New workstation for home use. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 11:44:52 am
content: After 10 years of service, my home workstation died. Either the cpu (an AMD Phenom II 6-core) or the motherboard died.I checked the powersupply and all voltages are present (3.3, 5 and 12 Volt).When switching on, only the fans rotate, the bios does not produce any beep.I decided that after 10 years, it was time for a big upgrade and I ordered the following components:CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 cores, 24 threads)MB: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMINGRAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200MHzStorage: Samsung 970 PRO NVMe M.2 SSD 1TBCase: Be Quiet! Silent Base 601 Midi TowerPSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 500WCPU cooler: Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH EditionAdditional case fan: Be Quiet! SilentWings 3 PWM 140mmMonitor: Benq BL2420PT 24" 2560x1440 QHD 16:9 IPS LEDFor me, the goals are stability, silence and fast parallel processing (I often compile software, mostly Qt-based).I also need to compile sometimes a windows version of my software so I need a lot of RAM and extra cpu cores in orderto run Virtualbox.I rarely play games, so I decided to re-use the old, simple AMD Radeon graphics card which has a passive heatsink.Doom I & II, Quake I and Quake III Arena runs smooth also on this simple graphics card. These are the only games Ioccasionally play.First thing I did was updating the bios to the latest version which can be done in advance (without having an OS installed)by inserting a pendrive with the bios firmware file in a designated USB connector and pushing a button on the motherboard.Then I installed the OS, openSuse Leap 15.2 with kernel 5.3.18 and KDE Plasma 5 desktop, from a pendrive.Installation was fast and within 15 minutes I had my new pc up and running.Interesting observation was that now my maximum download speed increased from 400Mbs (old motherboard with Realtek LAN)to 880Mbs. The new motherboard uses an Intel 2.5GB LAN chip. (I have an FTTH connection, 1Gbs down, 100Mbs up.)I'm very satisfied with this new pc because it's very quiet, very fast and no need to tweak anything.Everything was plug and play as is usually the case when using Linux and paying a bit of attention when selectingnew hardware. Compiling Qt 5.12.9 from source using the command make -j24 takes less than 2.5 minutes.On my old pc it took 12 minutes.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 01:06:01 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on August 23, 2020, 11:44:52 amDid you ever consider ECC RAM ? Especially for stability and long term reliability.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 01:53:59 pm
content: Looks like a decent machine.I haven't used qt since a job I had in 2004. Thought I'd quickly check it out and try a build on my machine. The git checkout is taking *forever*. Several hours already.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 01:58:12 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 23, 2020, 01:53:59 pmAnd it's only up to qtdeclarative. A ton of subdirectories to go yet.

author: Mattjd
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 03:07:23 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on August 23, 2020, 11:44:52 amThis is a fine setup, I initially thought your PSU wattage was too low but see you don't have a GPU? Did you actually build this? How is it running? I'm very very confused, the 3900x or any X series Ryzen has no iGPU so you need a discrete GPU. Unless you just forgot to mention it.Other than that this looks good. Nice job on getting sufficient RAM. People think 32gb is a lot but for the Ryzens to really shine they need it. For example, if you bought the 3950x, its recommended to get 64gb to really push it.

author: Black Phoenix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 03:57:14 pm
content: Quote from: Mattjd on August 23, 2020, 03:07:23 pmBut he have a GPU, he mentions it later on the same thread:Quote from: Karel on August 23, 2020, 11:44:52 am

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 03:57:28 pm
content: He said he's reused the Radeon graphics card from his old machine.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 05:09:33 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on August 23, 2020, 01:06:01 pmNope, I didn't think about it...

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 05:11:43 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 23, 2020, 01:53:59 pmI always download the tarbal form a mirror ftp site:https://download.qt.io/static/mirrorlist/

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 05:18:17 pm
content: Quote from: Mattjd on August 23, 2020, 03:07:23 pmI am re-using and old, passively cooled, Radeon HD 4350 graphics card:

author: 0db
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 05:32:56 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on August 23, 2020, 05:18:17 pmhow "Linux friendly" is it?

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 05:41:16 pm
content: Quote from: 0db on August 23, 2020, 05:32:56 pmVery friendly. AMD provides hardware register info of their GPU's to the community and the opensource drivers are on par with AMD's closed sourcecounterparts (according to Phoronix).AMD Radeon cards are plug and play on Linux. Even this old simple card plays Quake III Arena very well.No need to install anything.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2020, 11:47:55 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on August 23, 2020, 05:11:43 pmProbably an idea. Anyway next morning and it's done. I was only getting around 100 KB/s checkout speeds on 100 Mbps internet.I used the instructions athttps://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_5_from_Git#Getting_the_source_codeexcept the configure failed until I added -no-opengl.Code:$ mkdir qt5-build$ cd qt5-build$ ../qt5/configure -developer-build -opensource -nomake examples -nomake tests -no-opengl$ time make -j64::real5m13.674suser170m2.127ssys24m50.008s$ uptime11:45:52 up 5 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 47.48, 34.71, 19.86My 32 core 2990wx is using more than 12 cores a good amount of the time -- look at the load average, though (user+sys)/real only equals 8.01 -- so it's interesting that yours is so much faster. Are this year's chips so very much better? Or are you using different configure options?

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 06:25:25 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 23, 2020, 11:47:55 pmYes, I use the following options because I link static and I want to keep the executable as small as possible:Code:./configure -v -prefix /usr/local/Qt-5.12.9-static -release -opensource -confirm-license -c++std c++11 -static -accessibility -fontconfig -skip qtdeclarative -skip qtconnectivity -skip qtmultimedia -qt-zlib -no-mtdev -no-journald -qt-libpng -qt-libjpeg -system-freetype -qt-harfbuzz -no-openssl -no-libproxy -no-glib -nomake examples -nomake tests -no-compile-examples -cups -no-evdev -no-dbus -no-eglfs -qreal double -no-opengl -skip qtlocation -skip qtsensors -skip qtwayland -skip qtgamepad -skip qtserialbus -skip qt3d -skip qtpurchasing -skip qtquickcontrols -skip qtquickcontrols2 -skip qtspeech -skip qtwebengine

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 09:33:59 am
content: OK. I installed freetype fontconfig and cups dev packages to get that to work.Much faster, but it seems my 32 core is still a little slower than your 12 core. Those 2nd gen chips are good!Code:real2m52.332suser73m38.355ssys9m28.145s21:22:27 up 7:53, 1 user, load average: 37.62, 24.79, 13.60(user+sys)/real is now 28.9, so it's using most of the cores most of the time.Doing just "make clean && make" instead of a completely new build directory got me 2m43.4s.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 09:59:55 am
content: Quote from: Karel on August 23, 2020, 05:09:33 pmToo bad, this ECC memory, imo, is one of the hidden gem that Ryzen has. This used to be luxurious feature only available for server grade cpu.On my 3700X, linux rasdaemon managed to catch the corrected bit flips twice , yay, though not easy to deliberately invoke that errors, failed at windows as the os was not properly booted in the process, only at linux.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 10:33:04 am
content: Quote from: BravoV on August 24, 2020, 09:59:55 amTwice in how long?

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 10:40:58 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 24, 2020, 10:33:04 amIn about 48 hours, if my memory serves me well.The problem was, to have the system at the edge of stability, but still can "properly" booted. At windows I spent so many hours but failed to capture it, as the OS it self was not running in good shape (unstable).Finally , at linux, and then did some weird timings combination and overclock the mem clock, with below 1.2V Vddr, and spent many hours, finally able to capture that two precious corrected bit flips which happened at the exact location in the memory, weakest spot I guess.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 10:44:13 am
content: Ok. So on a machine with stock settings it's going to be much much less.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 11:29:03 am
content: I can run memtest86 overnight to see what happens...

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 11:45:18 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 24, 2020, 09:33:59 amMaybe also the Samsung 970 PRO NVMe plays a role here.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 11:59:10 am
content: Quote from: BravoV on August 24, 2020, 10:40:58 amrunning "at the edge of stability", overclock and all that... just to capture some bit flips, to prove what?

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 12:48:21 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 24, 2020, 10:44:13 amNo, that is not the purpose of ECC RAM, suggesting to read further on it.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 12:49:21 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on August 24, 2020, 11:59:10 amTo prove that ECC RAM works at Ryzen ?

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 12:53:33 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on August 24, 2020, 11:45:18 amMy components:1TB Samsung 970 Pro M.2128GB DDR4-2400/2666 PC4-19200/21300Gigabyte X399 AORUS Gaming TR4There's plenty of RAM for caching everything so it shouldn't even be hitting the SSD much.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 01:02:44 pm
content: A nice summary what on earth ECC RAM is for ->Why use ECC?Point is, memory is "relatively" cheap nowadays, compared to last year, yes, ECC still more expensive, but too overly pricey, but if you valued your memory integrity, ECC is good bet.Then why not, if the mobo supports it.This feature was out of reach in desktop computing, until Ryzen.No, gamer or casual computing do NOT need ECC, its just a big waste of money, imo.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2020, 03:34:21 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on August 24, 2020, 01:02:44 pmBack to old good (Intel) days, entry-level and up Xeons have supported ECC in UDIMM format similar to Ryzen.I wouldn't say "was out of reach"

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2020, 06:06:05 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on August 24, 2020, 12:53:33 pmThese sites have some interesting info about how cpu's perform when compiling big software projects:https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/build-linux-kernelhttps://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Kernel-Bisecting-5.9-Ongoing

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2020, 09:18:07 am
content: Quote from: Karel on September 11, 2020, 06:06:05 amCompiling is a little bit of a conflicted benchmark because at least open-source projects (especially those combining a lot of subprojects) usually tend to alternate phases running "configure" which typically only uses maybe two cores or linking which uses one core, with phases which can use as many cores as there are C files in the current subproject.So it varies from project to project a lot. A CPU that has a lot of cores but can't turbo one or two cores up to infinity can suffer a lot from Amdahl's law.Anyway, in the linux kernel builds, my 32 core 2990wx ranks at 40 seconds and the only things faster than it are 2nd gen Threadrippers with 24+ cores, EPYC with 24+ cores, or dual XEONs with 20+ cores each (40+ cores total). Only the 24 core ThreadRipper 3960X is (a little) cheaper. And the "2 x AMD EPYC 7282 16-Core", at least for the CPUs themselves -- the needed motherboard surely is expensive.The OP's 3900X clocks in at 53 seconds, which is very very respectable, especially for the price.Incidentally, I just a couple of days ago took delivery of a Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 with 6 core (Zen 2) Ryzen 5 4500U, which was around US$735 including tax and shipping. It clocks the Linux kernel build page at 194 seconds.Both my 2.5 year old NUC and the 6th gen X1 Carbon I had at my last job have an i7-8650U, rated at 256 seconds.The current entry level 8th gen X1 Carbon and the Intel version of the E14 both have i5-10210U rated at 258 seconds.The kernel bisecting link doesn't have any comparative CPU figures, but just points at the same kernel build stats and also LLVM build stats (which don't cover many machines))

author: iteratee
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 13, 2020, 11:18:12 pm
content: If I were building a new high-end workstation today I'd be seriously looking at Power9. I'm not married to Windows, so while the ability to virtualize Windows on my main rig is nice, it's not mandatory - I have other x86 boxen for that, which opens me up to any suitable alternate architecture.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 07:24:39 am
content: Quote from: iteratee on September 13, 2020, 11:18:12 pmThe Linux kernel build times link a couple of messages up has any entry for POWER9 8 core 16 thread CPU taking 298 seconds. As far as I can tell, building any kind of decent system around it (e.g. using Talos II Lite) is going to cost at last $4000.This is slower than, say, an AMD Ryzen 3 3200G (237 seconds) which I see on Amazon for $99.99. I also see HP offering a complete PC (M01-F0020) with 8 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD for $449.

author: iteratee
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 01:49:09 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on September 14, 2020, 07:24:39 amYeah the cost-performance is still just a bit much for the other perks to compensate enough for this to be an easy choice. One of the main appealing points to me is for multi-socket systems. Xeon has always been packed with arbitrary limitations that make the cost impossible to justify over a single-socket consumer-grade system especially when considering overclocking is added to the equation.I haven't researched current hardware for the last few years though. I don't even know all the model naming conventions these days.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2020, 11:31:02 pm
content: Quote from: iteratee on September 14, 2020, 01:49:09 pmDon't get me wrong here -- I'd love to have a POWER9 machine. I'm kinda sad I sold my Dual 2.0 GHz G5 PowerMac when the Core 2 Duo Macs came out. I still have a couple of 17" G4 iMacs and G4 Minis.And I buy RISC-V hardware with right now pretty bad price-performance compared to Intel or ARM e.g. my $999 HiFive Unleashed board that performs only a little better than a $40 Pi 3 and doesn't even have video.If there was a POWER9 machine for under $1k I'd probably get one...

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2020, 06:31:39 pm
content: Here's my story about ECC RAM: it can be a double edged sword.I ran a dual Xeon 24C/48T 64GB beast for a couple of years until suddenly one day I started getting ECC errors that pretty much ground the machine to tortoise pace filling up logs. I'd reboot, and then a couple of hours later they came up again. You couldn't really install updates because it would just go into its unusable tortoise state, serialising with very high CPU on one of the 24 cores. I tried reseating the CPUs & RAM, reducing the RAM to one stick per socket etc etc, but nothing fixed it.In the end I mothballed the dual Xeon, and switched to an i7-8700K (32GB), and then to an i9-9900K (64GB) which is what I use now.About 4 or 5 months ago, I decided to power up the dual Xeon again, and sure enough the ECC errors reappeared after an hour or so. I left it running overnight and it finally installed a bunch of updates over the next two days... and I've not had one ECC error since.So the ECC errors turned out to be an OS feature introduced by auto updates months earlier without me knowing. It was Windows, of course, which I am sure will moisten the multitude of limbering loins of all the Linux fanboys out there for sure!