FB Sprint 2026 Notifications

[ChelseaOilman]

I agree with you regarding the new hardware purchase. I invested in an EPYC GENOA (96/192) and corresponding DDR5 RAM at just the right time. It's now in use and racking up a lot of credits. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait before I can upgrade the RAM any further.

I have 2x the exact same servers fully populated with 16GB DIMMS. I now regret not getting 32GB DIMMS. I purchased a new SM MB for a Turin but can't currently afford the CPU or memory right now to assemble it

[JeromeC]

Boinc must remain a hobby for me : I won't change my main computer because of it (late 2020 i9 iMac), I keep paying the smallest dedicated VPS at OVH (just 8 threads, historically to run linux projects, now like a regular backup) and I limit myself to one reasonable vast.ai configuration (= not very powerful, in particular now that prices are going up) just during the sprints, and that's it.

So there is no way I can do better than this, when I get points in sprints in L2 now I assume it's only because the others were busy doing something else

[Tamagoch]

So there is no way I can do better than this, when I get points in sprints in L2 now I assume it's only because the others were busy doing something else

oh, yes )
there was a quite non ordinary yoyo sprint when I felt myself like Force India in Spa
so many points from nowhere... I like yoyo even more since then

[Thor54]

Hi Tim,

I'm familiar with this list.

However, in the current sprint, my data isn't listed in the 2026 championship. It's calculated for 3 days with 192 threads.

These calculated data are listed for the team, which is correct.

That's why I'm invisible in the current sprint.

Regards,

Thor54

[UBT - Timbo]

I've never used the cloud but with hardware prices going through the roof, buying new hardware is getting hard to justify

Hiya

I think that the "cost difference" between buying new (to you) hardware compared to renting server time on the cloud is very close.

This is because new hardware, if kept for a couple of years, will soon become "obsolete" and its running cost (power wise) is getting prohibitive as well as its "second hand" resale value is reducing. New releases of hardware is faster and has more "bells and whistles", which BOINC projects seem to be creating new app versions to take advantage of the new silicon.

Whereas, renting server time is going to cost a certain amount (for a given configuration), but without any real "downsides".

So if you compare the cost of renting vs the cost of buying/running new hardware:
Cloud computing might cost from (say) $10-$30 per month? So, over 2 years that's $240-$720 total cost !

Check here for one example of renting a server:

https://www.theaccessgroup.com/en-gb/ma ... alculator/

New hardware, can cost as much as you want to spend, but a half decent motherboard, CPU + GPU, RAM, case, PSU and HDD can easily cost $500-$1000 and then add-in the cost of electricity running 24/7 - that could easily be 300 W per hour, 7.2 kW per day which is 2,628 kW per annum - you can work out what that would cost you, based on your local suppliers...but it would NOT be cheap !

regards
Tim

[UBT - wbiz]

I've never used the cloud but with hardware prices going through the roof, buying new hardware is getting hard to justify

Hiya

I think that the "cost difference" between buying new (to you) hardware compared to renting server time on the cloud is very close.

This is because new hardware, if kept for a couple of years, will soon become "obsolete" and its running cost (power wise) is getting prohibitive as well as its "second hand" resale value is reducing. New releases of hardware is faster and has more "bells and whistles", which BOINC projects seem to be creating new app versions to take advantage of the new silicon.

Whereas, renting server time is going to cost a certain amount (for a given configuration), but without any real "downsides".

So if you compare the cost of renting vs the cost of buying/running new hardware:
Cloud computing might cost from (say) $10-$30 per month? So, over 2 years that's $240-$720 total cost !

Check here for one example of renting a server:

https://www.theaccessgroup.com/en-gb/ma ... alculator/

New hardware, can cost as much as you want to spend, but a half decent motherboard, CPU + GPU, RAM, case, PSU and HDD can easily cost $500-$1000 and then add-in the cost of electricity running 24/7 - that could easily be 300 W per hour, 7.2 kW per day which is 2,628 kW per annum - you can work out what that would cost you, based on your local suppliers...but it would NOT be cheap !

regards
Tim

From that example, its not even close, 16 cores with 32GB RAM costing £480 a month whereas the home power cost is less than £100. However Amazon AWS/EC2 would probably work out a lot cheaper, its just the difficulty of doing the guesstimates with AWS especially as some projects have a lot of bandwidth.

If its sprint only then a pay-by-use like AWS would probably work out fine but for marathons over 3 years I imagine AWS would cost more.

I really don't think its in the spirit of Boinc to rent especially competitively, Boinc is about donating your computer system's time, not cash, if you want to go down the cash route why not simply donate money directly to the projects and have a league table of who donated the most (someone could organise that through gofundme or whatever - the BoincGFM project)?

Its the difference between being member of a F1 team or being an investor/advertiser, its the team that wins the races, its the advertisers that believe that everybody cares and notices their advertising, ones real, ones imaginary.

[JeromeC]

Well when I rent a formula 1 formula 4 on vast.ai, I am the one installing everything, making it work, having to pilot it, monitor ir, repair it, etc.

So I'm more like a "pilot-engineer-mechanic-strategist-investor" actually

[UBT - Timbo]

From that example, its not even close, 16 cores with 32GB RAM costing £480 a month whereas the home power cost is less than £100. However Amazon AWS/EC2 would probably work out a lot cheaper, its just the difficulty of doing the guesstimates with AWS especially as some projects have a lot of bandwidth.

If its sprint only then a pay-by-use like AWS would probably work out fine but for marathons over 3 years I imagine AWS would cost more.

I really don't think its in the spirit of Boinc to rent especially competitively, Boinc is about donating your computer system's time, not cash, if you want to go down the cash route why not simply donate money directly to the projects and have a league table of who donated the most (someone could organise that through gofundme or whatever - the BoincGFM project)?

Its the difference between being member of a F1 team or being an investor/advertiser, its the team that wins the races, its the advertisers that believe that everybody cares and notices their advertising, ones real, ones imaginary.

Hiya

My "example" (in my previous post) was just a quick "sketch" of what the costs *might* be...and of course, there are multiple choices in terms of buying hardware or renting cloud services...it just boils down to money, time and how much you want to "dabble" in the hobby.

And yes, you are quite right in thinking that a much better way (of spending your own money) is to donate funds direct to one or more projects rather than using the same amount to fund hardware or rental costs. Of course you don't then get to participate in Marathons or Sprints...and in the meantime any existing hardware is not being put to "good use" when you are not playing games on it or working out your taxes or designing the latest "artefact".

On the other hand, being involved with the projects and competing against fellow humans is good for each persons competitive spirit but of course, there are also those who are "credit whores" who will stop at nothing to generate lots of BOINC credits.

And ultimately, this does rather lead to people being intimidated, when comparing one members very basic host system, with another member who has multiple hosts...but in it's present guise there's nothing we can do about this on this site, other than to try and place similar BOINC credit scoring accounts in the same league as others who have a similar computing power.

regards
Tim

[UBT - wbiz]

Well, err, yes! I now realise that I have been hypocritical because I say that we should encompass everybody's different interests in running boinc and at the same time I was disparaging "credit whores", after all FB is a competition about gaining maximum points. I'll wind my neck in on leased computing in future, its all calculations in the pot which is what boinc is about.

While I'm here, big thanks to Carl for giving the team a boost in the last sprint! I was laughing, while Carl was getting his energy for free from his solar, I was getting paid to burn electricity due to a rare-ish energy surplus, unfortunately it was only a few hours so my peak position 3 soon slid downhill afterwards. I had a very hot server room for a few hours as well as a fan heater on the outside patio burning more electricity! [mumbles and rants going on inside head about the screwed up anti-consumer and anti-business price fixing of our energy generation]

[JeromeC]

Yeah, where is the fun to just "donate money and forget about it" ? "hobby" means "have a level of implication", else it's not a hobby, in my views.

And regarding money impact on cruncher production, it is always the same : crunchers with big money will get either big personal configuration(s), either big rented host(s) (or both). But we don't