Hi
I have a DELL tower unit 9ZXS55J (ID: no 8023146) which I bought about 2 years ago for WU crunching which it does very well but almost doubles my electricity consumption. I have 4 HP laptops which are cheap to run - say 10p a day.
Few months ago the TU packed up and shows Error lights 1 and 3 when I turn it on? Supplier says it is probably the power supply but I have to ship it back to him.
Looking inside, I see the NVIDIA unit as at heading.
Since I am sending it back, I am wondering if there are more efficient GPUs out there?
TIA
George

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Sorry to hear about the demise of your computer - it does sound like a PSU has gone down :-(

Hmm, which version of the GPU is the "Quadro 5000"? There have been several versions of that, the oldest being the "Quadro 5000", which is now getting quite long in the tooth, followed, in chronological order by "Quadro K5000", "Quadro M5000", and finally the "Quadro P5000". Looking at the description of your computer then I would guess that you have the oldest one - this is uncountably the least powerful of the family. All appear to have similar maximum power requirements (150-180w). All but the QP5000 are listed as "end or life" products.
You have a bit of choice here, either stick with the Quadro family, but they are stupidly expensive - the UK price for a new Quadro P5000 is about £1500, for that sort of money you could get three GTX1080, or a couple of GTX1080ti or two RTX2080 and still have some change cash in your pocket to pay the power bill!

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Dell has a very good online support system, driven by that service tag number. You have a Precision T3500 workstation, shipped on October 20, 2011. It had (when shipped) a single Nehalem class processor, itself rated at 130W - but with support for a second CPU socket if needed - with 12 GB RAM. And so on.

Error lights 1 and 3 indicate "Memory configuration error". That could be as simple as the CMOS battery running flat. Otherwise, lift out the memory modules (probably three at a time) to see if you can locate a faulty one. Keep to the supported memory configurations shown on page 74 of the service manual. If your supplier says it's the power supply, show him the diagnostic light codes in that same service manual and find a different supplier for next time.

On your question about the QUADRO 5000: it was an extremely powerful, professional, graphics card in its day - but its day was seven years ago, and things have moved on a great deal since then, not least in efficiency. To be honest, this project doesn't make best use of extreme professional graphics cards - it would be much more efficient to run modern cards from the GTX 1050/1070/1080 range.

Richard/Bob
Thank you for your detailed and very helpful replies. Have DL the instruction manual.
Regards
George

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Richard
Looked at eBay just now and there are various graphics 1050 cards: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw=nvidia+gtx+1070&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1311.R3.TR11.TRC1.A0.H1.Xnvidia+gtx+1050.TRS0&_nkw=nvidia+gtx+1050&_sacat=0
These appear to be reasonably priced (say, 2 figures) while the 1070/1080 are well into three figures.
Would the 1050 ones work? I would not install it myself.
TIA
George

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The GTX1050 & GTX1050ti are pretty good GPUs for the money and power consumption - you would certainly notice the latter!
I would avoid the un-branded "new" cards, as they are "just too cheap to be believed" - also the very cheap (less than half currently retail price) branded second-hand prices.
A quick look at one site gives a low branded new price for a GTX1050 is about £115, and a GTX1050ti about £155.
Brands to seriously consider include Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Thanks again Bob

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Whoops Bob, what is the difference between the 1050 and the 1050ti please?
TIA

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Whoops Bob, what is the difference between the 1050 and the 1050ti please?
TIA

Google shows this;

Both are based on Nvidia's powerful Pascal based architecture. GTX 1050 has less cuda cores (640) compared to GTX 1050 Ti (768). This means GTX 1050 Ti is more powerful. GTX 1050 Ti has 4GB GDDR5 type memory where as GTX 1050 has 2GB GDDR5.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Given the same speeds, 5 vs 6 Compute Units, the Ti should be a 20% fast cruncher.

Richard
Looked at eBay just now and there are various graphics 1050 cards: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw=nvidia+gtx+1070&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1311.R3.TR11.TRC1.A0.H1.Xnvidia+gtx+1050.TRS0&_nkw=nvidia+gtx+1050&_sacat=0
These appear to be reasonably priced (say, 2 figures) while the 1070/1080 are well into three figures.
Would the 1050 ones work? I would not install it myself.
TIA
George

In the US, the gtx 1060 3GB is running about $150USD used on eBay. I have had very good luck with these used cards. And the prices for the gtx 1050/1050Ti used/new were actually higher. Not sure how your market will match up with my experience.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Keith, Brent & Tom
Thanks for your feedback
Regards
George

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Richard
Changed the little 2032 battery and that did seem to help. As soon as I plugged it in, the TU lit up and gave warnings messages 1 2 3! The voltage of the old battery was 2.99 v while the new one showed 3.28 v.
Switched off the TU which then came on again without any warning lights except for a steady green indicator which looks like three little bricks: one above a line and two bricks below the line. The HDD indicator seems to be working normally but according to the Computer list, there are no WUs??
Regards
George

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Well the TU is running again and crunching WUs.
Only glitch is Local Time is shown as UTC +1 although most recent time contacting server is 11.12 UTC which is correct as Summer Time just finished.
This leaves replacing the graphics card which will probably be a 1050 ti. Wondering if I would be able to manage this myself? The Service Manual is quite thorough. Any idea what I would get for my current graphics card on eBay?

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Likely replacing the motherboard battery reset the BIOS. You can easily change the BIOS time, and also the desktop time.

If you felt comfortable changing the battery, you will have no problem changing a video card.

Thanks Brent but I have no readout from the TU. This laptop shows the units being done by the TU and other laptops, but there is no readout like on Simple View.
The TU is connected to my router by blue Ethernet cable. But to reset the clock etc I presumably have to connect a monitor and keyboard into the USB sockets on the TU?

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Just to clarify, by TU you mean Tower right?
What time is off by 1 hour, if you have no monitor on it?
Viewed by Simple View? Are you looking at the computer by using BOINC Manager to connect to another computer?

Having the BIOS clock not set is no big deal, and yes you need a monitor connected to it to change it. You would likely want to do that when installing your 1050 to update drivers from NVidea anyway, so it can wait.

Yes Brent TU is Tower Unit

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Found the time was off by one hour after looking at details on BOINC Manager. Glad to know it can wait. Thanks again.

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So I should just be able to install this:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MSI-GeForce-GTX-1050-Ti-4GB-OC-GDDR5-Graphics-Card/401492180342?_trkparms=aid%3D555017%26algo%3DPL.CASSINI%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D55148%26meid%3D5e49e5651dfb45bdaf7dc7b228f347f9%26pid%3D100505%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26%26itm%3D401492180342&_trksid=p2045573.c100505.m3226
or
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MSI-nVidia-GeForce-GTX-1050-Ti-Gaming-X-4GB-Graphics-Video-Card/253915895074?hash=item3b1e911522:g:w~4AAOSwcWJbtl1v:rk:2:pf:0
or
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Zotac-GeForce-GTX-1050Ti-4GB-Mini-NEW-Lowest-please-read/123371980601?epid=17010535760&hash=item1cb98b0739:g:nesAAOSwUb5bnYbu:rk:3:pf:0
and off she goes?
TIA

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