Hi there!
Up to know, regarding CPU, I believed that 2 Xenon 4210 was a good performer for Seti.
But when I see one i9 CPU with much higher clock, I doubt.
What would you recommend if I want a PC mainly for Seti, running on Windows ?

Many thanks!

Well you could go after CPU's, but better productivity will be had using GPU's as you can see from my 2 old i5 rigs running dual GTX 1060's (just divide my RAC by 3 and that's about what you'll get under Windows). ;-)

Cheers.

Hi there!
Up to know, regarding CPU, I believed that 2 Xenon 4210 was a good performer for Seti.
But when I see one i9 CPU with much higher clock, I doubt.
What would you recommend if I want a PC mainly for Seti, running on Windows ?

Many thanks!

If you are NOT going to need turbo performance I would buy the highest core/thread count you can find for the least money (with or without turbo). If you change your mind about running without Turbo (its significantly cheaper) you can always enable turbo in the bios again if you get a cpu with turbo.

As Wiggo said, the most efficient/productive Seti@Home crunching is done with gpus.

I have a Win10 box running an Amd 2600 (without turbo) that is not crunching Seti@Home on the cpu but is on the gpus. Running 2 gtx 1060 3Gb's. Its doing about 20,000 Rac on the gpus alone. I normally run WCG (World Community Grid) on the cpu threads. There are three things I could do to increase production.
1) Start crunching Seti@Home on the cpu's.
2) Run the Lunatics distro under Windows.
3) Switch to Linux and Tbars' All-in-One for a rig that would approach 100,000 RAC.

Since the Windows box has to run some Windows only apps its not going to get the Linux conversion.

Tom

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

Price/performance from a CPU you can't go past the Ryzen 7 3000 series (the Ryzen 9 3000 series also perform extremely well, although the performance for the price isn't as good as it is for the Ryzen 7 3000 series).


Check out the price next to each CPU...

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Grant
Darwin NT

Hi there!
Up to know, regarding CPU, I believed that 2 Xenon 4210 was a good performer for Seti.
But when I see one i9 CPU with much higher clock, I doubt.
What would you recommend if I want a PC mainly for Seti, running on Windows ?

Many thanks!

What is your budget. I am pricing the "2 Xenon 4210 " in the $500 range. There are i9 cpus in that same dollar range but they have fewer cores/threads. If you are a devoted Intel fan with an unlimited budget then the high core/thread count i9 looks very nice. But its near 3X expensive plus you need to buy the appropriate cooler for its temperature.

If you want maximum production and are a devoted Intel person, you can run a couple of mid-range to high end gpu's on something smaller than an I5. HTH.
Tom

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

Like Wiggo says, if you are just chasing Seti credits, buy some 2 core Pentium or i3, and use the $$ you save there to buy better GPU and power supply to run it.

Exotic motherboards, SSDs , and high core count CPU's are all very nice. But I bet for the cost of one exotic rig, I could build 2 or 3 cheap minitowers with high end GPUs, and combined they would outperform a single "beast" for cost, RAC and likely power use.

Of course if you have other tasks, then the specs change. Maybe you do want a 6 core i5 or a mid range Ryzen, and a bigger SSD because you want to bust into a bit of gaming from time to time?

I'm a PC "Bottom Feeder", and don't spend a lot of $$ on PC parts. But if I wanted to up my RAC, then I'd be upgrading GPUs (and power supplies to cope) . Nvidia 1660 cards seem a pretty good deal, But an old $100 i5 machine could drive a 2080Ti if you fit a new PSU and a couple more cooling fans. The RAC from the CPU is in the few % range compared to what the GPU can pump though.

What is your target MB? That will limit the choices you can make for an Intel cpu.

I like higher thread/core counts with adequate processing speed. I suspect that often you can get more production out of higher core/thread counts with adequate speed than you can get out of lower core/thread counts with really high turbo-boost speeds.

Tom

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