 hours.  I couldn't tell you how much electricity I was using.  My bill went up probably 30-40 bucks or so that month I'd guess (at around $0.1099 / kwh) from where I'm normally at (in the $200 ish range, for scale).  But my two bigger cards were drawing around 350w each, and the two non "bigger" cards were around 180w each (5700xt and vega).

Nvidia cards do it probably a million times better and more efficiently though.  I do it for fun on my AMD cards, because its what I have.

You do NOT have to go crazy with multiple cards or systems.  One CPU or GPU is all that's required (Nvidia preferred, AMD "works" / CPU's don't really help much these days anymore).

What is the benefit?  You're giving your resources to Stanford University while its running on your system, to help "fold proteins" to help find cures for incurable diseases such as Alzheimer's and others.  Best way I can describe it "simply", you're providing your system to be used for AI purposes at Stanford for researching cures for diseases.

You get free internet points on a made up scoreboard that doesn't count for anything.  Except maybe a prize here at EHW.

[bonami2]

Will be posted on social media. Am in also 

[damric]

  On 08/04/2025 at 02:22, Kaz said:

Out of curiosity, how much electricity are those of you who fold using?  What is the overall benefit of folding?

Expand  

It's helpful to tune high end high power draw cards for efficiency for sure. Like my RX 6900XT I can tune it to fold at sub 100W by just dropping the maximum frequency to 70%. But for foldathon I'll let it run at 80% 140W. 

 

Overall benefit is to college professors who have a backlog of tests to run and not the equipment to run them. More recently folding@home helped identify the spike protein during the early covid pandemic.

[Sir Beregond]

  On 08/04/2025 at 02:22, Kaz said:

Out of curiosity, how much electricity are those of you who fold using?  What is the overall benefit of folding?

Expand  

It's basically scientific distributed computing with the aim at finding cures and treatments for cancers, Alzheimers, and other diseases.

 

And along with it some fake internet points.

[mx500torid]

  On 08/04/2025 at 15:04, Sir Beregond said:

It's basically scientific distributed computing with the aim at finding cures and treatments for cancers, Alzheimers, and other diseases.

 

And along with it some fake internet points.

Expand  

The points are fake????? I am in.

[mx500torid]

oops

Edited April 9 by mx500torid
oops

[rUNbYrATZ]

  On 07/04/2025 at 19:23, damric said:

How to participate:

During the competition you must be folding for Team 239902

 

 

 

Stats: You can view the stats for the foldathon here: https://ehwfoldingstats.lazypenguin.com

 

Mind the EVENT START TIMER as it is UTC time zone.

 

Note: Stats are updated as soon as possible, but less frequent than desired. Just keep folding!

 

Folding is stressful on hardware, and will often break an overclock unless it's been tested with folding. I do not recommend overclocking high end GPUs as the power draw can be extreme while folding. If anything, try tuning for energy efficiency. Casualties happen and EXTREMEHW can not be held accountable if you destroy your hardware while folding. 

 

Thank you for your participation!

Expand  

That looks awful.

 

You might want to try this:

 

added (someone else's AI work):

 

 

 

Edited April 13 by rUNbYrATZ

[pio]

Bump, about 10 days left.  I stand by my offer, if we can get 50 people on board....I'll give away those prizes.  Do we want to see pictures?  I can dig the stuff out and snap some pictures.

Also, huge thanks to @rUNbYrATZfor the image.  Looks great!

[damric]

@NBrock @elblat 

[damric]

@CoolGTX @markfw

[pio]

Just to show you guys that I'm not bluffing.........

(again will ship anywhere but shipping will be paid for by winner and arranged with @LabRat).

Prizes we have on offer if we can get 50 people folding for the cause for this 96 hours:
(1st-3rd place prizes, first person gets first choice, etc)
(*also - up to you guys if we do a "random draw" for those 1-3 prizes or award to highest contributers)

32GB (2x16GB) G.Skill Flare X DDR5-6000 kit:

Lapped AMD Ryzen 9 7900x (lapped by @Fluxmaven)

ASRock Challenger Intel Arc B570 10GB OC Edition:

[pio]

5 more days till event starts guys.  Don't make me keep these parts!

[LabRat]

With prior permission from W1zzard @ TechPowerUp, I have invited the members of TPU to our F@H event.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/extremehw-invites-techpowerup-to-our-3rd-annual-96-hour-folding-challenge-april-26th-00-00-utc.335791/