Rich Freeman wrote: > On Wed, Apr 17, 2024 at 6:33 AM Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On the AM5 link, I found a mobo that I kinda like. I still wish it had >> more PCIe slots tho. > AM5 has 28 PCIe lanes. Anything above that comes from a switch on the > motherboard. > > 0.1% of the population cares about having anything on their > motherboard besides a 16x slot for the GPU. So, that's what all the > cheaper boards deliver these days. The higher end boards often have a > switch and will deliver extra lanes, and MAYBE those will go into > another PCIe slot (probably not wired for 16x but it might have that > form factor), and more often those go into additional M.2 slots and > USB3 ports. (USB3 is very high bandwidth, especially later > generations, and eats up PCIe lanes as a result.) > > Keep in mind those 28 v5 lanes have the bandwidth of over 100 v3 > lanes, which is part of why the counts are being reduced. The problem > is that hardware to do that conversion is kinda niche right now. It > is much easier to bifurcate a larger slot, but that doesn't buy you > more lanes. > >> It supports not only the Ryzen 9 >> series but also supports Ryzen 5 series. > That is because the 9 and 5 are branding and basically convey no > information at all besides the price point. > > The Ryzen 7 1700X has about half the performance of the Ryzen 5 7600X, > and that would be because the first chip came out in 2017, and the > second came out in 2022 and is three generations newer. > > Likewise the intel branding of "i3" or "i7" and so on also conveys no > information beyond the general price level they were introduced at. > You can expect the bigger numbers to offer more performance/features > than the smaller ones OF THE SAME GENERATION. The same branding keeps > getting re-applied to later generations of chips, and IMO it is > intentionally confusing. > >> I looked up the Ryzen 5 7600X >> and 8600G. I think the X has no video and the G has video support. > Both have onboard graphics. The G designates zen1-3 chips with a GPU > built in, and all zen4 CPUs have this as a standard feature. The > 7600X is zen4. > > See what I mean about the branding getting confusing? >
Yep. I see that. It's easy enough to confuse me. Having something that is inherently confusing just makes it worse. I think some manufacturers do this sort of thing on purpose. Not just computer stuff either. >> I >> haven't researched yet to see if the mobo requires the G since it has >> video ports, two to be more precise which is the minimum I need. > All AM5 CPUs have GPUs, but in general motherboards with video outputs > do not require the CPU to have a GPU built in. The ports just don't > do anything if this is lacking, and you would need a dedicated GPU. > OK. I read that a few times. If I want to use the onboard video I have to have a certain CPU that supports it? Do those have something so I know which is which? Or do I read that as all the CPUs support onboard video but if one plugs in a video card, that part of the CPU isn't used? The last one makes more sense but asking to be sure. >> Anyway, those two CPUs are cheaper than the Ryzen 9 I was looking at. I >> could upgrade later on as prices drop. I'm sure a new Ryzen is lurking >> around the corner. > Zen5 is supposedly coming out later this year. It will be very > expensive. Zen4 is still kinda expensive I believe though I haven't > gone looking recently at prices. I have a zen4 system and it was > expensive (particularly the motherboard, and the DDR5 is more > expensive, and if you want NVMe that does v5 that is more expensive as > well). That could mean a slight price drop for the things I'm looking at then. One can hope. Right??? > > > I have a FX-8350 8 core CPU now. Would the Ryzen 5's mentioned above be >> a good bit faster, a lot, a whole lot? > So, that very much depends on what you're doing. > > Single-thread performance of that 7600X is 2-3x faster. Total > performance is almost 5x faster. The 7600X will use moderately less > power at full load, and I'm guessing WAY less power at less than full > load. It will also have much better performance than those numbers > reflect for very short bursts of work, since modern CPUs can boost. > > That's just pure CPU performance. > > The DDR5 performance of the recent CPU is MUCH better than that of the > DDR3 you're using now. Your old motherboard might be PCIe v2 (I think > the controller for that was on the motherboard back then?). If so > each lane delivers 8x more bandwidth on the recent CPU, which matters > a great deal for graphics, or for NVMe performance if you're using an > NVMe that supports it and have a workload that benefits from it. > > Gaming tends to be a workload that benefits the most from all of these > factors. If your system is just acting as a NAS and all the storage > is on hard drives, I'm guessing you won't see much of a difference at > all, except maybe in boot time, especially if you put the OS on an > NVMe. > > If this is just for your NAS I would not drop all that money on zen4, > let alone zen5. I'd look for something older, possibly used, that is > way cheaper. > This wouldn't be for a NAS box. The new build would become my main rig. My current rig would become the new NAS box. The current CPU supports AES so that should speed up encryption. I'm undecided on whether to strip out my Cooler Master case and put the new build in it or put new build in the new case with massive drive capacity. Putting new build in the Cooler Master would make more sense. Thing is, down time. No TV unless I can rig up a spare rig to use for a day or two. Keep in mind, gotta install Gentoo as well. The large drive capacity of the new case makes a lot more sense for the NAS box tho. I do like the Cooler Master. It's massive. However, it does sit comfortable next to my desk. The only downside, I have to watch when the DVD tray is out. It's at the perfect height for my knee to hit and break. Well, I have a lot going on here. Right now, I have Seamonkey running, mostly for email. Web surfing isn't very good on a LOT of sites with Seamonkey. Three profiles of Firefox. I have different profiles for different things. That way I can split up add-ons since some clash with each other plus, I have enough tabs for each one already. I also have Qbittorrent running. I have five instances of Dolphin running. Konsole with several tabs. I quite often have Krusader running as root, I use it to edit files owned and only accessible by root. I also have Smplayer running with a long playlist. Sometimes my playlist can go into the hundreds of videos. I watch TV with it. I also have a few instances of mpv running at times as well. On occasion, when I'm downloading pics from cell phone or camera, I also have Digikam and another instance of Dolphin running. I keep this rig busy even when I'm doing nothing but watching TV. Right now, I'm using right at 20GBs of memory. To update things like gcc, LOo, Firefox or that big qt package, I close at least two Firefox profiles. Sometimes, I close Seamonkey or at least restart it so it uses a little less memory. I might add, simply right clicking on the desktop can take sometimes 20 or 30 seconds for the menu to pop up. Switching from one desktop to another can take several seconds, sometimes 8 or 10. This rig is getting slower. Actually, the software is just getting bigger. You get my meaning tho. I bet the old KDE3 would be blazingly fast compared to the rig I ran it on originally. >> Still, I need more memory too. 32GBs just isn't much when running >> Seamonkey, three Firefox profiles and torrent software. > Ok, if this is for a desktop you'll benefit more from a newer CPU. > RAM is really expensive though these days. Getting something > off-lease is going to save you a fortune as the RAM is practically > free in those. You can get something with 32GB of DDR4 for $150 or > less in a SFF PC. Given the new rig can have 128GBs, I assume it comes in 32GB sticks. I'd get 32GBs at first. Maybe a month or so later get another 32GB. That'll get me 64Gbs. Later on, a good sale maybe, buy another 32GB or a 64GB set and max it out. That's how I usually do it. I always try to buy sticks so that I don't have to remove any when upgrading tho. >> I'm not running >> out but at times, it's using a lot of it. I was hoping for a mobo that >> would handle more than 128GB but that is a lot of memory. > Any recent motherboard will handle 128GB. You'll just need to use > large DIMMs as the limit is on the number of channels/slots. > All the boards I'm looking at have four slots. Plugs. Whatever. I think I've only ever had one rig with just two slots. It was given to me so can't complain. >> Most of them seem to >> test gaming speeds which isn't of much use anyway for me. I'm more >> about compiling and such. > Compiling is similar to gaming, but tends to be more multi-threaded. > Unless you're building in tmpfs the storage and memory performance are > both very relevant. A modern CPU will have a noticeable improvement. > > That said, if you just mean that you install packages on Gentoo once > in a while, I'm not sure I'd spend a fortune just to make my > background package updates happen faster. It is a nice-to-have > though. > > If you're doing software development and often rebuild stuff, you'll notice > it. > >> This opens a new option that might be easier to accomplish. Still wish >> that mobo had more PCIe slots tho. > What you want exists - just not so much on consumer hardware. You'd > have to look for PCIe switches to try to get what you want. > Definitely possible if you use integrated graphics and then use the > 16x slot for a switch, and can find something that does what you want. > > If you want what you're looking for out of the box, this is the server > zen4 equivalent of the CPU you're looking at: > https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/h13ssl-nt > > All the RAM slots and PCIe slots you want, as well as M.2 slots and 8 > SATA ports. I saw one on eBay (just the board) for under $900, and > you can imagine what it costs to fill the rest out. Suffice it to say > any website of an authorized seller will say "call us for pricing." > I've looked at server type boards. I'd like to have one. I'd like one that has SAS ports. Most of those can expand out and handle a lot of drives. I may not need PCIe cards or just one, maybe. Thing is, price. I suspect they are very reliable and would last many years, decades even. The concern would be just getting to slow due to age and software growing. I wouldn't worry about it blowing smoke, just getting to outdated. Still, price tag. Even used ones are not cheap. I wish I could tho. I really wish I could. Heck, if I had room and budget, I'd have a rack type server. O_O LOL I'm just glad I noticed I have some options to allow me to start this and not rip my budget apart. CPU, mobo and memory all at one time, not cheap. Dale :-) :-)
