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Category: Support
Forum: Android Support Forum
Thread: PINE A64 |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 16
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psmacmur
Cruncher Joined: Oct 23, 2008 Post Count: 6 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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@fuzzydice: Love your stacked pine rig! Nice work!
  If you run one board outside the stack with just your large passive heatsink, what does it throttle at? My passive heatsink is tiny but keeps my single board between 1008-1104 MHz. I'd expect yours'd keep one close to maxxed given the single fan keeps the whole stack running so well. I think there's an official pine heatsink coming in a few months, but I'm nevertheless curious where you sourced yours? Also, is the fan powered off one of the boards? I really feel that setups like yours are, or at least should be, the way forward for HPC. Imagine the stack you could build into a conventional 4U chassis, say. (Actually you might get better cooling with the boards on their edge anyway, but that's another thought.) You'd need another fan or two, but still ~1 fan per 5 boards. Now imagine a 19" rack full of those, and then a datacenter of those... roughly a gazillion 1-gigahertz cores, probably still drawing less power than one '90s supercomputer cabinet. Ok I'm getting a little carried away,  but yours is an inspiring build. |
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fuzzydice555
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Mar 25, 2015 Post Count: 89 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I tried a much larger passive heatsink (2-3 times the height), I still couldn't get the board to reach 1200MHz.
----------------------------------------It throttled to 1050 I think, with a thermal pad. With a copper shim & arctic mx paste, it was between 1100 and 1150, so the thermal interface seems to matter somewhat. These self-adhesive sinks are much less hassle though, so I'll keep it active. Even with minimal airflow, the boards run well. I use these currently: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/10PCS-40-x-40-...114.13010608.0.122.upBMnz The larger heatsink was a north bridge cooler from an old broken motherboard. I run the fan from a nearby PC (a J1900 mini ITX cruncher). It's a 4 PIN PC case fan, running it from an actual PC gives me RPM control. It's a fun build, but for me Xeons are better alternatives. Xeon E5-2628Lv4 from ebay - 168$ - 83W power consumption - 10000 PPD or 22 PINE A64 boards - 418$ - 88W power consumption - 10000 PPD Not to mention the cabling nightmare of 22 boards If we could get our hands on server grade manycore ARM hardware though...  |
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psmacmur
Cruncher Joined: Oct 23, 2008 Post Count: 6 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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That's a harsh reality check regarding Xeons vs PINE64. It's really all about watts eh? At least with modern CPUs. No magic.
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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fuzzydice555, in your Xeon, what other components are included with that power consumption? Is that from the wall or is that an estimate of the chip only.
----------------------------------------Doing comparisons like that typically mean you are comparing total build prices and operation cost if you want a fair comparison.     [Edit 1 times, last edit by Coleslaw at Aug 23, 2016 9:27:30 PM] |
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fuzzydice555
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Mar 25, 2015 Post Count: 89 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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The power consumption for the Xeon is the real power consumption of a system I own, measured at the wall.
----------------------------------------For my builds the total cost would be: Xeon 2628Lv4 - 168$ Mobo - 100$ used / 214$ new 32GB SSD - 16$ 2x4GB memory - 40$ 80+ PSU - 45$ Case - 35$ CPU Cooler used 20$ / new 43$ --- 424$ min / 561$ max Theoretical pine farm, each PSU driving a stack of 4 boards and a fan: 22x PINE boards - 418$ 6x BlitzWolf 5 port 40w PSUs - 126$ 22x USB cables - 54$ 6x fans - 22$ 22x heatsinks - 25$ 4x 8 port switches - 44$ 22x UTP cables - 10$ 22x 8GB memory cards - 136$ --- 835$ total Even if the pine farm turned out to be much cheaper, I wouldn't want to place 22 boards with 44 cables, psus, doodads and whatnots anywhere in my home. Also, what happens when one of the boards stop sending WUs? How do you know which board is the culprit? In my opinion, the PINE is a great cruncher. Cheap, easy to set up, etc. If your gunning for big points though, it's much less practical than ebay xeon builds. [Edit 2 times, last edit by fuzzydice555 at Aug 24, 2016 11:46:00 AM] |
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Coleslaw
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Mar 29, 2007 Post Count: 1343 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Oh I get the headaches of multiple tiny crunchers. I have over 30 phones in my home contributing to different projects. I prefer the Xeons because they are much more durable. Having one power cable and network cable instead of several also makes things nice. The advantage to phones instead of the PINE boards is that they are 1) much cheaper (~$10 for dual and sometimes quad cores) 2) have built in wifi 3) ready to go out of the package (just add software) 4) no needed accessories other than power cable (included in cost).
----------------------------------------I'm hoping AMD does something nice with their A series server chips. Like having a multi socket board that is affordable. Right now the offerings don't look so hot from a price point vs. offerings. |
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