Author Topic: Bare bone PC - recomendation?  (Read 7450 times)

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Offline Monkeh

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #50 on: June 07, 2020, 02:04:40 am »
Also when I find my work process limited by computer performance, with a single disk or Window's horrendously performing Storage Spaces in any of various configurations, it will be storage throughput which is limiting performance.  With my Areca HBA or SATA SSD, performance is CPU limited with the HBA providing better overall performance than the SSD.

So from my perspective, people using SSDs are just barely catching up to the performance that I became used to more than 10 years ago.  The difference is they can do so at much lower cost albeit for less storage space.

Now try something not bottlenecked by SATA.

And how does that help when the CPU or RAM is the limiting factor?

I am using something not bottlenecked by SATA, a big high performance HBA.

Well, part of the reason you're CPU limited is driving an AHCI or similar controller which is simply inefficient at this task.. You are not going to see better performance out of your array of spinning missed seeks than a proper SSD, and you're consuming an order of magnitude (at least) more power, let alone space, to even begin to get close.

Also sorry not sorry, no time in my life to listen to that particular Linus on any subject.
 

Offline David Hess

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #51 on: June 08, 2020, 12:05:51 pm »
Well, part of the reason you're CPU limited is driving an AHCI or similar controller which is simply inefficient at this task.

There was no significant difference between the Areca HBA in pass-through and AHCI.  AHCI is lower performance but not to the extent that it mattered in real world applications with single disks as opposed to synthetic benchmarks.  This might explain the poor performance of Windows Storage Spaces and I may know in a few weeks when I pick up another Areca HBA if I run some tests on that.

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You are not going to see better performance out of your array of spinning missed seeks than a proper SSD, and you're consuming an order of magnitude (at least) more power, let alone space, to even begin to get close.

All true but even including the HBA, capacity per cost is an order of magnitude higher and funds are not unlimited.

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Also sorry not sorry, no time in my life to listen to that particular Linus on any subject.

So like Socrates' friends?
 

Offline Mechatrommer

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #52 on: June 08, 2020, 01:03:47 pm »
And how does that help when the CPU or RAM is the limiting factor?
thats the sign for a call to i9-10900K ;D
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline David Hess

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #53 on: June 08, 2020, 06:55:42 pm »
And how does that help when the CPU or RAM is the limiting factor?

thats the sign for a call to i9-10900K ;D

No ECC?  No thanks. (1)

The RYZEN 7 3700X is at the top of my list of acceptable processors.

(1) The i9-10900K supports ECC but it requires a south bridge which supports its also which means a very expensive motherboard.  Maybe there is a reasonably priced Intel solution but Intel has made it too difficult to find.
 

Offline wraper

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #54 on: June 08, 2020, 07:03:09 pm »
The i9-10900K supports ECC but it requires a south bridge which supports its also which means a very expensive motherboard.  Maybe there is a reasonably priced Intel solution but Intel has made it too difficult to find.
No chipset will make it support ECC because it does not. Also there was no north/southbridge for more than a decade. Including your motherboard With Phenom II.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2020, 07:16:10 pm by wraper »
 

Offline David Hess

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #55 on: June 08, 2020, 07:03:37 pm »
The i9-10900K supports ECC but it requires a south bridge which supports its also which means a very expensive motherboard.  Maybe there is a reasonably priced Intel solution but Intel has made it too difficult to find.

No chipset will make it support ECC because it does not.

The first reference I found said it supports ECC, with chipset support, but Intel says it does not:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/199332/intel-core-i9-10900k-processor-20m-cache-up-to-5-30-ghz.html

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Also there was no north/southbridge for more than a decade. Including your motherboard With Phenom II.

The south bridge still exists in the form of the I/O controller hub.  Intel ties ECC support to their south bridge for reasons of market segmentation.

Intel calls it the PCH (Platform Controller Hub) now but it is the same thing and AMD has an equivalent.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2020, 07:11:33 pm by David Hess »
 

Offline wraper

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #56 on: June 08, 2020, 07:08:46 pm »
The i9-10900K supports ECC but it requires a south bridge which supports its also which means a very expensive motherboard.  Maybe there is a reasonably priced Intel solution but Intel has made it too difficult to find.

No chipset will make it support ECC because it does not.

The first reference I found said it supports ECC, with chipset support, but Intel says it does not:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/199332/intel-core-i9-10900k-processor-20m-cache-up-to-5-30-ghz.html
Among consumer processors ECC is only supported on some bottom end CPUs like Pentium or i3 lines.
 

Offline wraper

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #57 on: June 08, 2020, 07:15:38 pm »
The south bridge still exists in the form of the I/O controller hub.  Intel ties ECC support to their south bridge for reasons of market segmentation.
It's called PCH for Intel and calling it southbridge is not correct since it isn't functionally. Although I stand corrected about your motherboard, AM2/3 still had southbridge. I even have 2 of them laying around.
 

Offline David Hess

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #58 on: June 08, 2020, 07:19:31 pm »
Among consumer processors ECC is only supported on some bottom end CPUs like Pentium or i3 lines.

I'm probably thinking of some of the low end Xeons which use the same socket as their consumer processors.  When used in a desktop board, they don't support ECC but do when used in a board with a server chipset, they do.

 

Offline Mechatrommer

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #59 on: June 08, 2020, 07:30:39 pm »
No ECC?  No thanks. (1)
suit youself ;D i've been with no ECC since my 1st PC. the Xeon server i mentioned earlier has ECC but i bought it because its cheap, not because it has ECC. if ECC is the problem in Intel's, its should be viral since decades ago in the muggle's world. maybe i'll consider it if i want to make up a business server for consumers. btw, as for now the Xeon server will stay to become my secondary (specialized) computing machine, probably as a test (prototype) server in the future.
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline wraper

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #60 on: June 08, 2020, 07:34:13 pm »
No ECC?  No thanks. (1)
suit youself ;D i've been with no ECC since my 1st PC. the Xeon server i mentioned earlier has ECC but i bought it because its cheap, not because it has ECC. if ECC is the problem in Intel's, its should be viral since decades ago in the muggle's world. maybe i'll consider it if i want to make up a business server for consumers. btw, as for now the Xeon server will stay to become my secondary (specialized) computing machine, probably as a test (prototype) server in the future.
I've had enough of non testable RAM problems with Intel and AMD based computers causing me a lot of PITA. So ECC is very welcomed for me.
 
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Offline Mechatrommer

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #61 on: June 08, 2020, 08:07:43 pm »
i think its easy to diy ram validation/stress test program (or maybe its already there in the net) one way i can think of is to run 2 same simulations at the same time to use different memory space, if 2 outputs are the same, memory is good. or just make 2 different compilations/outputs at different time even if they will use the same memory space and compare, if outputs are the same, memory/compilation/work is good. do that many millions of time in few months 24/7 if need more assurance. but i'm yet to have the need to make the simulation program as i havent notice a single problem relating to this that justify itself as a significant concern... or are those nonreliable non-ECC/motherboard good brand names? like Kingston or Samsung etc? or were they handled with good ESD practice? btw, ECC is already on premium price so anybody requires that premium grade should not complaint about the price they are going to pay, ymmv.
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline wraper

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #62 on: June 08, 2020, 08:13:30 pm »
i think its easy to diy ram validation/stress test program (or maybe its already there in the net) one way i can think of is to run 2 same simulations at the same time to use different memory space, if 2 outputs are the same, memory is good. or just make 2 different compilations/outputs at different time even if they will use the same memory space and compare, if outputs are the same, memory/compilation/work is good. do that many millions of time in few months 24/7 if need more assurance. but i'm yet to have the need to make the simulation program as i havent notice a single problem relating to this that justify itself as a significant concern... or are those nonreliable non-ECC/motherboard good brand names? like Kingston or Samsung etc? or were they handled with good ESD practice? btw, ECC is already on premium price so anybody requires that premium grade should not complaint about the price they are going to pay, ymmv.
There is Memtest86 and other programs. The issue is everything can be perfect according to them after running for 24+ hours. Yet you may have BSOD once in a few weeks regardless until you replace the RAM. Also you are not even sure if it was caused by RAM to begin with. Memory tests do not help much for detecting marginal RAM issues. The fact there is no ECC in consumer computers with current sizes of RAM is a pure nonsense from technical point of view. Basically everything in computer uses some sort of ECC, except goddamn RAM. It's a goddamn marketing to distinguish server products.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2020, 08:19:38 pm by wraper »
 
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Offline Mechatrommer

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #63 on: June 08, 2020, 08:18:51 pm »
i will have BSOD if i configure my OS wrongly, usually due to broken/old/incompatible drivers or even broken graphics card. recently i usually have BSOD when wake up from hibernation, it turned out to be dying PSU (loose/broken connectors) issue. changing PSU and its gone.
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline wraper

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #64 on: June 08, 2020, 08:23:59 pm »
i will have BSOD if i configure my OS wrongly, usually due to broken/old/incompatible drivers or even broken graphics card. recently i usually have BSOD when wake up from hibernation, it turned out to be dying PSU (loose/broken connectors) issue. changing PSU and its gone.
But you don't know for sure if any of BSODs were caused by those. And nope, BSOD because of bad GPU is much less common than because of RAM. It likely may be not even broken. Just does not work with particular computer properly at XMP or SPD timings. Especially considering that RAM chips usually are of lower speed grade than sticker/SPD/XMP may let you think.
 

Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #65 on: June 09, 2020, 08:24:25 am »
last year i bought HP Z800 12 cores Xeon server

Well, strictly speaking, the z800 is a workstation, not a server (HP's servers were called 'ProLiant' until the whole part of the business was spun out to HPE). It supports ECC but lacks any of the features like remote management, hot-swap capable drive bays and fans, or redundant PSUs which are normally found in servers.

Back then the z800 was different from other dual processor workstations (i.e. Dell Precision T7500) in that it used two 5520 chipset PCHs to make all PCIe slots available even in single CPU configurations (other workstations couldn't use the slots assigned to CPU 2 if only a single processor was installed). Unfortunately HP didn't do this for its successors.

If you need a server then I'd look at the ProLiant series. Which often are also cheaper than a workstation ;)

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i was afraid i will miss out, but it seems there are still plenty Z800 in ebay to choose from.

Indeed, but that is because it's been obsolete for several years and it's Nehalem and Westmere XEONs are affected by several major security flaws for which no microcode update exists.

In addition, the z800 has a weak spot which is the proprietary PSU, which over the lifetime has proven to be unreliable and prone to fail. The successor z820 (which uses the same physical shape for the PSU) got a redesigned power supply which was a lot more reliable (and which was also used in the z840), but this one doesn't work in the z800.

If I had to buy something today then I'd rather opt for the HP z620 or z820 which use Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge XEON E5 processors (all which are notably faster than Nehalem and Westmere) and which not only are mmuch more reliable but also offer goodies such as USB3, UEFI and even NVMe boot support (retrofitted by HP through a BIOS update).

My recommendation would be the z620 since it's less bulky, also all its PCIe slots are connected to the primary CPU so they all are usable when only one processor is installed. I'm using one as my gaming PC (1x XEON E5-2667v2, 64GB RAM, Micron 9200 PRO 3.8TB NVMe SSD,  Geforce RTX 2060 Super) ;)

Thanks to early E5 servers and workstations being retired, prices for systems and especially processors have come down dramatically. it's probably the current sweet spot in terms of price/performance right now.

« Last Edit: June 09, 2020, 08:34:36 am by Wuerstchenhund »
 
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Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #66 on: June 09, 2020, 09:00:13 am »
No ECC?  No thanks. (1)
suit youself ;D i've been with no ECC since my 1st PC.

A lot of people have. And most of the time it appears to work fine. But soft errors are a real thing, and when they happen then the user doesn't necessarily sees any immediate effects (like crashes or errors). Sometimes this affects a non-used memory segment, and on other occasions it might well affect a segment that contains data and results in silent data corruption.

Remember "bit rot" (sudden change of individual bits on a magnetic hard drive)? There's a good chance that most of the people who are affected were actually having undetected memory issues. Because as wraper said, everything else in a PC is already ECC protected. Also because "bit rot" seems to be mostly a problem for consumers and not the professional sector or enterprise (where workstations and servers use ECC).

The highly inflated cost of ECC is mostly down to market political reasons (i.e. greed) and not because the additional four bits of memory plus some simple logic would actually be cost prohibitive.
 

Offline BravoV

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Re: Bare bone PC - recomendation?
« Reply #67 on: June 09, 2020, 11:54:04 am »
The highly inflated cost of ECC is mostly down to market political reasons (i.e. greed) and not because the additional four bits of memory plus some simple logic would actually be cost prohibitive.

Ugraded mine and wifey Ryzen desktops, both now on ECC as price currently quite reasonable, and yes, here locally its cheaper than those yucky led bling2 GSkill memory.  :palm:

My Samsung's OEM B-Die ECC are underrated 2400@CL17 at factory SPD  ::), managed to bump up to 2933 without even adding any voltage to it, and currently I'm happy at 3200@CL16@1.38V no problem nor error correction logged.

Yes, I did try deliberately at almost stable RAM speed at crazy timing just to test the ECC mechanism, and it works on Ryzen, Windows WHEA shows nicely.  :-+

« Last Edit: June 09, 2020, 12:04:04 pm by BravoV »
 


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