This is the (still evolving) parts list for the Great Beast, the machine build supported by the Help Stamp Out CVS In Your Lifetime fund. Prices (which may fluctuate before final build) are links to vendors).
We actually present three four different scenarios based on different processor-motherboard combos. “Tyro II” is a near-clone of HedgeMage’s power box built in February; “Haswell” is a proposal around the newest high-end Intel Core i7 4790K chip. “Xeon” is a proposal around a Xeon E3-1281 and ECC memory.
The fourth parts list (incomplete) is what TekSyndicate is presently contemplating based on the Xeon build.
I’m not considering more expensive AMD chips, as single-threaded performance is very important for the Beast’s anticipated job load and Intel seems currently to have a substantial edge there.
16GB memory is sold as pairs of 8GB modules, so the x2 in the tables below is actually four parts.
| Case | NZXT CA-H630F-M1 | $191.80 | Best case ergonomics ever. |
| PSU | SeaSonic SS-750KM3 | $139.99 | Reputed to be very quiet and reliable |
| Processor cooler | Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO | $33.03 | For reduced noise and better power efficiency |
| Case fan | Cooler Master MegaFlow (Black) | $21.99 | Quieter replacement for the stock case fan |
| Hard drive | Seagate SV-35 | $130.00 | 3TB. Supposedly built ultra-reliable for video surveillance. |
| Partial cost | $517.01 |
I’m leaving out the optical drive as those are very generic and trivial to scavenge from a decommissioned system. Also, I have a dual-port graphics card I intend to keep using.
Amazon reviews suggest the SV-35 may have reliability problems. This HGST Deskstar drive has been suggested as a replacement at the same price and capacity.
My regulars have good things to say about Samsung and Crucial SSDs. Intel used to make the only SSD controllers that didn’t suck, but apparently this has changed.
An important note about the CoolerMaster is here:
“The ony catch with that particular CPU cooler and (I assume) similar, is that depending on the board layout, it may interfere with the RAM modules if they are using large heat spreaders. My personal solution to that problem was to simply remove the heat spreaders and I haven’t had any reliability problems. Last time I was haunting overclocking circles, RAM cooling was seldom deemed necessary.”
Closed-loop water cooling such as the NZXT Kraken 41 ($109) has been suggested, but someone will need to explain to me why they’re enough better to justify a $70 price premium.
Amazon reviews also say the only less than excellent thing about the NZXT case is its fans, which aren’t as quiet as one might expect. Thus the aftermarjet MegaFlow fan.
| Processor | AMD FX-8350 | $179.99 | 4GHz clock, turbo to 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard | MSI 990FXA-GD80 V2 | $167.09 | Built for overclocking, has very stable 11-phase power |
| Memory | Patriot Viper 3 16GB x2 | $389.98 | DDR3 2133 (non-ECC) |
| SSD | Intel 530 120GB SSD | $79.99 | |
| Subtotal | $817.05 | ||
| Total cost | $1334.06 |
| Processor | Intel Core i7 4790K | $339.99 | Only addresses 32GB; memory speed tops out at 1600 |
| Motherboard | ASUS GRYPHON Z97 | $159.99 | |
| Memory | ADATA XPG V1.0 16GB x2 | $309.98 | DDR3 1600 (non-ECC) |
| SSD | Crucial M550 | $154.99 | 256GB M.2 device – connects direct to motherboard |
| Subtotal | $964.95 | ||
| Total | $1481.96 |
The possibility has been raised that we ought to buy 4GB memory modules rather than 8s, because this build will only take 32GB and 4-channel memory controllers are faster with 4 sticks in place.
| Processor | E5-1650 v3 | $574.99 | Addresses 768GB |
| Motherboard | Asrock X99 WS | $323.99 | Board supports 128GB |
| Memory | CT16G4VFD4213 x4 | $1319.96 | DDR4 2133 Registered ECC RAM 64GB (16×4) |
| SSD | Crucial M550 | $154.99 | 256GB M.2 device – connects direct to motherboard |
| Subtotal | $2219.11 | ||
| Total | $2890.94 |
This is what actually resides in the Great Beast. At the last moment TekSyndicate added and Enermax ECA3222 Tool-less 3.5/2.5 hotswap adapter withfront usb3 ports
Reading between the lines a bit, the E5-1630v3 appears to be a E-1620v3 that passed extra validation. The only spec different between the parts is clock speed; the 1620 runs at 3.5 Ghz (3.7 peak with ‘turboboost’), and the 1630 at 3.7 (3.8 turbo) Ghz.
You’re showing your age. That should be GB for RAM, not MB. And for CPU memory addressing range.
>You’re showing your age. That should be GB for RAM, not MB. And for CPU memory addressing range.
Fixed. And get off my lawn!
I’ve always found a lot of valuable information on building PCs at silentpcreview.com, especially as it appears you have a concern for the overall noise of the system.
Regarding ECC memory, I do believe that the whole cosmic ray thing is a little bit of a canard.
Non-ECC memory does have parity bits. Since it is incorrectable, the kernel usually just cores the app or panics. Double bit flip of -exactly- the correct type and silent corruption are essentially unheard of.
IIRC, ECC provides 1 bit correction and 2 bit detection. Its primary use case is for high-SLA servers that cannot afford to take the time to restart the applications or regenerate the lost data.
Another issue is the odds and chances. High quality studies done by Intel and others have shown that true cosmic ray bit flips are incredibly rare. Given the prevalence of the idea at the time (early 90’s) due to frequent memory corruption kernel panics, they ended up going back to dig deeper. The conclusion was 99%-99.99% of memory corruption was due to power problems. From AC line noise and under-voltage, to under-spec and under-filtered P/S, et cetera.
So get a high quality P/S (oh wait, you are) and a high quality, multi-phase mobo (oh wait, you are) as well as a high quality, line filtering UPS (guess what my bet would be) and put the price difference to better use.
>Closed-loop water cooling such as the NZXT Kraken 41 ($109) has been suggested, but someone will need to explain to me why they’re enough better to justify a $70 price premium.
Advantages: Off-CPU radiator puts less mechanical stress on the mobo mounts. Also allows larger radiators and larger, quieter fans.
Disadvantages: Fiddly installation, potential leak problems, problems finding a good point to mount the radiator.
Spec.org has no recent results for AMD (AMD guys will tell you those tests are too L3-friendly, and might even be right…), and none for the E5-1630v3 (which seems rare).
Here are single/multithread results for a representative “Haswell” i7-4790K:
http://spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2014q2/cpu2006-20140603-29795.html (single-thread)
http://spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2014q2/cpu2006-20140602-29768.html (multi-thread)
And for a E5-1620v3 (similar to 1630, but about 10% less clock):
http://spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2012q2/cpu2006-20120417-21059.html (single)
http://spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2012q2/cpu2006-20120417-21058.html (multithread)
The i7 is about 30% faster single-threaded, and about 10% at 8 threads. There’s considerable variance by workload, though; the two are almost even at GCC, the i7 wins big at quantum computer simulation, and the Xeon wins by a bit on a traveling salesman solver. YMMV.
+1 on Brinton Sherwood’s comments (although I must admit I haven’t actually read the Intel studies). IIRC, a more prevalent source of radiation-induced bit twiddling was from inadvertent radioisotopes in the epoxy encapsulation of the chips (!) But that’s been mostly fixed, too, AFAIK.
This may also simplify or accelerate the sourcing of your CPU.
–
Possibly a stupid idea? Could cvs-fast-export and/or reposurgeon be enhanced with a ‘checkpoint to disk every X seconds/steps’ option?
>Possibly a stupid idea? Could cvs-fast-export and/or reposurgeon be enhanced with a ‘checkpoint to disk every X seconds/steps’ option?
Unlikely. Marshalling and unmarshalling the relevant data structures is expensive.
>So get a high quality P/S (oh wait, you are) and a high quality, multi-phase mobo (oh wait, you are) as well as a high quality, line filtering UPS (guess what my bet would be) and put the price difference to better use.
I’ve got the UPS, yes. And, BTW, I already knew that radionuclides in the packaging are a bigger error source that cosmic rays. So…your reducing the question to one of relative performance. Is there any reason to believe the Xeon would outperform the i7 on this job load?
>Advantages:/Disadvantages:
I cannot say this sounds like a compelling case for water-cooling. My gut is telling me to go with the conservative design here. Might be different if I were planning to overclock.
@ESR: in the “common parts” list, you indicate the Seagate SV-35 as being 3GB. It is, in fact, 3TB. Small point, but had me bewildered for a moment.
In the “Common parts” table, the hard drive size should read 3TB not 3GB. Now I’ll get off your lawn.
Hold out for something that will so large RAM-space addressing and for DDR4 RAM.
And seriously get a drive dedicated only to swap! That alone is a huge speed improvement.
I have the Xigmatek equivalent to that CPU cooler. It keeps my A10-5800K below case ambient unless I’m pushing it hard.
It is tall, and can interfere with RAM sockets (I can only use 3 of the 4 on my motherboard because of it, which means 2, practically speaking), but it works quite well and is quiet. It’s Paul’s and my standard CPU cooler. I expect the Cooler Master will do just as well.
Regarding 200mm fans, I’ll second the recommendation on that Tom’s Hardware thread for the Cooler Master. I have a pair of those going into my next build and can confirm that they are very quiet indeed.
@Brinton Sherwood: I had enough memory glitches with a Dell (Precision) workstation that I recommend ECC whenever it’s a practical option. In my case, I suspect that stray heat may have been more of an issue than cosmic rays, radionuclides, or whatever, but ECC counteracts all sources.
@esr: I recommend the Crucial MX100 line as a replacement for the Intel 530; you can get twice as much capacity for nearly the same price, and SSDs wear faster the higher the percentage utilization is.
>@ESR: in the “common parts” list, you indicate the Seagate SV-35 as being 3GB. It is, in fact, 3TB. Small point, but had me bewildered for a moment.
Methinks he is intentionally baiting us. There is a consistent pattern of s/GB/MB and s/TB/GB going on here.
That or he and Mr Bell are competing to be the cranky old git in the “Here’s a nickel” strip. ;-)
> I cannot say this sounds like a compelling case for water-cooling. My gut is telling me to go with the conservative design here. Might be different if I were planning to overclock.
One of your earlier semi-requirements was “quiet”. Large radiator means large fans. Fan noise is dominated by the RPM required for a given blade diameter, i.e. a function of blade tip speed.
> although I must admit I haven’t actually read the Intel studies
I -think- it was Intel, been 20 years since I read those. Could as easily been IBM, Sun or HP. Was a big problem at the time.
> And seriously get a drive dedicated only to swap! That alone is a huge speed improvement.
The SSD makes that irrelevant. If esr was going to with hard drives, then I would agree.
Don’t waste your time f’ing with building your own machine.
https://system76.com/desktops/model/wilp11#
Base System Price $779.00
Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS 64 bit
4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4790 ( 3.6GHz – 8MB cache – 4 Cores with Hyperthreading – HD Graphics 4600 ) +$149.00
32 GB – 4 x 8 GB – Crucial Sport Dual Channel DDR3 – 1600 MHz +$349.00
Intel High Definition Graphics
240 GB Crucial M500 M.2 SATA SSD +$115.00
500 GB SATA III 6 Gb/s 16 MB Cache +$70.00
500 GB SATA III 6 Gb/s 16 MB Cache +$70.00
No card reader
CD-RW / DVD-RW Dual Layer +$39.00
No second optical drive
No wireless card
No monitor
No speakers
No keyboard/mouse
No flash drive
1 Yr. Ltd. Warranty and 1 Yr. Technical Support
Sub Total: $1,571.0
This isn’t a machine that’s going to run at 99% for months at a time. You’ll do Dev on it, you’ll process a repo a couple times a [ Day Week Month ] and it’ll be done.
Order the machine and get on to making the world a better place.
@William Except that if you’re ordering from System76, put in your own drives and memory. They charge a hefty premium for them.
Eric,
It does not look like the Asrock motherboard supports ECC. I am looking to build a very similar system (larger disk capacity and newer display card for CUDA/OpenCL experiments). I want to try zfs, but ECC seems mandatory to prevent loss or corruption of data.
It is my impression from reading these “ECC is required for ZFS” threads that non-ECC (parity?) RAM does not detect failing or stuck bits and thus cannot be relied upon for error free transfers. It appears that ZFS, through its continuous file system grooming process has the potential to currupt a lot more data as file system data is cycled through memory.
Do you think the “ECC is required for ZFS” position is justified?
Correction to my last port the Asrock X99 WS DOES support ECC. Sorry for the confusion on my part.
> Don’t waste your time f’ing with building your own machine.
The implication is that a craftsman should be fine heading down to Walmart/Harbor Freight for his tools. I would suggest that this is not a tenable position.
If I am going to spend the majority of my life using a tool, I am darn well going to ensure it is fit to my purpose.
> It is my impression from reading these “ECC is required for ZFS” threads that non-ECC (parity?) RAM does not detect failing or stuck bits and thus cannot be relied upon for error free transfers.
Incorrect. Simple parity will catch >99% of errors. It is the <1%, how it is handled, what it costs, et cetera that is the interesting bit.
Will the CVS conversion app support parallel processing across all of the cores?
@Brinton Sherwood –
Eric and I could each be that “cranky old git” (I’m about 18 months older, and definitely have him beat in the “scruffy beard” department.) However, I’m willing to believe that it’s more our non-ECC wetware memories not keeping up with the relentless march of technology.
My first actual ‘own it in my own home with my own bill of sale and everything’ personal computer was (only!) 26 years ago – a Mac Classic II – with
512 kbytes memory and a
80 Mbyte hard disk.
I shit you not. And I got real (end-user) work done on it – personal word processing, Quicken for home bookkeeping, etc. Moore’s Law (and its parallels in magnetic technologies, etc.) have made it far too easy for developers to create bloatware.
Perhaps we should make developers use small machines to keep their code lean ‘n’ mean.
Oh, yeah – that’s how we got here.
ESR: Did a quick search and it appears that the Xeon’s and i7 are functionally equivalent in all aspects except that Xeons are designed for use on dual socket boards. Beyond that, they have a better warranty but no advantage in performance.
So, if you’re not doing dual sockets, stick to the i7 and use the extra pay for more clock cycles and RAM.
I highly recommend using ECC memory. I’ve had a couple of boards fail due to insufficient case cooling, and the ECC kept the machine working long enough to log the errors in mcelog, helping to troubleshoot the problem, rather than silently corrupting my data and locking up.
If I remember correctly, both parity or ECC require DIMMs with a 9th chip for the extra data. ECC simply uses the extra bit in a more sophisticated way. In other words, no 9th chip on the DIMM, no ECC and no parity.
AMD am3 and am3+ cpus have built-in memory controllers which support ECC. Many if not most ASUS am3+ boards support ECC. I just built a machine on an ASUS M5A97 LE r2.0. The UEFI setup has a simple ECC on/off setting. Older ASUS am3 boards have a more sophisticated setup where different background memory scrub timings can be selected.
For some reason, the fact that many ASUS am3/am3+ boards support ECC is not widely advertised. The manuals can be downloaded for free from ASUS, and they clearly state ECC support in the memory spec and the firmware setup sections.
I can tell you from personal experience that at least on the two ASUS socket 939 boards that went south on me, the ECC works.
>Regarding 200mm fans, I’ll second the recommendation on that Tom’s Hardware thread for the Cooler Master.
Which, the AeroCool or the MegaFlow? Hoping it’s the latter as I find LEDs on fans absurd.
> I recommend the Crucial MX100 line as a replacement for the Intel 530; you can get twice as much capacity for nearly the same price
I’m seeing 256GBs for $30 more than 128s, and a 128 for $5 less.
I’m seeing 256GBs for $30 more than 128s, and a 128 for $5 less.
Prices are fluctuating wildly on SSDs, so that’s entirely within the margin of error. I’d suggest the extra $30 for double the space is worth it, considering how long you tend to keep your machines.
>Order the machine and get on to making the world a better place.
Tempting thought – it’s competitive with the Haswell option. But I want the NZXT case, and I think we can make the custom build quieter than we’ll get with the lowest-price coolers and case fans we’ll get on a stock build like this.
Always use ECC. For Intel chips that means you have to get a Xeon, but all AMD chips support it. The AMD chips go to higher frequencies, so they could easily be faster for this workload. You should buy two machines and benchmark…
ZFS actually protects you from some of the consequences of non-ECC ram. For example, a bit might be flipped between the time it hashes a transaction in memory and when it is written to disk. The next time you read one of those blocks it’ll detect the error and correct it. (I’ll assume you’re running a ZFS pool with some redundancy.)
On the other hand, during a scrub it may read a block and find an error, and correct the error only to have a bit flip happen between the time it verifies the existing hash (which is where it detected the error) and the time it rehashes the newly-corrected data. The new hash is of the bit-flipped data, so when this data is read out next time it won’t see anything wrong with it. On the gripping hand, this is no worse than what would happen with a simpler filesystem, because those filesystems don’t verify the data at all; the bit flip would still happen and you still wouldn’t be able to detect it.
ZFS is awesome, you should try it. Of course, it could easily nerd-snipe you; it’s fun to play around with tests of how it handles various failure conditions. It’s really cool to intentionally scribble on some data (in a test pool made of files, obviously), then read it back out of the filesystem and get the correct data back with a checksum error reported in the status. You’d have to weigh the benefits against that risk.
And, all other things being equal, a 256GB drive should last twice as long as a 128GB because the writes will be leveled over more cells.
“Advantages: Off-CPU radiator puts less mechanical stress on the mobo mounts.”
Not to sound flip, either, but a closed-loop water-cooling solution is much less likely to block any of your RAM slots. Whether you want to pay extra for that is, of course, another matter (although obviously there are cheaper water-cooling solutions.)
@ Christopher Smith, ericrs
Yes, heat was another of the major factors found in those old studies. ESR’s current designs have enough cooling to support a middling amount of over-clocking. Since heat is not going to be an issue, I ignored it.
ECC most certainly has its place, but I feel that it is an expensive belt & suspenders solution given esr’s stated requirements. Especially when the risk is easily reduced to an acceptable level and for less cost with good design and solid component selection.
>Do you think the “ECC is required for ZFS” position is justified?
Np opinion; don’t know enough about ZFS.
>Will the CVS conversion app support parallel processing across all of the cores?
It already does, but it is unclear that this helps much. The part that can be parellelized isn’t the most intensive computations. Experiments on large repo will be required to discover if there’s any actual speedup.
>Beyond that, [Xeons] have a better warranty but no advantage in performance.
Understood. The draw in the Xeon configuration is the ECC memory.
>I’d suggest the extra $30 for double the space is worth it, considering how long you tend to keep your machines.
Oh, I agree. I just don’t consider that the same price, not at that percentage of the whole.
Eric, what peripherals do you use: keyboard, mouse, monitor(s)?
@Brinton Sherwood
> Non-ECC memory does have parity bits.
This is wrong; non-ECC memory has *no* protection *whatsoever*. Usually, you detect errors in non-ECC memory only by the fact that some flipped bit in the file cache eventually corrupted your data on the disk.
@ Brinton Sherwood
Agreed about the cooling situation in Eric’s new case. I’m jealous. I’ll just have to make do taking a sawz-all to the covers of the old cases I already have and bolting in a few extra 120mms ;-) .
The thermal problems in my old builds didn’t cause immediate problems in the machine’s functioning, but I believe they contributed to the premature failure of the boards. Cooling for the CPU was never an issue, as lm_sensors always reported temps well within reason, and the temp of the exhaust air was not worrisome. My suspicion is that the lack of airflow allowed pockets of hot air to be held around the chips and capacitors on the surface of the board, causing something to degrade prematurely.
It doesn’t look like Eric is going to make the same mistakes I did, but hardware always inevitably fails at some point. In my experience, ECC can give a softer landing in the case of some types of hardware failure. Last I checked the “Egg”, 8gb unbuffered ddr3 DIMMs were going for around $100, so there isn’t much of a price penalty, and the ASUS am3+ boards that support ECC don’t cost any more than the other brands that don’t. I find it more than a bit annoying how many am3+ boards don’t support ECC just to save a few copper traces and a few lines of firmware code.
Just wanted to throw this out In case the AMD box is still on the table.
>Eric, what peripherals do you use: keyboard, mouse, monitor(s)?
Unicomp buckling-spring USB keyboard. Logitech optical TrackMarble. A high-end Dell flatscreen I’m not remembering the model number of offhand.
@esr –
About 18 months ago, you were using a pair of “Auria EQ276W flatscreen[s]”. Has that changed?
The Asrock X99 WS does not fit into the “Haswell” option; it has the wrong socket for the i7 4790K, and requires DDR4 memory.
Similarly, the “Xeon” option requires DDR4 memory.
@Cervisia
It is highly probable that companies moved away from parity RAM to save costs and embarrassment. It has been quite a while since I was actively involved in systems design.
Would like to see something more substantive than a Wikipedia article though.
>About 18 months ago, you were using a pair of “Auria EQ276W flatscreen[s]“. Has that changed?
Yes. They both died in exactly the same way – display started to fast-flicker. The Dell was the replacement for the first. Haven’t replaced the second.
Sales guy at Micro Center said the off-brand flatscreens have a high mortality rate. Would have been nice if someone had told me that before I bought the Aurias….
> It has been quite a while since I was actively involved in systems design.
I had better correct myself lest someone else. Systems research and requirements design.
We’ve been Slashdotted. Brace for incoming…
>The Asrock X99 WS does not fit into the “Haswell” option; it has the wrong socket for the i7 4790K, and requires DDR4 memory.
Urgh. I’ve lined out that part and added a note. Do you have a recommendation?
>Similarly, the “Xeon” option requires DDR4 memory.
I found a product from Crucial that looks like it will do.
Here are a few suggestions: If you can wait, monitor prices and pick up the parts on sale. Unless you need 32GB of RAM or a 3TB HDD, buy something smaller and add later. With RAM, you can add another 16GB of the exact model later, and you may be able to catch a sale. With the HDD, the larger sizes will come down in price, and old HDD’s are always useful for storage or backup.
A HDD with 64MB cache is fast, and while I have an SSD for my OS, I am not impressed. The SSD for my virtual machine files is impressive, but those files are 1GB+. My older 16MB HDD’s are dogs, and if I upgraded to an SSD, I would be impressed.
Your case choice seems pricey. I would suggest a Cooler Master HAF series. They have a lot of holes for fans. You can add fans as you like, and there are many fans that are quiet. If you get enough airflow, you can keep all the fans at low RPM’s, and that should keep everything quiet.
I built my present machine last year, and I purchased the parts over about six months. I monitor prices, and I pick up things when they are deeply discounted. Some of the parts may be a closeout model, but they are just as good. Unless something has a bell or whistle I must have, I go with the second highest tier.
I assume that you are buying OEM parts and bare bone drives. If so, do not forget about SATA cables and screws. Your case and motherboard should list what is included, and you should check.
Some other things to check when making a motherboard decision: PS/2 connection, USB2.0, USB3.0, VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, PCI, PCI-E, modem, network. I am old school, and I like having a PS/2 keyboard. A DVI-I can double as a VGA, and USB3.0 are backward compatible with USB2.0. I assume that you checked out the various slots. Most graphics cards are going to eat a slot. Is the slot it covers vital?
The new i7 graphics can be used with a discrete video card. This will allow you one or two additional monitors. You can quickly fill the screen with applications – email, resource monitors, web traffic, etc.
I am more concerned about heat than noise, but when things get noisy, it is getting hot inside the case. This build was designed to keep the heat down, and so far, it has been quiet. If it gets noisy, I intend to add two top 120mm fans.
If this is helpful, great. Otherwise, disregard.
With the sudden doubling of the fund are you still matching it? If so it may be time to start looking at a much higher end build…….
>We’ve been Slashdotted. Brace for incoming…
INTENSIFY FORWARD FIREPOWER!!!
>With the sudden doubling of the fund are you still matching it?
Honestly, I don’t think I can afford to any more. I thought I’d be lucky if we collected $500.
> Which, the AeroCool or the MegaFlow? Hoping it’s the latter as I find LEDs on fans absurd.
The MegaFlow.
Just realized the second order consequences of Cervisia’s comment. Assuming it is correct, then I retract everything I’ve said about skipping the ECC RAM. I refuse to run or recommend H/W without some level of corruption checking.
Which means I need to investigate and possibly start budgeting for a new system myself. Grrr…
wrt RAM for Xeon config – the CPU has 4 memory channels – so its best to install 4 memory sticks for max memory bandwidth/performance.
Also note: eventhough the CPU supports DDR-4 2133 and you buy DDR-4 2133 memory – the combination might not give you 2133. [so you might have to check with the MB vendor or specs regrading this].
For ex: – I think some MBs give max memory-bandwidth if 4 sticks are used – but not when 8 sticks are used [or not when dense-memory sticks are used]
Go to ebay, pick yourself up a refurbished HP GL380 G6 with 72GB of RAM and 4 Quad core-xeon’s. replace the SAS with some mirrored samsung SSD’s and have at it. Not too noisy, 2U case, runs awesome, Spend the rest on a nice night out.
> Yes. They both died in exactly the same way – display started to fast-flicker. The Dell was the replacement for the first. Haven’t replaced the second.
Did you try replacing the inverter?
> >The Asrock X99 WS does not fit into the “Haswell” option; it has the wrong socket for the i7 4790K, and requires DDR4 memory.
> Urgh. I’ve lined out that part and added a note. Do you have a recommendation?
Something like perhaps?
That is to say, a motherboard like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132133, perhaps?
So here’s my little idea
Processor : i3 4370 (3.8GHz and 54W TDP)
Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-6LASH (is it unavailable in the US or what, currently?) or Tyan S5535AG2NR-HE if you can find such.
Else what you can find with chipset C222, C224, C226.
Memory : multiply four sticks by 8GB giving 32GB ECC, non-registered (synonym : unbuffered). Memory speed pretty unimportant.
PSU : SeaSonic SSR-360GP 360W
SSD : Crucial M550?
Case : any
CPU Cooler : any
>pick yourself up a refurbished HP GL380 G6
Suggestions of the form “buy server-class hardware that you don’t have the skills or experience to maintain yourself”, while well meant, aren’t very useful.
>Did you try replacing the inverter?
Er, what’s an inverter? And how would I replace one?
>That is to say, a motherboard like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132133, perhaps?
That looks like it would do and I have added to the Haswell build. Might be academic, though, as the money avalanche makes it certain we can afford the Xeon build.
That level of contributions might well put a multisocket Xeon within your reach. While it might not help with the current workload, you’re in a position to consider your next big computing task…
ESR> Suggestions of the form “buy server-class hardware that you don’t have the skills or experience to maintain yourself”, while well meant, aren’t very useful.
Actually, there’s not THAT much difference between server class hardware and commodity stuff these days as far as management, except the server stuff is physically easier to work on and usually gives you a heads up well before things go pear-shaped (and even that is become commodity too).
The limiting factor of server-class hardware for this application is noise. Servers are rarely designed for low-noise environments and that’s one of your critical requirements.
The inverter is a smallish circuit board that manages the backlight in the display which is commonly the first thing to fail mysteriously. Flickering over the whole screen or a very dim backlight is good evidence that the inverter has gone. Here’s one for a different monitor from the same brand: http://www.amazon.com/AURIA-EQ3299-BACKLIGHT-INVERTER-SSI320_4UA01/dp/B00GJV5TEG; a quick search didn’t turn up any info about the EQ276W model, but it might be filed under a different name (a different model number or even brand).
They fit into the bezel of the display, and are pretty simple to replace. Pop the bezel (plastic clasps, perhaps some double-sided tape), unplug and unscrew the old one, screw and plug in the new one, pop the bezel back on and you’re done.
If you’re really out for adventure, and it’s just a couple of capacitors on the inverter that have gone, you can replace those rather than the whole thing. Total repair cost could be a couple of dollars.
>Flickering over the whole screen or a very dim backlight is good evidence that the inverter has gone.
That sounds extremely plausible. I was already pretty sure the panel hadn’t gone bad but rather something driving it at the analog level, though my suspicions centered on the PSU. The error pattern seemed just wrong for a panel flaw or logic fault.
Alas, I fear this kind of troubleshooting is outside my skillset. Software guy. I feel stupid now.
@esr
> Alas, I fear this kind of troubleshooting is outside my skillset. Software guy. I feel stupid now.
What, like me – a hardware guy – reading through complex algorithm discussion threads?
Bah…
@esr – Maybe I can take a look at your dead screen when I escort The Great Beast to Malvern.
>Maybe I can take a look at your dead screen when I escort The Great Beast to Malvern.
Hm. You think you can troubleshoot a busted inverter board? Because I did see a wacky video about reflowing the solder on one with a toaster oven. And I have a toaster oven. :-)
Don’t ever use an oven (or a skillet, my preference for single-sided boards) for food after using it for solder, even on modern RoHS.
ESR> Suggestions of the form “buy server-class hardware that you don’t have the skills or experience to maintain yourself”, while well meant, aren’t very useful.
Well, I wasn’t trying to be facetious, I was actually suggesting it as a means to really reduce the complexity and reduce the skill/experience requirement factor. If you want a solution that just works, doesn’t require a piecemeal approach to system building, everything is pretty much integrated and tested, and gives you tons of spare capacity for doing things, it’s not a bad way to go.
I have one sitting about 10 feet away from me in a typical white-collar office, and under normal load with all the VM’s and such running, it’snot audible from where I’m at.
Server vendors test pretty stringently, none of them want a rep for flaky hardware when they’re being deployed by the hundreds in a data center.
As to skill level, frankly, setting up the server would be less work than piecing together a PC from individual components. Dual power supplies so you’re protected from failure, you can run the memory in mirrored mode if you want to be extra cautious, all the RAM is ECC, cable management is trivial as they’ve done all the dirty work. Drives and such are all hot swappable, and easily accessed from the front which is simpler than cracking a case open to get to it.
Only thing you’d have to do is stick in a video card, and it’s a screwless case, so pop a latch, loosen a couple thumbscrews, stick it in, and you’re done.
When I replace my home PC, it’s exactly what I’m going to do, as I don’t want to be in the position you’re placing yourself, with a hodge-podge pile of parts. I leave that to the gamers and performance enthusiasts that love tinkering. I just want it to run. Close to forever. And I want to have 1000 tabs open in chrome.
I’m betting you’ll be in to your homebuilt box for more money and less capacity, and probably equal or more frustration.
Anyway, my 2 cents, back to work…
I didn’t see anyone address your video card. Are you sure there is a correct slot/connector for it on your soon-to-be-new motherboard? This technology changes fast.
PCI-E has been stable for nearly a decade, and old cards will work in new slots.
Wendell Wilson has argued in email that we ought to change from the E5-1630 v3 to the E5-1650 v3. This is another move towards cache, not speed; it drops the rated clock from 3.70GHz to 3.50GHz, but adds 5MHz to the cache. Both chips turbo to 3.8GHz, which makes this a pretty easy call in my opinion.
It’ll cost about $150 more, but it seems more readily available than the 1630. There’s only about $60 of slack in the fund but I’m quite willing to spend my personal bucks on this. (I did say I’d match funds, back when I thought we’d be lucky to pull $500.)
A more serious issue is that Wendell believes the Linux kernel isn’t yet properly doing turbo-boost requests to the v3 Xeons. If that’s true I might have to send Linus a patch.
ESR said: A more serious issue is that Wendell believes the Linux kernel isn’t yet properly doing turbo-boost requests to the v3 Xeons. If that’s true I might have to send Linus a patch.
Yes, this would be one of many productive and happy uses honoring the “beast” contributors.
Re: 1650s. As I mentioned earlier, spec.org has no test results for the 1630s (I suspect the 1630s almost all failed validation at the planned clock speed and became the slightly slower 1620s – you may not find any of them at all). 1650 is similar to 1620, but with 12 MB cache (vs 10) and 6 cores (vs 4), and a slightly lower base clock (3.2/3.8 vs 3.6/3.8).
However, comparing the 1650 to the the 1620, we see the single-threaded performance is almost indistinguishable (slight edge to the 1650), and the 1650 wins multithreaded by a bit over 30%. Given that that’s 12 threads vs 8 it strongly suggests the chips are starting to be memory limited at that throughput, but it’s still a clear win.
Correction to above: the results I quote above are for the for v2 processors (for both). Intel’s naming has gotten even more confusing when I wasn’t looking…
The E5-1650v3 is in fact 3.5/3.8 Ghz with a 15 MB L3, so is presumably faster still.
Did the great beast get purchased?
What was the final configuration and cost?
>Did the great beast get purchased?
Not yet. Wendell has to straighten out some paperwork with TekSyndicate’s accountants first. Also we don’t have a place to buy the motherboard we want yet; all the other parts are available on Newegg.
It probably won’t get to Malvern until sometime early next month.
The URL for the Case Fan under Common Parts is currently incorrect. (It points to this page.)
“Help stamp out CVS in your lifetime.”
Do you really prefer Walgreen’s *that* much?