[GTALUG] New Build Computer?

[Nicholas Krause]

On 7/15/20 5:27 PM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 04:55:13PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
>> What is your old motherboard?  CPU?  RAM?
>>
>> The oldest i7 with 6 cores seems to be of the Haswell-E generation
>> (eg. Core i7-5820k).
> 
> i7-3960X has 6 cores and 12 threads.  I am running one.
> 
> I also have my father's unstable (seems to hang detecting disks on
> most boot attempts for some reason) i7-3920 (4 core 8 thread) with the
> Asus Sabertooth X79 motherboard and 32GB ram.  If it boots, it runs fine.
> If it hangs detecting disks the screen has no output since video is
> initialized after disks (there are a lot of diagnostic LEDs on these
> boards).
> 
>> The 6-core I7's seem to use sockets with more pins than the common
>> garden variety I7s.  This makes for more expensive motherboards and
>> they probably support more memory.
> 
> Oh yes.  They certainly do all of that.  Supports at least 128GB in my
> case.
> 
>> Even the oldest 6-core i7s seem to use DDR4.  Newer CPUs still use
>> DDR4.  So you might be able to reuse your RAM.  It might be slower
>> than what you'd want on a new build.
> 
> Mine is DDR3.
> 
>> The first 6-core 12-thread i7 seems to be Skylake-x.  Like a Core
>> i7-7800x.  Suitable LGA 2066 motherboards are available and expensive.
>> <https://www.newegg.ca/p/pl?N=100007626%20601299335>
> 
> Socket 2011 was the first.  Sandy Bridge-E.
> 
>> I'd love to play with what you discard!  It would be newer and more
>> powerful than any of my desktops.
>>
>> If you want a similarly high-end box but for modern times, you can go
>> crazy with a current ThreadRipper or Epyc AMD processor.  But you can
>> get quite a lot of power for less, as Lennart has outlined.
> 
> Given you can get ryzen 9 for AM4 socket with 12 cores/24 threads for
> $649 for the CPU and about $300 or $400 for a good board, that's quite
> a bit cheaper than getting into threadripper.  Unless you need a LOT of
> memory, it would probably be sufficient.
> 
For memory its a max of 256GB which isn't a lot if your considering
running a workload that is using that many cores, the data sets are
probably large. The other reason would be PCI-E lanes of 64 versus
whatever ryzen9 has. Through for most people those things don't matter
and 12 cores/24 threads is a lot even for large workloads.

Through since you mentioned video editing or Peter did it may be good
to figure out if single core speed is more important as some video
encoders are more about clock speed or GPU speed than cores.

Cheers,
Nick


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