Good day,

This is just a PSA that this device (Atomic Pi) might be a good choice for those looking for a low-cost single board computer with an x86 CPU for crunching:

https://digital-loggers.com/api.html
https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Pi-High-Speed-Peripherals/dp/B07N298F2B

The CPU is not a performance power-house, but I have a LattePanda single-board computer (wasn't a good choice, 3x the cost, no heatsink) with the same CPU and was pulling around 600RAC.

My early thoughts:
Skipping over all the personal opinions and judgement I originally typed, here's the pure numbers...I'm currently paying about $58 per month in electricity for 12,500RAC. This is using three desktops from the 2010 era (retired from family members) running Rosetta at 100%, 24/7, using about 700 watts total. If I divide that out, that's 17.8RAC per watt, or 216RAC per dollar per month of electricity.

I have a LattePanda single board computer with the same CPU as the Atomic Pi. I know I was leveling off at around 600RAC with that device. Atomic Pi requires a 5V/4A supply, and should use about 3.6A in actual use. That comes out to 18W. That 18W @ 5V will be delivered through a, say, 80% efficient power supply (on the low side to be safe)...so actual draw from the wall will be 22.5W @ 120v. That comes out to 26.6RAC per watt, or 317RAC per dollar per month of electricity. So, as far as electrical efficiency, Atomic Pi's are the way to go. I also happen to have a 40A 5V power supply in my shop, so I already have capacity to run eight or so with one PSU.

An idea I've been toying with for months now might be a little more possible now. My mom (who originally created this account), passed away in 2018 from cancer at the age of 58. I've struggled with it in a number of ways, but one of the biggest is "what can I do to honor her life and help others without just donating money?" My idea was to setup something like a GoFundMe (which I really dislike, but could work for me) where people could donate an amount equal to the cost of a device (like Atomic Pi) plus maybe a year of electrical cost. I would buy the device, set it up, and put the donor's name on it. I could use my website that's been empty for 10 years to post stats and link over to the Rosetta@home page so people can see the news if they are interested. If even a dozen people among friends and family did it, that's a win. If it was successful enough, I have a shed where I could set up some racks, duct work, Ethernet switch, and get as carried away as I want...I've already considered using Arduino's to monitor temps and control cooling which would be fun. Plus, having a tiny "data center" made out of sub-$50 Pi's and Arduinos would be so much fun. The two most important aspects to me would be making it crystal-clear where every dollar went, and showing that those dollars are making direct, real-world contributions to Rosetta@home. Probably all a pipe dream, but the Atomic Pi's price and x86 CPU make it a little more plausible.

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Hello:
I have three laptops (i7-3720qm or 3740qm) that are running 24/7. One System is only Rosetta and the RAC runs between 3500 and 3600. I found the best RAC/Watt was to use a Throttle stop and set the speed at 2.2 ghz. I have a Kill-o-watt meter attached and the PC draws 34 watts with the screen shut off. My other two pc's running Rosetta and WC at a 50/50 split have total RAC of 7300 using 78watts. In the past I had a desktop (Xeon) 8 core drawing 150 watts and only getting RAC of 3900 running Rosetta 24/7. I have cut my cost and increased my output. Good luck

Thanks for the reply. Clever solution to use laptops and throttle back to help with electrical costs while stilling getting good performance. Has heat been an issue? Do you have to have the laptops in certain physical orientations to stay cool and well-ventilated?

I pulled the trigger on two Atomic Pi's. I put more time into them than I planned, but so far I'm impressed. With one unit, my power supply is drawing 14-16.5 watts with Rosetta running on all cores at 100% usage which really surprised me. I expected the board to draw something like 20 watts, then the power supply is only 79% efficient so I'd be in the low 20-25w range. I'm still waiting for RAC to build up, but the device is earning about 1,050 credits per day so I'm encouraged. I saw much better performance after I put Ubuntu on an SD card instead of using the Linux distribution on the built in storage that ships with the device.

I'm going to see where RAC levels out...based on my LattePanda test and the CPU benchmark, I'm expecting 700-900 RAC. I have an infrared camera and filmed the board for 15 minutes while it warmed up. At 70F ambient, the heatsink was leveling off around 115F but two other spots on the board were at 150F. So I expect these will need either a cool environment or some forced air to keep temps under control. I set up Boincview so I can monitor the board from my desktop without having to run a bloated GUI OS, VNC, or have any peripherals connected on the APi. My very last hurdle is to finish fixing my SSH setup so I can run Linux commands from my desktop for system maintenance, checking CPU temps, etc. If I get the SSH squared away, I'll pull the SD card, make an image of it, then I should be able to clone it right over to my other Atomic Pi and only have to change the host name in order to start crunching on subsequent units.

I'll report back when RAC levels off. Device is https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/show_host_detail.php?hostid=3704915 if anyone else is interested.

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Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that RAC is up to 508 and still climbing. The bad news is that I misunderstood exactly what's going on with this AtomicPi single board computer / SBC. The simplest way to put it is that someone ended up with 10,000 of these units that were industrial surplus and they're selling them at a loss to empty shelves quickly and make a buck while doing it. There's nothing wrong with that, but it does reset the meter on cost for me. I thought this device was demonstrating that a <$50 x86 SBC was possible, and that's the kind of price point where I could add computing power incrementally without serious financial investment or impact to electrical costs and cooling capability. So, AtomicPi @ ~$40 is not a platform I can depend on "long" term at least in regards to cost, and likely also in availability.

I've looked around at other options, and I think the PC Engines apu2d4 looks interesting. It's intended to be used as a router, but it benchmarks on Passmark about 10% faster than the Intel Atom z8350 that LattePanda and AtomicPi use. There's other options out there, but nothing under $100 that I know of.

So, as far as my pipe-dream of a tiny Rosetta@home data center, I either have to consider more expensive hardware or hope for a Rosetta@home port to ARM cpu's, which would open up a lot of options...most importantly, Raspberry Pi 3 B+, a future Raspberry Pi 4, and/or the Compute Modules.

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Hello:
I have not had and thermal issues. The CPU is running around 19-21 watts and the core temp measures 70-75c. The fan seems to run around 50% of the max speed.
On the PC that was crunching Rosetta only it was up to RAC of 4000, however I was gone for 10 days and we had a power outage so I just restarted today.
In the past I used Throttle Stop to up the CPU clock to 3.1 mhz and used around 45 watts and measured 95c temp and the fan wqs 100%. At the higher clock rate the total PC watt draw was 59 watts and a RAC of 5600. I ran for year at the higher clock without any thermal issues.

Now at the lower clock rate of 2.2mhz the pc has a total draw of 35 watts on the Kilo_watt meter.

Thanks for the reply. Sounds like your machine has a great RAC/watt for you, and 4000 is doing some great work!

My AtomicPi finally leveled off at 780 RAC running ubuntu server 18.04.2. It's using 14-16 watts. The same CPU and amount of RAM is available in the LattePanda single board computer for $89 whereas the Atomic Pi is allegedly just a surplus device that will be unavailable when supplies are exhausted. I've done a lot more searching, and I think LattePanda is the best device price, RAC, and wattage mix I can find today. Based on your insight Firebyrd, I will certainly put any laptops I come across into service.

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Hello:
Just a quick update on the Laptop (Dell Latitude 6430, I7-3720qm with 4gb ram ) running at 2.2mhz using Throttle Stop to adjust the speed. It has peaked out at RAC of 4100 just running Rosetta 100%. 34 watts without the screen on.

Firebyrd