Join the MicroCenterOfficial Folding@Home Team: #257944

ryau

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRHjtFXotxM

If you'd like to help join the fight against COVID-19, we've set up a Folding@Home team #257944 for our customers and community to join.

Basic Overview of Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project, where people can download the application and use their CPUs and GPUs to run simulations when your PC is not in use, which help biochemists find cures for diseases. We're all battling through the impact of COVID-19 but we will not let it defeat us. This is a great way to give back to the scientific community and help save lives.

If you've recently built or acquired a new PC, get your old PC folding!

We'd like to give shoutouts to the PCMasterrace subreddit, Nvidia and Linus Tech Tips for giving this project renewed visibility. The Folding@Home team tweeted that so many users have joined recently that they just passed the exaFLOP barrier:

Thanks to our AMAZING community, we’ve crossed the exaFLOP barrier! That’s over a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second, making us ~10x faster than the IBM Summit!

Installing and Configuring

If you'd like to help donate your spare CPU & GPU cycles, you can download and install the Folding@Home application from their site: https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

There are clients available for Windows, MacOS, and various flavors of Linux (32 and 64 bit):
https://foldingathome.org/alternative-downloads/

If this is the first time you're installing the client, you will need to configure your identity the first time you open the application. If you did the Express installation, doubleclick the Folding@Home icon on the desktop - it might take a few moments for it to initialize and load the web control client in your browser.

Select "Set up an identity" and click the Start Folding button.

Now you can enter your name and our team number: 257944.
If you get Passkey (optional) it will rack up more points as you fold. Just make sure enter the same "name" when signing up for a Passkey, which will be emailed to you. Once you click save you should be good to go, the client will start to download work units and start processing them. Each work unit completed and uploaded is another batch of protein simulation data that's used to determine the best way to fight COVID-19 and your points will continue to accumulate the more work units your PC processes.

You may notice that the drop down for the cause doesn't show Coronavirus or COVID-19, that's ok, just leave it as "Any disease" and the servers will assign COVID work units as this project is being prioritized above all others right now.


If you've already downloaded the FAH client, you can join our team by clicking on the Configure button and entering our team number: 257944.



In the Advanced tab there's an option to select the cause you'd like to support, including Alzheimer's, Cancer, Huntington's and Parkinson's. There's currently no option for COVID-19, but if you leave the selection as "Any" the work servers will assign COVID-19 work units, as those projects are being prioritized.


We'd love to see our customers and community join the MicroCenterOfficial team to help fight back against COVID-19. If you're already a folder, feel free to comment and post your stats, system usage, screenshots, etc.

Thanks and happy folding!

Reuben

Disclaimer: The Folding@Home utility is well-known to users of the utility, including associated hardware and software necessary to effectively run the utility, to force a PC to run at full-load for best results, although the utility (or associated utilities) may be used to configure the system to run below full-load. Using Folding@Home utilities will generally raise the power usage of your system and will very likely increase your monthly utility power bill. Additionally, due to the high load generally placed on a system through the Folding@Home utility or associated utilities, it’s possible that hardware may fail during your participation in Folding@Home. By choosing to participate in Folding@Home you agree and accept that your participation may incur additional costs due to an increase in power usage and/or hardware or software failure. By participating, you also agree to absolve Micro Electronics, Inc. d.b.a. Micro Center of responsibility for any additional costs or damage incurred by use of the Folding@Home utility or any associated utility or similar utilities, including, but not limited to, an increased utility bill relative to Folding@Home usage, damaged hardware, corrupted software, loss of time and wages.

groot

any security concerns with this?

cmslick3

This is great to see. It's also very important to keep in mind that this type of distributed computing will not adversely affect the life of your components in any way. I've run BOINC projects for years on OC'd and non OC'd parts and nothing has died early. It's best when running these types of workload to shoot towards maximum stability and not necessarily raw performance, if there are errors in the results they will be thrown out.
Don't be afraid to donate your extra CPU time to these very worthy distributed computing causes!!

cmslick3

groot said:

any security concerns with this?

Nope, i've been doing this for years and not had any issues. This is simply running a computing client on your machine which will get work from their dedicated servers. 

ramack

I'm seeing this from my phone, so it may be addressed and I just can't see it. I only have Linux boxes at home available does the OS matter? Does it have to be a Windows box?

DustinB

ramack said:

I'm seeing this from my phone, so it may be addressed and I just can't see it. I only have Linux boxes at home available does the OS matter? Does it have to be a Windows box?

Here you go:  https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/installation-guides/linux/

Checo007

In the section "I support research fighting" there is not COVID-19 option... do I have the wrong team code? Is showing only Alzheimer's, Cancer, Huntington's and Parkinson's...

Bob

I'm trying this out on my computer.  Reminds me of the old seti@home project.

WhiskeyDrainer

Same as Checo007 - Cause Preference only lists Alzheimer's, Cancer, Huntington's and Parkinson's

union3476

@Checo007 @WhiskeyDrainer From my understanding leave it on any disease  and covid 19 is priority on the any disease list

ryau

Checo007 said:

In the section "I support research fighting" there is not COVID-19 option... do I have the wrong team code? Is showing only Alzheimer's, Cancer, Huntington's and Parkinson's...

WhiskeyDrainer said:

Same as Checo007 - Cause Preference only lists Alzheimer's, Cancer, Huntington's and Parkinson's

Just leave it as "Any", they'll assign COVID-19 related work units when they become available. Thanks for your support!

Doc

I've been using BOINC for years doing Seti and other research. Never had security issues even when installed on over 30 desktops at once. Never used this program but I'm sure it's the same or similar code

GregInOxford

I have an old XP machine, but the client will not run on it.  I went ahead and installed on my laptop (Win 10), but it would be nice to use that old XP CPU.

GregInOxford

Heads up.  Windows Defender will try to block this program.  A window will come up, but you can Allow it to run.  Problem is that had I stepped away from my laptop, it wouldn't have run.

NytHawk

Just started Folding for the first time - Thanks for sharing!

Cannonfodder

I am not using all those cores anyway, 192gig of ram also helps.
 

Dtech

I am in, got a WU going on two different always on machines.  Got a CPU one on unit A and GPU on unit B.  Will try to get more up and running.

Cannonfodder

So why do I show 0 points contributed to the team, or is it just a latency issue? 

ryau

Cannonfodder said:

So why do I show 0 points contributed to the team, or is it just a latency issue? 

It's a latency issue, with the increased demand, the scores and profiles are cached daily, so you may not see your scores or name appear in the team list until later today or tomorrow.

Black78

I'm all set up though I don't see anything happening. Does it take a while before I'm picked up?

ryau

Black78 said:

I'm all set up though I don't see anything happening. Does it take a while before I'm picked up?

There might not be any work units available. If you open the FAH client and go to the Log tab, you'll see the communication between your client and the F@H servers. If it shows "No WUs available for this configuration" you just have to wait until the folks who run the project make more available. The app will continue retrying every so often, so you can just let it run in the background. If it still hasn't picked up any work units you can try pausing and unpausing it, that will sometimes work.

saulr

Just joined up. Will get my idle desktop computer going at it full time while I work on the laptop.

Cannonfodder

I am running a Xeon E5-2680 v3 just because I can. Just burned through a 6 days to process job in 2 hours and it keeps on rolling. It will be interesting to see what it is up to tomorrow.

Rick75230

Regarding "I have an old XP machine and the app won't run", if it's a desktop, there are several options, e.g., buy an inexpensive SSD and load Linux.  Or maybe try a Linux Live CD.  And let's face it--anyone who builds stuff from MicroCenter, TigerDirect, etc., has some old HDD's sitting around that you can load Linux on.  I'd suggest Linux Mint or Ubuntu.  Mint is probably the easiest to work with coming from Windows.

Black78

Got some work after pausing and unpausing. Thanks ryau!

ryau

Black78 said:

Got some work after pausing and unpausing. Thanks ryau!

You're welcome! 

r_widell

Does it run as a daemon or do I have to stay logged in (and lock my screen)?

ryau

r_widell said:

Does it run as a daemon or do I have to stay logged in (and lock my screen)?

It runs as a daemon in the background. You can set it to run as you're using your PC or only when idle.

Offline

Headless linux servers work great for this too if you've got a supported GPU. Ubuntu Server 19.10 works well.

ryau

You guys are awesome, checked the team stats and we now have 359 members with a grand score of almost 6 million already!
https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/257944

Bob

I received a Covid-19 work unit yesterday.  Be patient - one will arrive.