Time for a new computer - what processor?

[technix]

I believe a lot of people here have mentioned, AMD's Infinity Fabric is dependent on RAM clock speed, and since Infinity Fabric works almost as if the front side bus, it has direct and significant impact on overall system performance. Even if you don't plan on overclocking your system too much, it would be worth it to crank that part up using RAM sticks rated at higher speed like 2933MHz or 3200MHz.

On the other hand for a mid tier machine there is no point going with a X470 motherboard if you don't plan to overclock the CPU sky high. B450 will work just fine and allow some overclocking, and it will cost less.

Also there is a parity issue with CPU and GPU. They should be around the same tier, otherwise one of them will bottleneck and you are not going to get your money's worth in computing performance.

[drussell]

I don't know about AMD, but different Intel processors have Memory buses of different width. The wide-bus Intel chips have over 2000 pins and the memory bus is twice as wide. In theory, this should matter more than 500 MHz difference in DDR4 speed. Although I haven't seen the benchmarks. Of course, these bigger chips are more expensive and require a different motherboard, which is also more expensive.

The "desktop" quad-channel memory Intel processors use the 2011 and later 2066 pin LGA "sockets" originally borrowed from the server Xeons.  To take advantage of that configuration you obviously need to populate four DIMM sockets (most motherboards have 8 DIMM sockets.)

On AMD you currently have to go to the server level chips to get 4 memory channels.

[NiHaoMike]

On AMD you currently have to go to the server level chips to get 4 memory channels.

The Threadrippers are not *that* expensive.

[drussell]

The Threadrippers are not *that* expensive.

Nope.  Certainly a valid way of getting 4-channel performance. 

The Intel 4-channel "desktop" chips are certainly not cheap! 

Also, the "entry level" Intel CPUs that use LGA2066 only have dual-channel memory support.

[technix]

The Threadrippers are not *that* expensive.

Nope.  Certainly a valid way of getting 4-channel performance. 

The Intel 4-channel "desktop" chips are certainly not cheap! 

Also, the "entry level" Intel CPUs that use LGA2066 only have dual-channel memory support.

If you need 4-channel on the cheap, it might be a better idea to use second hand Intel LGA2011 based systems. Those were decommissioned en masse a few years ago and cleap LGA2011 (not the -1 or -3 variety) ans matching DDR3 memory flooded the market.

[tkamiya]

It's nice to have many cores and more threads, but make sure your software can take advantage of them!

I have a dual CPU box with TWO 2.somethingGHz Xeon 6 core 12 thread CPU.

Even with software package like Photoshop and FlightSimulator, most cores/threads will stay idle while just a few would reach 100%.  It would have been better with less core but fast CPU.

Also, I have 56GB memory but again, 12GB peak at the most gets used.

Total waste of money!

BenchMarking CPU and chipset is one thing but reality is something totally different.

[Mr. Scram]

It's nice to have many cores and more threads, but make sure your software can take advantage of them!

I have a dual CPU box with TWO 2.somethingGHz Xeon 6 core 12 thread CPU.

Even with software package like Photoshop and FlightSimulator, most cores/threads will stay idle while just a few would reach 100%.  It would have been better with less core but fast CPU.

Also, I have 56GB memory but again, 12GB peak at the most gets used.

Total waste of money!

BenchMarking CPU and chipset is one thing but reality is something totally different.

You must be one of those people who close their browser tabs, aren't you?

I think Photoshop and Flight Simulator both hail from another period. Programmers are catching on how to properly make use of more cores. Games have been using them for a while now and things like renderers of course have almost always done it. Most programs benefit from more cores, but developers simply didn't know how to or want to spend the effort making use of them. That being said, having fast cores is still a safe bet for consumer tasks.

[Simon]

On AMD you currently have to go to the server level chips to get 4 memory channels.

The Threadrippers are not *that* expensive.

No, they are the price of a decent i7 but I don't need to go that far. The threadripper was clearly aimed at the server market but may well have desktop applications for some particular usage cases including over night increase in the size of you penis by 50% when installed on machines that will never get to use them properly.

[Simon]

I believe a lot of people here have mentioned, AMD's Infinity Fabric is dependent on RAM clock speed, and since Infinity Fabric works almost as if the front side bus, it has direct and significant impact on overall system performance. Even if you don't plan on overclocking your system too much, it would be worth it to crank that part up using RAM sticks rated at higher speed like 2933MHz or 3200MHz.

On the other hand for a mid tier machine there is no point going with a X470 motherboard if you don't plan to overclock the CPU sky high. B450 will work just fine and allow some overclocking, and it will cost less.

Also there is a parity issue with CPU and GPU. They should be around the same tier, otherwise one of them will bottleneck and you are not going to get your money's worth in computing performance.

i am hoping this motherboard lasts a little longer, yes it may have been a little cheaper than the last one but 3 years and conked out? not happy.

I was hoping that the higher end one would last longer, i don't bother to change machines that often these days. I don't need the performance really although i do like to run BOINC.

The CPU is rated at 2933 so the motherboard and RAM at 3200 will already be able to exceed that. If i can crank the RAM channel to 3200 I will be perfectly happy.

Indeed on the last machine it was the memory controller I increased the speed of not the RAM per se as i had more or less worked out that it was going to be a hub of some kind joining several things together like the external memory controllers/North bridges used to do.

FSB? oh yes I remember my first PC with a 900MHz AMD spitfire, it had a DDR FSB at 100MHz and 133MHz RAM, the asshole that I bout it from set the RAM speed to 100MHz to err.... match the speed of the FSB. My that was a speed boost of 33% that was a long time coming.

[Simon]

Heh. Got the same gear for 100£ less at mindfactory. But your funeral

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/830814
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/835547
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/856118
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/743022

I'm not too bothered, I get the VAT back anyway and shipping is free and it is easier to deal with them in the even of problems plus some local people get employed even if they are cheap eastern European migrant warehouse workers 

[IanJ]

Just built a new PC for myself, as follows:

- Corsair 200R case
- Noctua NH-U12S Ultra Quiet Single Tower CPU Cooler
- 32GB (2x16GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black, PC4-21300 (2666), Non-ECC Unbuffered
- Intel Core i7 8700K, S 1151, Coffee Lake, 6 Core, 12 Thread, 3.7GHz, 4.7GHz Turbo, 12MB Cache, 1200MHz GPU, 95W
- ASUS PRIME H370-PLUS, Intel H370, S 1151, DDR4, SATA3, Dual M.2, 2-Way CrossFire, Realtek GbE, USB 3.1 Gen2 A, ATX
- 500GB Samsung 970 EVO, M.2 (2280) PCIe 3.0 (x4) NVMe SSD, Phoenix, MLC V-NAND, 3400MB/s Read, 2300MB/s Write, 370k/450k
- 750W Corsair RMx Series RM750x, Full Modular, 80PLUS Gold, SLI/CrossFire, Single Rail, 62.5A, 135mm Fan, ATX PSU
- GTX1050Ti (pulled from old PC)

Motherboard was chosen because I wanted a couple of PCI slots in addition to PCIe. A lot of new board only have one, if any, PCI slots. I need them for a couple of legacy cards I use.

PC is used for software dev and video editing/rendering mostly.........and of course browsing these forums...:-)

Ian.

[Simon]

I dearly hope that this is the last PC i build for a while. with 8 cores and about the max speed any processor will do the real performance developments are now left to the software writers to make their code multithreading. The software industry is lagging badly and selling money for old rope. We use solid edge at work and for years it did not multithread (not sure if it does now) and despite having 4 core i7 processors (which worked faster if hyperthreading was turned off) 3/4 of the proccessor was idle. And this really annoyed me because large assemblies would take a long time to move on the screen yet were a perfect multithread use case as once you establish the absolute position of all components each core can independently move a part on it's own making full use of the processor. But no, Siemens don't give a shit and turn out barely usable code and when you find a bug pretend it's you fault.

[NiHaoMike]

If you need 4-channel on the cheap, it might be a better idea to use second hand Intel LGA2011 based systems. Those were decommissioned en masse a few years ago and cleap LGA2011 (not the -1 or -3 variety) ans matching DDR3 memory flooded the market.

Having owned a 2011 system from new, they're fantastic machines albeit much less energy efficient than newer machines of comparable specs. And keep in mind a standard desktop Ryzen 7 has 8 cores while the 2011s (Sandy Bridge E and Ivy Bridge E) only have 6 for the single socket versions.

It's nice to have many cores and more threads, but make sure your software can take advantage of them!

I have a dual CPU box with TWO 2.somethingGHz Xeon 6 core 12 thread CPU.

Even with software package like Photoshop and FlightSimulator, most cores/threads will stay idle while just a few would reach 100%.  It would have been better with less core but fast CPU.

Also, I have 56GB memory but again, 12GB peak at the most gets used.

Total waste of money!

BenchMarking CPU and chipset is one thing but reality is something totally different.

All the extra RAM and cores seems perfect to install Virtualbox and spin up a few earnhoney mining VMs. Especially in the winter when the heat generated can be put to good use. Have 48GB in my PC with about 20GB in use by all apps including some VMs and up to 24GB allocated for use by tmpfs.

[Simon]

i run 16GB without a pagefile (ruins SSD's) and never had a problem. If i need more i have 2 more slots that i can fill.

[technix]

I dearly hope that this is the last PC i build for a while. with 8 cores and about the max speed any processor will do the real performance developments are now left to the software writers to make their code multithreading. The software industry is lagging badly and selling money for old rope. We use solid edge at work and for years it did not multithread (not sure if it does now) and despite having 4 core i7 processors (which worked faster if hyperthreading was turned off) 3/4 of the proccessor was idle. And this really annoyed me because large assemblies would take a long time to move on the screen yet were a perfect multithread use case as once you establish the absolute position of all components each core can independently move a part on it's own making full use of the processor. But no, Siemens don't give a shit and turn out barely usable code and when you find a bug pretend it's you fault.

Once again, decommissioned server hardware often last longer than brand new consumer hardware, simply because they are built to last. If you can find a solid used overclockable Intel X79 motherboard, that plus a Xeon E5-1650v2 can work better than a Ryzen: it has a ring bus architecture instead of Infinity Fabric (a 2-way NUMA, similar to a dual Xeon E5-2643v2 system.) it has 4-channel memory support, it has 44 PCIe lanes for multi-GPU or a lot of random PCIe cards, and while being a Xeon it has an unlocked clock multiplier and can be overclocked sky high, and thanks to it being a Xeon the base voltage and temperature are lower allowing for more overclocking headroom.

If you need 4-channel on the cheap, it might be a better idea to use second hand Intel LGA2011 based systems. Those were decommissioned en masse a few years ago and cleap LGA2011 (not the -1 or -3 variety) ans matching DDR3 memory flooded the market.

Having owned a 2011 system from new, they're fantastic machines albeit much less energy efficient than newer machines of comparable specs. And keep in mind a standard desktop Ryzen 7 has 8 cores while the 2011s (Sandy Bridge E and Ivy Bridge E) only have 6 for the single socket versions.

Like above, that Ryzen is more like dual E5-2637v2 in the same package: a NUMA system. NUMA puts a lot of pressure on the memory management system of the OS since the memory access latency will be irregular. The ring bus of Ivy Bridge Xeon has a much regular memory access pattern.

Also specifically for the E5-16xx series, maybe with the exception of the lowest end E5-1620 and E5-1620v2, they have an unlocked multiplier allowing for sky high overclocks on a solid X79 motherboard. Being a Xeon those chips are binned from the get go for lower temperature and voltage, allowing even more headroom at overclocking.

It's nice to have many cores and more threads, but make sure your software can take advantage of them!

I have a dual CPU box with TWO 2.something GHz Xeon 6 core 12 thread CPU.

Even with software package like Photoshop and FlightSimulator, most cores/threads will stay idle while just a few would reach 100%.  It would have been better with less core but fast CPU.

Also, I have 56GB memory but again, 12GB peak at the most gets used.

Total waste of money!

BenchMarking CPU and chipset is one thing but reality is something totally different.

All the extra RAM and cores seems perfect to install Virtualbox and spin up a few earnhoney mining VMs. Especially in the winter when the heat generated can be put to good use. Have 48GB in my PC with about 20GB in use by all apps including some VMs and up to 24GB allocated for use by tmpfs.

I have a workstation PC with 2x Xeon E5-2680 (8-cores each) and 128GB RAM. I was using that as an ESXi VM host, until I finally stopped using it as so and now it is my high core count Windows workstation.

[tkamiya]

You must be one of those people who close their browser tabs, aren't you?

How did you know?

[ChunkyPastaSauce]

Maybe consider Intel? You said single thread performance has priority, but do not want to not give-up multi-core (no low end chips).
 
From passmark: 
cpu                                          - price      - total cpu mark    -    cpu mark value    -   single thread mark     -   single thread value
AMD FX-4350 Quad-Core           $129.99           5333                      41.03                        1532                                11.79
AMD Ryzen 7 2700                    $265.99         15063                      56.63                        2009                                 7.56
Intel Core i5-8600K @ 3.60GHz  $239.99         12791                      53.30                        2518                                10.49   
Intel Core i5-9600K @ 3.70GHz  $279.99         13452                      48.05                        2674                                 9.55

For similar price of Ryzen 7, i5 has large single thread performance gain over Ryzen (130%[Ryzen] vs 160%[i5-9600k] over fx chip) while still having decent multithread. Also the 8600k is supposed to be good for overclocking. Once you get above these ($300+), you pay something like $100 more for 5% increase in single thread performance and then $500 more for the next 5%...

Also, E-2126G ($254) and E-2136 ($284) JUST came out, they are basically i7-8700 series ($439.98  15152 34.44 2628 5.97) xeon equivalents with slightly lower turbo but much lower price than the i7.... if you dont plan on major overclocking (these are multiplier locked, but you can likely set the turbo power limits)..these might be worth looking into.

[cdev]

What about AMD's "epyc" or whatever its called? Its a server class chip.

A Chinese company also sells them, but AMD makes them, don't know if they are available elsewhere (probably not) or any cheaper that way.

[technix]

What about AMD's "epyc" or whatever its called? Its a server class chip.

A Chinese company also sells them, but AMD makes them, don't know if they are available elsewhere (probably not) or any cheaper that way.

AFAIK those Chinese Epyc chips are sold only in China - I have a feeling that AMD licensed it out as a way to circumvent potential trade restrictions. Also I was talking about decommissioned server gear like Intel Xeon E5-1650v2 from 2013, not new ones.

Maybe consider Intel? You said single thread performance has priority, but do not want to not give-up multi-core (no low end chips).

I am still backing an overclocked Xeon E5-1650v2. Spec for spec it is almost the same as the highest end Ivy Bridge desktop chip i7-4960X Extreme Edition, including the unlocked multiplier. 12716 PassMarks at stock speed, it is on par with i5-8600K which is also a 6-core processor. It can be overclocked sky high like that Extreme Edition i7 and that Skylake i5 chips too, and it supports DDR3 Registered ECC memory which is much cheaper on the used market. Compared to that Skylake i5, E5-1650v2 has the benefit of 28 additional PCIe lanes on the CPU, allowing direct CPU connection of NVMe SSD, additional graphics cards, or even one of those decommissioned Xeon Phi coprocessor cards. If you round up the overall cost, the E5-1650v2 might be the best bang for the buck for a high end system.

[Simon]

Well I looked at the chepest i7 and it was more than the Ryzen, for what I do it won't make any difference and it's same money for flops at worse. Parts are on order so no changing that.

[bob225]

At the end the day its down to budget and your own personal requirements

My X99 5820k (2011-3) is still as good as the day I built it 4 years ago it still keeps up with the more modern cpus (passmark of 12990, single core 2021)

[cdev]

These are servers that are being removed from service? Sometimes they sell for very little. I dont run my computer all the time so that might make sense for me as a development platform, as I want to get into machine learning.
If it supports PCIv3 atomics + is very cheap.

Could you tell me a bit more? I am on a very tight budget.

What about AMD's "epyc" or whatever its called? Its a server class chip.

A Chinese company also sells them, but AMD makes them, don't know if they are available elsewhere (probably not) or any cheaper that way.

AFAIK those Chinese Epyc chips are sold only in China - I have a feeling that AMD licensed it out as a way to circumvent potential trade restrictions. Also I was talking about decommissioned server gear like Intel Xeon E5-1650v2 from 2013, not new ones.

Maybe consider Intel? You said single thread performance has priority, but do not want to not give-up multi-core (no low end chips).

I am still backing an overclocked Xeon E5-1650v2. Spec for spec it is almost the same as the highest end Ivy Bridge desktop chip i7-4960X Extreme Edition, including the unlocked multiplier. 12716 PassMarks at stock speed, it is on par with i5-8600K which is also a 6-core processor. It can be overclocked sky high like that Extreme Edition i7 and that Skylake i5 chips too, and it supports DDR3 Registered ECC memory which is much cheaper on the used market. Compared to that Skylake i5, E5-1650v2 has the benefit of 28 additional PCIe lanes on the CPU, allowing direct CPU connection of NVMe SSD, additional graphics cards, or even one of those decommissioned Xeon Phi coprocessor cards. If you round up the overall cost, the E5-1650v2 might be the best bang for the buck for a high end system.

[technix]

At the end the day its down to budget and your own personal requirements

My X99 5820k (2011-3) is still as good as the day I built it 4 years ago it still keeps up with the more modern cpus (passmark of 12990, single core 2021)

Intel has been stagnating for quite a while since Nehalem really. Here is a comparison with the Xeon E3-1230 series across generations: (I have that Xeon E3-1231v3, and this series was fairly popular in China before Skylake as a high end mainstream desktop processor over corresponding high end mainstream i7, since it is usually 0.1-0.2GHz slower than that i7, lacked overclocking support, while cost almost as low as the high end i5)

Pulled out a lot of data and let's see...

Passmark doesn't have a score for E-2134 which is the best approximation of what E3-1230v7 would be should the old naming scheme is kept. The E-2146G really is a better approximation of E3-1245v7.

[Mr. Scram]

AFAIK those Chinese Epyc chips are sold only in China - I have a feeling that AMD licensed it out as a way to circumvent potential trade restrictions. Also I was talking about decommissioned server gear like Intel Xeon E5-1650v2 from 2013, not new ones.

I am still backing an overclocked Xeon E5-1650v2. Spec for spec it is almost the same as the highest end Ivy Bridge desktop chip i7-4960X Extreme Edition, including the unlocked multiplier. 12716 PassMarks at stock speed, it is on par with i5-8600K which is also a 6-core processor. It can be overclocked sky high like that Extreme Edition i7 and that Skylake i5 chips too, and it supports DDR3 Registered ECC memory which is much cheaper on the used market. Compared to that Skylake i5, E5-1650v2 has the benefit of 28 additional PCIe lanes on the CPU, allowing direct CPU connection of NVMe SSD, additional graphics cards, or even one of those decommissioned Xeon Phi coprocessor cards. If you round up the overall cost, the E5-1650v2 might be the best bang for the buck for a high end system.

Ivy Bridge technology is both woefully inefficient and insecure compared to modern chips. Not something to invest in at this point.

[technix]

These are servers that are being removed from service? Sometimes they sell for very little. I dont run by computer all the time so that might make sense for me as a development platform, as I want to get into machine learning.

Could you tell me a bit more? I am on a very tight budget.

These are individual components pulled from decommissioned servers. In some cases rach-mounted servers have proprietary motherboards, but processor, RAM modules and expansion cards are usually standardized components. You can buy used, decommissioned server processor, RAM and peripherals for very cheap from various online sellers, and put those into a matching motherboard and build a cheap but powerful system.

In their official documentation Intel maintained a separation of server chipsets and desktop chipsets as separate market segments while processors themselves used the same socket and are often electrically compatible, before Skylake Intel never enforced this separation and motherboard vendors often added support to both desktop and server processors to the motherboard regardless of the market segment of the motherboard based on that electrical compatibility.

This lead to my suggesting the E5-1650v2, which is spec for spec effectively an i7-3970X (top-tier Ivy Bridge desktop chip) with 3MB less cache, 0.1GHz lower top turbo clock speed, but with support for ECC memory (cheap due to limited support not allowing the supply on the used market drain up fast enough,) faster DDR3-1866 RAM over DDR3-1600, close to 3x more memory (allowing for 8x 16GB memory modules for 128GB total,) supports PCIe 3.0 over the desktop chip's PCIe 2.0 (almost doubles NVMe performance,) has 20W less TDP (either a save on electric bill or a good amount of overclocking headroom, since both chip has unlocked clock multiplier) than the desktop chip, and costs a little over half as much even back when they are sold at MSRP.

Ivy Bridge technology is both woefully inefficient and insecure compared to modern chips. Not something to invest in at this point.

If you are building a mission critical server, buy the latest stuff with security patches applied. If you are just using it as a workstation behind a firewall, you might be able to get away with the older components for the cheap. If your motherboard has a socketed BIOS chip (like my Asus Z9PE-D16C/2L) and you have a programmer suitable for it (can be the CH341-based cheapies, universal programmer like TL866, or even just an Arduino with appropriate programming) you can even find BIOS modding tools to add those patches yourself (and new features like NVMe.)