Get folding
Getting your machine folding is simple. Head
to foldingathome.org/start-folding, and
download the client. Once it’s installed, you’ll
need to set your username and team. The
username can be whatever you like, and you
can input team number 35947 to fold for the
Custom PC & bit-tech team. You can change
any of these details in the Web Control tab by
clicking on Change Identity in the top left of the
Web Control box. If you want your machine
to work on COVID-19 research, then select
‘COVID-19’ in the ‘I support research finding’
pull-down menu.
You can also select how hard you want your
CPU and GPU to work – you can set them to
only fold when the machine is idle, or when
you’re working too. You can also select Light,
Medium or Full. In the Light mode, only the
CPU will fold, while the latter two modes
see both the CPU and GPU running. Both
the Medium and Full settings hammer your
hardware pretty hard though.
Also, bear in mind that folding will increase
your PC’s power consumption. On our Ryzen
7 2700X rig with a GeForce GTX 1070 T, the
machine consumed around 70W when idle,
but that increased to 214W when folding on
the CPU, and around 320W when folding on
the GPU as well. If you fold a lot, you’ll see an
increase in your electricity bill, so keep an eye
on it if you’re on a tight budget.
Also, due to the popularity of folding at
the moment, it may take a while to get work
units to your PC. ‘There are two issues,’
explains Bowman. ‘One is getting more of
the physical servers set up, and the other is
getting simulations launched on them. These
machines act as both a queue of simulations
to be run and a repository where we collect
all the data that our volunteers generate, so
there’s a need for high storage capacity. My
group have four machines, each with 100TB of
usable space, and we’re filling that up rapidly.’
If you want more control, right click on the
multi-coloured molecule icon in the Taskbar
and select Advanced Control. From here you
can pause work units, set folding to pause if
you’re running on battery power and configure
advanced settings such as proxy servers.
You can also click the Viewer icon to get a
visualisation of the molecule being processed.
You can discuss folding with other folks
on the team, and get more tips and tricks
too, at our folding team’s forum on bit-tech
(custompc.co.uk/FoldingForum).
Select ‘COVID-19’ in the pull-down menu if you want to
prioritise research for the current coronavirus pandemicChoose your own username, and put 35947 in the Team Number
box if you want to fold for the Custom PC & bit-tech teamBEARINMINDTHATENABLINGFOLDING
ONYOUR MACHINEWILLINCREASE ITS
POWERCONSUMPTION