I am hoping to create a form of super computer called a cluster. Does anybody have any ideas/recommendations. If so, please post below.

Here is an exact definition from wikipedia:


I am posting this both on Gothic Blood Designs and here:
http://z6.invisionfree.com/G_B_D/index.php?showtopic=83

What are you going to use it for?
What is your budget for this system?

Better yet--do you have the hundreds of thousands of dollars and the knowhow to put it together? Clusters can be inexpensive to start--but realize that spending $600 on each machine adds up quickly. I know some schools that use 5-10 Q6600's for rendering work, and have work equally distributed among the 5-10 systems. It's hard to put together and can get expensive fast.

What are you going to use it for?
Well I don't know yet, probably just about everything. I'm thinking maybe an HD TV recording cluster and each node has a TV Tuner in it

What is your budget for this system?
$0.00



I've got some old Dell OptiPlex G1s kicking around im only going to make a cluster of 2-5 computers, I've got a switch in my room, and a billion (not literally) 10/100mbps ethernet cards. If I need any extra parts, my dad is an IT manager and a family friend is an IT guy and server manager.

It sounds to me that your not really looking into making a cluster of computers forming a super computer, but more a network of computers.

One thing you have to bear in mind is the electric consumption. If you have 5 computers drawing 200 watts each, that 1kwh, 24kwh over 24 hours. Don't know about the price of electric where you live, but where I live it is around $0.25 per kwh. 1kwh over a year is 8760kwh. At $0.25 per kwh, thats $2190 per year your going to be paying on electric.

Can you afford that? Running a cluster of computers is not going to be cheap.

I'm pretty knew to this but wouldn't the concept be 1 workstation with x amount of slaves? the workstation assigning tasks to each slave and spreading the load? For every day use you'd be limited through performance of each slave/workstation? Therefore actually not performing as well as one decent computer?

Optiplex G1s? Old PII's? You're not going to be able to do very much with those. Not to mention they likely have 10mbit/s ethernet onboard and you should be able to plug in a 100mbit/s PCI card. If you want to record TV, it won't be particularly effective. The problem is that you still need a storage server to actually store all the shows and you need processing power to actually encode the TV shows real-time. To put this simply--it's not cheap and it's not going to be particularly easy to "hack" it all together. They will be no super computer--and it's likely that the TV tuners won't work properly because you're lacking in both RAM and graphics power.



Those computers probably consume about 100wH each under load--so the price probably won't quite be $2200. If there's any more than about 5 of them running 24/7, it'll be around $1000 a year in power alone.


Supposedly, it's more about just being a number of computers doing similar tasks, but not depending on any other computer really.


Some other problems--very few routers or switches will actually let you run at full speed. That, and Windows generally limits bandwidth (except for a few multimedia types) to 10% or so of your actual capacity. You can change that in the registry, but it may actually be a bad idea since it's designed to prevent quite a number of problems. If you have a 10/100 switch and are running 10/100 cards, your max bandwidth will probably be 10 mbit/s or about 1.25mbyte/s.

Thanks alot for this, my brain hadn't even thought of this. When I was thinking of cost, I wasn't thinking of electricity, I was thinking of parts.


Thanks for this information. Does Ubuntu Linux have the same restrictions?

EDIT: sorry for the late post, I wrote it and then forgot to post it

Yes--and your parents probably don't want you to be running 5 computers at load. I actually doubt they'll take 100wH each. Pentium II "Deschutes" processors seem to be most common, and are generally 24 watt processors at the most-common 400mhz variation. Counting how many PIIs the my family has around (I have one, my uncle has 3-4 running, about a dozen more as spares), all but one is a PII 400 Deschutes. I was checking and saw that, in their current, state, the systems may very well draw about 180 watts. My estimate was low, Stobbo's was high. The draw probably isn't quite that high--I factored in a 40% aged power supply, 3 sticks of PC133 SD RAM, and some other parts (one CD-ROM drive, floppy, an 80mm fan, TV tuner, PCI NIC).

Ways to save power:
Run without an optical drive
Run without a floppy drive
Run with minimal RAM (1 stick if you're able to)
If you're lucky, it didn't run for a decade strait. Factor in a more-efficient power supply (30% aged instead of 40%)

Doing that specifically, I estimated the power draw to be about 120 watts.

If you're doing any more than four systems with more than that above minimum like this, it'll be much better, efficient, and easy to spend the money on a newer computer. A TV tuner card that will read digital feeds will cost you about $50. My quick estimate parts list... Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2160 ($75), Intel P35 motherboard with 6 SATA connections and RAID support ($100), 2x2GB RAM ($70), SATA DVD burner w/ Lightscribe ($35), four 250GB hard drives ($240), one 160GB OS hard drive ($50), 500W power supply ($60), three TV tuner cards ($150), WinXP Media Center 2005 or WinVista Home Premium ($120), a Radeon HD2600 Pro ($70), and an ATX case ($50). Cost estimate for that? About $1080 shipped and a cost of 450 watt-Hours. It'll be a bit more expensive up-front but it'll be even in the long run. You eliminate the hassles of networking, compatibility, reliability, and basically everything else you'll encounter using old systems. You'll also have several times more processing power and storage.

I would personally not advise it--I basically compiled three computers into one system. You could get away with a bit less (dual TV tuners and 2 fewer hard drives, for example). It's expensive and probably not worth it--and why not just get a DVD recorder and use DVD-RAM discs? They have a 4.7GB capacity each and hundreds of thousands of rewrites. They'll cost less too--$120-$180 a recorder, though you'll have to manually get the DVD-RAM disc. Life is all about compromises--and if you go with the DVD recorder instead of a DVR computer, you'll save significantly. You can use numerous types of DVD to record the shows and whatever you want to watch, so it is also flexible. Your only real problem comes in copying the DVDs--as making a copy consumes money.


Good luck getting drivers for Ubuntu! The community is nowhere near large enough to write all the drivers--so you'll likely have to find out what specific TV tuners have drivers and use only those. I was running Ubuntu 5.10 on a PIII 600mhz laptop with 128MB RAM and I was almost always at 98% used RAM--even Ubuntu gets quite heavy on RAM. You'll probably need a minimum of 256MB of RAM to get a TV tuner running properly.

http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/

You might want to read up on this cluster. It is relatively affordable and the whole thing only uses 450 watts under load (not bad at all for four CPUs). Though it's kinda outdated now (a year or so old), it might give you an idea of how to go about this better.

Like Bob said, a new dual core computer would be a faster and more efficient option.

Let's put it this way--one Celeron 420 processor (single-core Conroe-L running at 1.6GHz) will consume about twice as much as a single Pentium II 400MHz processor and will perform over four times better in SSE and MMX tasks.

What's SSE and MMX? In short, they're instruction sets. The Celeron 420 has the added advantage of SSE2 and SSE3 support. It also supports 64-bit operating systems and applications. Using those higher instruction sets, you will get MUCH better performance with that single slow single-core processor (about equivalent to a 3.2GHz Pentium 4), versus even 10 Pentium II 400 processors, especially after factoring in limited bandwidth.

As I said, using DVD recorders and DVD-RAM discs, you'll have a much more budget-efficient and power-efficient alternative to using a cluster of old computers. I'm not saying that old computers are worthless or useless or inefficient--because quite frankly that's not the case. My uncle runs three or four PII 400s as his primary desktop, vinyl digital recording station, and backup desktop. As he says--if the site requires Flash, I don't need to be there. The difference with this is the task is too demanding for the particular system. Using a number of computers older than 8 years (two lifetimes for most systems) for a task like recording TV will work, but it won't be particularly efficient.

Ok, thanks a ton for the input. I'm thinking now I might reconsider and just make one really good computer rather than piecing together old ones, mainly because it would be more cost effective. As I said before, thanks for all the information and the input. I can't wait to what I will do .

Heck whatever you decide to do keep us posted its always fun to hear about peoples little tech projects.

I have to remind myself of most of my own points, quite often. So yes--it'll be much more budget efficient to make your own all-in-one multimedia system. Depending on what you want and what you need, prices can vary. A lot of options for many different things...

Single core v. Dual core v. Quad core
Low-end card with HDMI or mid-range card with HDMI and acceleration
AMD's socket AM2 v. Intel's socket LGA775
2x1GB RAM v. 1x2GB RAM v. 2x2GB RAM
Non-RAID v. RAID 0 v. RAID 1 v. RAID 5 v. RAID 10 v. Intel Matrix RAID v. JBOD
WinXP MCE v. WinVista HP v. WinVista Ultimate v. Linux
DVD Burner without Blu-Ray v. Blu-Ray Reader v. Blu-Ray Burner
Sound card v. Integrated sound v. S/PDIF Optical v. S/PDIF Coaxial

That's just the start of it, really. There's a lot to consider if you want to build it like that.

I'll be happy to help with any advice--there's a lot to consider. I'd also be happy to hear about projects like this.

Good luck.

Thanks for all the help but the more I think about it, the more it sounds expensive.

-Cornboy3

Did you think it would be cheap to begin with?

...maybe I did, maybe I didn't...

Let's put it this way... the most expensive hardware components will be hard drives. I'd say spend $80 on a mATX Intel G965 chipset motherboard, $75 on an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2160, $40 on 2GB of RAM, $80 on a Radeon HD3650, and then as much as you want for hard drives. Be aware that you CAN jury-rig a solution to hold extra hard drives, but I wouldn't suggest it unless you know what you're doing. I'd say go with a 3-drive RAID 5, for the data security. You just need to make sure you get a chipset with RAID (ICH7R--look at 975X, G31, P31, and ICH8R--look at G965 and P965, ICH9R--look at G33, G35, and P35). You could get a PCI or PCI Express RAID controller, but those aren't worth it if you can get one onboard, at least for a task like this.

My real question is exactly what do you want to use this system for? What type of monitor and speakers are you setting up? If you're not independent, I doubt it'll be much and so basic parts can be used.

WelI think what I want to get is:
Intel Core 2 Duo Quad core
1x 2 Gig stick of ram
No idea what motherboard
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
Current drives will stay the same
XCLIO A380BK Case
Either 1 DVI port and one VGA or two DVI

Needs to have:
At least 1 PCI Slot for my TV tuner
DVI out
S-Video out

If you find an Intel Core 2 Duo Quad core let us know .

Ok if you want some help on the parts we'll need to know the following;

-Whats your budget?
-What do you need the computer for? - Heavy multitasking, Video Editing, Gaming, All of the above?

Apart from the above obviously

Well once I actualy get a real job probably about 500$
I hope to be able to use it for some gaming so I need a Direct X 9 compatible graphics card, but I do a ton of multitasking, being a graphics artist and a web developer much at the same time.

And I found 2 Quad Cores:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115017
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000LRMR2...FYQ1ZD5AZ4FWSVB

EDIT: I believe what I am going to buy is:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad-Core Processor, 2.40 GHz, 8M L2 Cache, LGA 775 = $250
Intel D975XBX2 Intel Core 2 Duo Ready Socket 775 ATX Motherboard = $200
Corsair 2GB PC6400 800MHz 240-Pin DDR2 RAM (TWIN2X2048-6400) = $53
XFX PVT44AWANG GeForce 6200 256MB GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card (VGA/DVI/S-Video) = $56 A graphics card
XCLIO A380BK Case

Will finish later, laptop dieing

Just a word of warning, don't overspend on the processor and motherboard, but underspend on everything else. If your going to spend $500, then spending $450 on the processor and motherboard is really silly.

What OS will you be running?

Trade that for Gigabyte DS3l since your most likely just going for a single card setup. Its cheap and easy to OC.

If you want that proccesor will you be running stock cooler? and by the way i do a lot of web dev stuff and you don't need top of the range unless you plan on running a development server. Personally i own the Q6600 and assigning 2 cores to VMware is really useful for me. I'd suggest running a 64bit os with 4-8gb of RAM if your into heavy multitasking.

Graphics hmm 3650 would do well, 8600GT, 9600GT is a bit out of budget unless your willing to cut down the motherboard/processor combo.

This is just a core rebuild right? you have the rest of the parts
BTW what Power supply are you running? Those C2Q's are power fairly hungry (draws 105ish W under load i think)

Well I want to run Vista Ultimate but I'm not sure because it's really expensive

EDIT: Gigabyte DS3l sounds cool and I don't think I have to worry to much about cooling because to the jet engine in my case As for the power supply, I'm not quite sure but I think some were around 375 Watts
2nd EDIT: BTW My current computer is a Dell Dimension 1100 with a celeron processor

Save your money. That's why I recommended an E2160 and a P/G965 chipset. You can get those for very cheap and you really don't need any more. If you choose to overclock, you can do so. You won't need a quad-core for multitasking photoediting and web developing. A dual-core is more than enough.

Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2.2GHz, $120 or Pentium Dual-Core E2160 1.8GHz, $70
Foxconn P9657AB-8EKRS2H, $60 - $10 MIR
G-Skill 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800 CL5
ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro 256MB GDDR2, $63 or ATI Radeon HD3650 512MB GDDR3, $75 - $10 MIR
Leadtek WinFast PxPVR1200 TV Tuner, $48
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB hard drive (for OS), $51
3 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB hard drives (for storage, put in RAID 5), $110 each
SeaSonic SS-500ES 500 watt power supply, $70
Thermaltake Matrix case, $50
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit OEM, $100
Arctic Cooling MX-2, $7
Arctic Silver ArctiClean, $6

Using the more expensive components (E4500 & HD3650), the total comes out to $952, or $984 shipped. You can have two $10 MIRs (right now), so that total is about $955. Using the E2160 and HD2600 Pro, it's a $890 subtotal, or $922 shipped. With the one $10 MIR, it drops down to $913 or so.

I realize that's probably a bit out of your budget--$400 out. You can start on the computer and drop out $220 from dropping two of the three 500GB hard drives--and that will bring your storage down to the 160GB OS drive and 500GB for the TV & everything else. That'll bring you much closer to what you want to spend, saying that $500 is what you want to spend.

Your going to strip the parts out of a Dell dimension 1100?

You need to check if your HDD and DVD/R(w?) is Serial ata, also check on what parts you actually need. Do you already have that case?

As for the powersupply, if its a standard dell one i'm not sure if it'll run a E4500, certainly won't run a Q6600. I agree with bob-sama a dual core would be perfect if your just using standard coding. As I said the only reason you'd want a Quad core setup is if your using a heavy web development setup. But for standard writing, testing etc you shouldn't need more then a single core and a dual core would be perfect.

No, my HDD and drives are IDE. Yes I do have the case but I want to get XCLIO A380BK one instead. Anyways, I wouldn't plan on building it soon because I'm only in 9th grade and don't have a job .

Then don't even think about it now. Wait until you are a few months away from buying it, as computer prices and the recommended components change frequently.

Are well IDE is an outdated interface and usually modern motherboards come with only 1 or 2 of IDE connectors. You'll like SATA because its a lot smaller and easier to manage .

That list bob-sama compiled has literally everything you'll need (minus a screwdriver) to build your computer. You can keep up with the tech news for recent changes if you want I personally check AnandTech pretty much daily. Also read a few reviews of parts to get yourself an idea of whats out there. At least that way you should have an easier time picking parts whenever you come to build .

Cool, my little brother and mom already have s-ata on their stock HPs and the Xbox 360 HDD is also s-ata. Anyways, thanks for all the help!

I'm going to recommend AnandTech and X-Bit Labs for reviews. I don't really frequent either--I get my news from various other sources from a computer enthusiast forum. It's not that different--and you're much more likely to get stuff you can understand.

It's always fun to put together systems as a "what-if". I really started back at the Core 2 Duo launch (June/July 2006). It's been a while until I could actually get my computer together. I had some components back in September 2007, but didn't get it running till December.


As for IDE--I will recommend against them, especially with the XClio A380. I'd like to suggest the XClio Windtunnel Advanced, however, as it is just a better case overall and it's only $5 more. They're excellent cases. For my next build, I'll probably buy a server chassis and replacement fans (so I get a silent system and there are no LEDs).

Hey I just realized something. All the parts you suggested me are from newegg which is stationed in california. Problem is I'm in Ontario, Canada

Aah. And tech parts are stupidly expensive in Canada. I've helped people, including families, select parts. To say the least--for my family, buy parts in the USA, stay a few days and admire civilization (), and then return duty-free. You can try Tiger Direct Canada--but they aren't very good. Limited selection, inflated prices, and bad customer support. Yeah--they're not good. To compare prices--$60 more on a $170 motherboard, and no good boards for budgets.

Intel DP35DPM, $135
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 OEM, $90
OCZ Vanquisher CPU cooler, $31
Patriot 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800, $86 - $30 MIR
HIS Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256MB, $74 - $10 MIR
CoolerMaster Centurion 5, $61
Thermaltake Purepower 500W (W0100RU), $74
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB, $60
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB, $110
Lite-On DVD Burner w/ Lightscribe, SATA, $37
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit OEM w/ SP1, $135

With a lower-end processor and less storage, you still come up to $890.

In short--I hate TigerDirect. Anyone else have a Canadian e-retailer?

Uh

Factory direct
Best Buy and Futureshop (Yeah right!)


those are the top ones i can think of

Little tip always ask someone for advice before you do something your not 100% sure of i can't tell you how many computers and parts ive broke by taking risks. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
This why i always ask for advice before buying computer parts or doing something to a computer im not sure of ^^

WorstBuy and PastShop are just as bad. I'll look around for some American companies that will custom-ship outside of the USA. Right now, I can't think of one that sells hardware components. I know of a few for some enthusiast products (special cooling, cases, power supplies, sleeving, fans, custom items, paints, &c). Anyone from Canada know of any good ones? Or, want to spend a week in the US of A?

You may wish to check out NCIX you can get most items there slightly more then the USA and i don't see you getting -$50 savings on RAM there (wish i lived in the USA )

Now i haven't had dealings with this company so you best check these reviews and make up your own mind. From what I read i'd strongly recommend you try checking the company out by phoning them first or sending them a query email.

You can get a build around the E4500 there

E4500 - $139.15
2x1GB OCZ Gold DDR2-800 - $38.52 after MIR($20)
Gigabyte DS3l - $101.86
Corsair CMPSU 450W - $66 (after $15 MIR)
Seagate Barracuda 250GB 16mb cache + Vista HP 32bit - $178
8600GT - $106
Artic Cooling MX-2 - $8
CM elite 330 - $47

Comes to $583 and you have a little to play with to get another Hard drive or replace your current equipment.

Just some of the items you can pick up from canada, selection really isn't that great you could drop the 8600GT for a 3450 if your not going to play games. And you could also trade in some of the items if you don't want to deal with rebates. Still canada does have some items .

I know this is a bit out there but if your just coding an AM2 build could be cheaper especially around the 780G chipset? Something to consider i guess if you don't want to overclock.

Well I live about 1:15minutes away from the border, any chance there is a good store in the niagra falls buffalo area or some company that will ship there for really cheap?

Niagara Falls/ Buffalo? That area is too depressed. They lost most of their boutiques and normal stores. You won't find a good brick-and-mortar store there. IF you have family in the States, they could carry/ship the components over the border, though odds are they'll pay duty. I've heard decent stuff about NCIX, now that I think of it. I don't know of Canadian or European e-retailers since I'm an American. My components come nearly exclusively from NewEgg.

As for Acid's suggestion--you forgot a TV tuner and additional storage. One general rule of thumb for figuring out power is filling all RAM slots, an additional hard drive (or, in this case, 4), an additional optical drive, and setting for 30% capacitor aging. Also, you don't want to run PSUs above 80% of their rated capacity for maximum efficiency. Look for a 500W unit--Thermaltake Purepower is medium-to-good quality, SeaSonic (also Corsair HX), PC Power & Cooling, Zippy, and FPS Fortron are all good-to-excellent quality. The TT PurePower 500W is available from $68. That's probably going to be your choice for budget--they're good units though lower efficiency. Alternatively, a good 450W power supply (80 PLUS certified--SeaSonic, PC P&C, Zippy, FPS Fortron) should do just fine, and be about equal to the PurePower. Bottom line on power supply selection--the TT Purepower 500W is going to be your best price/quality unit.

I'm going to have to ask this, before I recommend anything more--exactly what do you want to do with this computer? Everything isn't an answer. If you plan to game, we'll need to know so we can give you the best recommendation for a graphics card.

What I want is a fast computer that can run at least 7 programs simultaneously, compatible with DirectX 9, that has two DVI outs or one DVI and a VGA out and S-Video, and compatible with at least a 1680x1050 resolution and a multiple monitor system.

7 program simultaneously?

That means nothing. Specify what type of programs.

Hmm... I run very memory intensive applications
1. Swiftkit
2. BeyondTV
3. 7 or so tabs open in Firefox
4. Symantic Virus Scan
5. 1 or 2 tabs in IE
6. Windows live mail
7. Windows live messenger
8. Xfire
And a bunch of stuff in the system tray

That isn't memory intensive by any stretch. Just a standard PC (Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM etc) would do that.

running windows vista ultimate? because right now on my laptop i've got 1 gb of ram and and a centrino duo processor and its pretty slow running two applications.

btw sorry for my bad typing, im really sick today.

I can't see any problems with them applications running on Windows Vista Ultimate, on a standard PC (Core 2 Duo, 2gb RAM etc...).

I'd imagine the 1GB RAM on your laptop is a bit of a bottleneck though.

All of those are pretty light--but why Symantic/Norton? That program is not only a memory hog but also quite unstable, not to mention all the viruses they miss. Most of us use Avast! or AVG Free--it's free, lighter, and actually works.

As Stobbo said, a dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM will be more than enough.