Hi,

I'm thinking of buying a new machine that would be mostly or entirely dedicated to BOINC. I'm just your average retired guy, and I can't afford the phenomenal many-many-many-cored machines that a surprising number of people running BOINC projects have. I was thinking about something along the lines of this Dell XPS desktop: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/xps-desktop/spd/xps-8950-desktop/xd8950adl40h?configurationid=c53b3029-a7b8-4a36-8c8e-681cf115b440. I would consider increasing the RAM to 64 GB and also increasing the "level" of the graphics card (i.e., to the 3080 or 3090) - the point of the latter would solely be to run BOINC GPU projects/tasks (*not* games).

I do want to get the most BOINC bang for the buck, and I don't want to pay for features or upgrades or whatever that BOINC can't use. Is there a document or post or other article of some kind that discusses hardware for BOINC? Or, probably better, can anyone here give me some guidance on this? I run Windows.

The projects I'm currently enrolled in are:

Cosmology@Home
Einstein@Home
LHC@Home
MilkyWay@Home
Rosetta@Home
SiDock@Home
Universe@Home
WorldCommunityGrid (OpenPandemics - COVID-19 only, for now)

I've in past been enrolled in Seti@Home (now on indefinte pause) and ClimatePrediction (which no longer seems to have Windows work).

In essence, I'd want a machine that is at least reasonably optimized for running BOINC projects - as many as possible (CPU and GPU) within my budget, as fast as possible (CPU and GPU).

I'd appreciate any help or advice or pointers anyone here could give.

Thanks.

Doug

I've in past been enrolled in Seti@Home (now on indefinte pause) and ClimatePrediction (which no longer seems to have Windows work).

Currently they are few and far between though not quite extinct. The latest type of task to be launched soon on the main site will eventually be available in a virtual box version for those not wishing to mess with WSL or installing a Linux distribution from within VB. But the VB tasks are I would estimate at least six months away.

Half your projects are in wind down and don't have any work.

I'd say the Dell XPS machine you linked is entirely sufficient for 90% of the projects you listed. Only a couple might need a bit more memory for large footprint calculations or virtual machines.

Maybe splurge to 64 GB of memory.

The spec'd 3070 in the machine is entirely sufficient for the gpu applications. Only marginal imrovements moving to a 3080 and the 3090 is entirely not worth the huge increase in cost for very little improvement in the crunching speed.

---