Folding at Home with the PS3 (my team is 2630)

I thought I'd make a quick recruitment thread for Folding@Home... I've mention protein folding quite a few times before around here, but I don't think its ever had its own thread... So...

Why fold at all? Well, I'll let my team's folding page answer that...

http://techreport.com/etc/folding/

We are ranked 9th out of 48484

Since I mentioned it, my team, The Tech Report (#2630), is really pushing to get some new members as we try to hold our position at 9th place as long as possible... Our team is currently over 2,500 active members strong and growing, making us one of the smallest teams near the top of the rankings. Because there's a point system, folding is quite competitive and fun... This is helped a lot by 3rd party stat tracking sites that let you monitor overtake dates, point totals, and just about everything else.

I could go on, but I'll keep this first post as short as possible. Please join my team.

After you install the 50Mb file on the PS3, in order to join this team you simply have to type the team number 2630 into Options, Identity, and then Join Existing Team.. After that you can view out teams efforts by clicking Options, Information, and then My Teams Statistics.

If you want to, post here that you have joined the team

Remember that your PS3 will easily be faster than the top persons computer who has a quad core system. The Ps3 is about 20 times faster than the average top of the line PC. So leaving it on for a few hours equals a few days for most people..

Oh yes it will. If 100 PS3 owners join this team, it is the about the same as if 2,000 members joined which will almost double my teams efforts.

June 30, 2004, my team only had 223 active members, with 2004 top of the line machines...

Jump to 2007 and the PS3 is many times faster than even the fastest 2007 machine.. You can only imagine the growth that the Ps3 will do for this cause. What is projected to have been completed in 10 years time could possibly take only a few years without the PS3's addition and using only top of the line current PC's.

Thanks for posting this. The interphase does look rather cool and it has a very relaxing Ocean beach sound to go along with it. And thanks for joining the team.

It shouldn't do anything to your PS3 as long as it is well ventilated. I keep my PC on 24 hours a day running while folding and turn it off to reboot once a week at most and it is still going strong after four years. My wife turns her computer on and off all the time and it crapped out on her after two years.

Based on my experience (I work with computers) hardware problems seem to occur more often when people turn on and off their computers more times compared to those leaving their computers on and connected to a battery backup.

What will prolong the life of your PS3 is if you buy a battery backup because a power outage while using the PS3 will shorten the life-span of the internal PS3 hard drive and may cause other issues inherent to sudden power fluctuations.

The only way your processor will get bad is if it overheats which the PS3 won't if it is well ventilated. The louder noise you are hearing is probably not the hard drive but the fans of the PS3 spinning faster since all the cell’s SPE’s are working. Just to calm you down about all this, there is a temperature gauge within the PS3 that monitors heat levels and your PS3 will shut off if it gets too hot. If this ever happens, then either your PS3 is not well ventilated and the cell overheats or the fan doesn't work properly causing the cell to overheat..

Either way your PS3 should not have any problems running the folding at home for however long you want it to run. And your hard drive will last longer since shutting it on and off are what hurt hard drives the most. That is why it is recommended to wait 60 seconds after powering down a PC before turning it back on.

Thanks for joining. It'll be interesting to see how 2630 does with all these new PS3 users. I don't know how the other top groups are doing with recruiting new users but I think in a few days we shall see what effect it has in the rankings.

It is possible that your firewall is blocking ports 8080 and or port 80 which are the ones that the program uses from their website. If you have a router, try logging in and opening those ports. A quicker solution if that is the problem would be to check dmz in your router which does leave you vulnerable to outside attacks for your home PC's. However you don't have to worry about the PS3 getting hacked into yet so simply turn off your home PC's when you do this.. If the program works with dmz on, then you can re-enable it and configure the port's 8080 and 80.