Getting started with BOINC

[hiigaran]

BOINC is a highly convenient platform, from which most distributed computing projects are run from. This program allows you to choose what projects/causes you wish to involve yourself in, be it one, ten, or however many projects you wish to assist. So here's what you do to get started:

1. Visit the BOINC homepage.
   
2. Download BOINC
   
3. Find some projects you are interested in contributing to, visit their websites, and create an account with them.
   
4. Once you have created an account, join the Brony@Home team
   

During the installation of BOINC, you will reach a prompt to install BOINC as a service. If you plan on using your video card as well as your CPU to contribute, do not install the program as a service. Otherwise, if you plan on using the CPU only, do so.

You will be prompted to restart the computer. Do so. Once you start back up, BOINC will appear, prompting you to add projects. You can proceed to add the projects you created an account for earlier on by following the instructions.

You may also create a new account directly from BOINC at this stage, or any time later on. You just need to confirm that you are indeed in a team, by visiting your account(s) on the relevant project(s) page(s).

Once you have some projects set up, click View at the top, and select Advanced Mode. You can choose whichever mode you want, but it really won't make a difference, as you won't be looking at it later on. What matters are the options. So, click Tools, then Options. Configure what you want here, then exit, go back to Tools, and go to Computing Preferences.

This is the most important area. Here, you can adjust your CPU, disk, and RAM settings, as well as configuring BOINC to pause itself when certain programs are running (for example, games).

As each computer is different, there are no general recommendations on what settings you should use, so if you are unsure of what settings to go for, feel free to ask here.

---

If you are unsure of which projects to contribute to, you can take a look at all the projects Brony@Home has a team in:

Note that while most of these projects run under BOINC, not all of them do, such as Folding@Home and Majestic-12.

You may choose to help our team by contributing to stagnant projects, or projects with a lower score in them, or you can visit each project's website and read through what they do. Our About page contains a linklist of all projects we are involved in.

[Sellyme]

Not all BOINC projects support GPUs, so here is a list of projects I know of that support GPUs:

AMD/ATI:
Bitcoin Utopia
Collatz Conjecture
DistrRTgen
Einstein@Home
MilkyWay@Home
POEM@Home
PrimeGrid
SETI@Home
World Community Grid*

NVIDIA
Bitcoin Utopia
Collatz Conjecture
DistrRTgen
Einstein@Home
GPUGrid
Ibercivis
PrimeGrid
SETI@Home
World Community Grid*

WCG only has GPU projects in its opt-in beta, and you will not get them all the time, so if you want to run WCG on your GPU, I highly recommend running a project like PrimeGrid of DistrRTgen with an abundance of GPU tasks, so that you'll still be crunching when WCG has nothing to give you.

---

Non-intensive BOINC projects

There are several BOINC projects that do not use CPU or GPU power, but still rack up points for you. Here's an example of one:



The project shown there is WUProp, and everyone running BOINC should attach it. Instructions on how to do this are explained in the link.

WUProp basically just monitors your crunching on other projects, and checks how long they take to complete, how much RAM they use, how much bandwidth they use uploading and downloading data, and more. This information is then attached to your model, and uploaded to a public database so that anyone can check if their CPU is performing as well as it should be, or, if you have RAM or bandwidth limitations, look for applications that use very little of those resources.

And the best part of this is that you get points! WUProp gives out BOINC credits just like every other project, so it's essentially free points. Why would you argue about free points? :D

There are also other non-intensive projects, but they require specialist equipment. There's Radioactive@Home, which requires a USB geiger counter, and Quake Catcher Network (and its three descendants, Quake Catcher Network Taiwan, Quake Catcher Network EMSC/CSEM, and La Red Atrapa Sismos), which all require either a USB gyroscopic sensor, or a modern HP or Apple laptop.