Bare bone PC - recomendation?

[wraper]

Exactly, which is why you are not really much worse off using older i7 cpus...

What you suggested was made with 22nm process though. So there was noticeable performance bump since then. But since 7 series not really given that core count and frequency is the same.

[SilverSolder]

an intel fan... always... https://www.pcworld.com/article/3540757/intel-core-i9-10900k-comet-lake-chip-price-specs-and-features.html and will build custom setup anytime as NUC like equivalent still cant deal with my storage need. ps: although i still think hyper/multi threading is a placebo buzz... ymmv.

That looks like a serious chip...

[wraper]

That looks like a serious chip...

Intel’s Core i9-10900K 10 Core Flagship Mainstream CPU Reportedly Consumes As Much Power As AMD’s 32 Core Threadripper 3970X

[SilverSolder]

That looks like a serious chip...

Intel’s Core i9-10900K 10 Core Flagship Mainstream CPU Reportedly Consumes As Much Power As AMD’s 32 Core Threadripper 3970X

The Threadripper (and Ryzens) also look dead serious.  Hmm, this has gotten interesting again recently, I see.

[Mechatrommer]

yes as i said wonderful time. i was searching for top notch intel CPU few years back, i think the one Dave used for video editing, Xtreme Edition if i'm not mistaken, for gamers or such... the price is simply, unaffordable, 4 digits price in USD. now we have 10 cores at half a K nice! Ryzen also offered interesting performance, including the unaffordable 30+ cores. but stability wise i dont know, never came nearer any one of those, so the stereotype remains, Intel CPU is always the most stable out of factory. i havent check closely on Ryzen stability/compatibility issues with other HW/SW, but istr i've read some. so if you want to put an item in your cart, make sure you search for <insert your favourite item> "problem" / "issue" (or any other relevant keywords that you should not expect) in google first before hitting "confirm buy" button.

[David Hess]

The only CPU instability problems I have had in the past 20 years have been related to hyperthreading on Intel CPUs and obscure power saving states like C1E where cache is evacuated and powered down.

[Mechatrommer]

The only CPU instability problems I have had in the past 20 years have been related to hyperthreading on Intel CPUs and obscure power saving states like C1E where cache is evacuated and powered down.

while comparing between Intel i9-10900K and AMD Ryzen 9 3900X...


since 3900X performs better on most SW (5:58) so i dig more into its problem if any.. here is the CPU is locking to non-boost freq when we request it to do a job...
https://community.amd.com/thread/244682
https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/04/amds-ryzen-boost-clocks-are-a-problem-but-not-for-you/

this kind of report will make me stay away from non-Intel CPU...ymmv.

[wraper]

since 3900X performs better on most SW (5:58) so i dig more into its problem if any.. here is the CPU is locking to non-boost freq when we request it to do a job...
https://community.amd.com/thread/244682
https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/04/amds-ryzen-boost-clocks-are-a-problem-but-not-for-you/

this kind of report will make me stay away from non-Intel CPU...ymmv.

So you are concerned about boost clock bios bug which was fixed like a week or two after it was discovered and completely ignore all security bugs of Intel CPUs?

[Mechatrommer]

practically it wont affect performance and normal (non-target) users imho. and its fixed in 10th gen, https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21167782/intel-processor-flaw-root-of-trust-csme-security-vulnerability even if its still not fixed, performance is the 1st reason why people buy a CPU, hardware AES is bell and whistle.

[wraper]

practically it wont affect performance and normal (non-target) users imho. and its fixed in 10th gen, https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21167782/intel-processor-flaw-root-of-trust-csme-security-vulnerability even if its still not fixed, performance is the 1st reason why people buy a CPU, hardware AES is bell and whistle.

That's only one out of many security bugs discovered in the last few years.

[Doctorandus_P]

When I was young I started saving for a new PC at the same day I bought a new PC, because I knew that in 3 or 4 years time it would be hopelessly obsolete.
Now I'm typing this text on a 11 year old DualCore which is still chugging along fine with Linux Mint.

There are still plenty of companies who throw away all their old PC's and buy new ones every three years, and these are bought in bulk by specialized companies and sold for reasonable prices.

As for the processor speed, it's quite useless to ask here with nobody even knowing which programs you run.
So make a list of the programs you want to run, make some estimate of the horsepower you need by running those programs on the PC you have now and compare it with the CPU ratings on cpubenchmark.net.

My guess is that you do not need a fast PC and a 3 year old second hand for around EUR200 would be enough.

[rdl]

Yep. Until a short time ago I was using a 3GHz Core2Du0 (2008 vintage) as my daily driver. Got a little concerned about using Windows 7 online, so I bought an off-lease Lenovo i5-3xxx for $150 and put Linux on it and it works fine for just about everything I do (except games, have a different PC for that). The C2D was still perfectly adequate and in hindsight, I probably should have just put Linux on it and saved some money.

[David Hess]

With my 10 year old Phenom 2 940 it is not CPU speed which holds it back but physical RAM.  It has 8 GB which was more than average 10 years ago but is now barely adequate.  I could upgrade it but the cost of the RAM would be more than a new and significantly faster CPU, motherboard, and RAM.

[wraper]

With my 10 year old Phenom 2 940 it is not CPU speed which holds it back but physical RAM.  It has 8 GB which was more than average 10 years ago but is now barely adequate.  I could upgrade it but the cost of the RAM would be more than a new and significantly faster CPU, motherboard, and RAM.

If anything holds it back, it's lack of SSD. I cannot come up with any task except something ultra specialized where 8GB of RAM would hold back this old CPU.

[David Hess]

With my 10 year old Phenom 2 940 it is not CPU speed which holds it back but physical RAM.  It has 8 GB which was more than average 10 years ago but is now barely adequate.  I could upgrade it but the cost of the RAM would be more than a new and significantly faster CPU, motherboard, and RAM.

If anything holds it back, it's lack of SSD. I cannot come up with any task except something ultra specialized where 8GB of RAM would hold back this old CPU.

SSDs I can add and it has one for the page file.  The main volume is an Areca HBA which is plenty fast.  Meanwhile, I regularly run out of RAM.

[wraper]

SSDs I can add and it has one for the page file.  The main volume is an Areca HBA which is plenty fast.  Meanwhile, I regularly run out of RAM.

It's frankly pretty lame to use SSD just for page file. And regardless what HDDs and what RAID you use, they completely suck compared to cheapest SSD used for OS and programs. Whatever linear transfer speed you have, seek time is still there.

[Mechatrommer]

I regularly run out of RAM.

i dont know what you are running. a server maybe? last year i bought HP Z800 12 cores Xeon server with built-in 24GB DDR3 at iirc $250 excl shipping. i dont have a specific use for it i just dont want to miss a chance. later add 48GB DDR3 to it at less than $100, snapped in 2X Xeon X5690 to get 3.46GHz, 120GB SSD and used Radeon RX470 at dirt cheap.. with its 72GB RAM i tried HFSS running 4 or 5 solvers at a time. the 12 cores is the one got throttled, the RAM is barely touched. i was afraid i will miss out, but it seems there are still plenty Z800 in ebay to choose from. btw i'm still with my 3GB RAM 10years old Q9400 quad core, never need more, even Altium R14 and AutoCAD R14 worked quite well. but whenever i need more serious work, Z800 is there standing by.

[olkipukki]

I am planning on investing in a barebone PC + a small screen.

On the other hand do I hope to get the PC as cheap as possible, since it's only meant for lab usage.

That's contradict each other.

[olkipukki]

I don't know stability of a Ryzen as despite I've built two of them, all for friends, I've never personally used either.

Almost 11 months since I have build "budget" 3600X based Ryzen workstation  for a daily usage and real-time interaction (such as Altium etc.)  As far as today, no issues at all.

The next step would be upgrade to 3950X and PCIe Gen4 primary storage; somethings I wish more cores available, especially then running VMs in parallels.

Another AMD workstation in progress for specific tasks, aka EPYC 7551P (1st Gen) on Win10, didn't fail yet.

[David Hess]

SSDs I can add and it has one for the page file.  The main volume is an Areca HBA which is plenty fast.  Meanwhile, I regularly run out of RAM.

It's frankly pretty lame to use SSD just for page file. And regardless what HDDs and what RAID you use, they completely suck compared to cheapest SSD used for OS and programs. Whatever linear transfer speed you have, seek time is still there.

Do you think I did not test it?  Operation and booting from the Areca HBA is *faster* than a Micron MX500 series SSD.  The only place where the SSD is faster is benchmarked random *read* access.

Under heavy load, Windows reports an access time to the HBA of barely more than 0.1 milliseconds because of prefetching and write coalescing on the HBA.  Note that this requires write buffering in Windows to be deliberately disabled because it just gets in the way by causing buffer bloat.

Now maybe you are thinking of higher performance PCIe SSDs but they are difficult to take advantage of with old hardware and would face the same interface limitations as a good HBA.

I regularly run out of RAM.

i dont know what you are running. a server maybe?

Just Firefox takes 4GB.  Chrome is even worse.

Applications I use for work are less demanding than Firefox and various games.

[Mechatrommer]

ahh the fun of Firefox!.. when i open many Firefox windows and tabs, things start to lag badly, checking the task manager its usually will consume 1-2GB of ram and some unknown processing 1-2 cores at behind, maybe some scripts not sure. the fix is simple "End Process" button and restart then carefully select out the unecessary windows. its clean again until i reopen another many windows/tabs. Chrome shows much much more stable operations but some websites will show errors when Firefox still can open them. both are old unsupported version in WinXP though maybe that explained failed to open scenarios in Chrome (unsupported certificate whatever it is), so i use both to save one another's arse, mainly Firefox (albeit its unstable nature) due to easy GUI to save bookmarks and shortcuts buttons etc. anyway they are not like working on critical project files that need saving from time to time, so its not critical, just end task and restart. and the wonder of both is i can start again to where i was even on power outage, so browsing experience is uniterrupted with many power outages, hibernates cycle for many many days. the time when i got "Windows resource depletion" warning is when i open all chrome, firefox, photoshop, altium, autocad at one go, but it seldomly happened and i trained myself to make a habit not to work on many unrelated projects at a time.

[David Hess]

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.

[Monkeh]

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.

[David Hess]

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.

[SilverSolder]

Software is probably a bigger performance limitation than hardware, these days.