New workstation for home use.

[Karel]

After 10 years of service, my home workstation died. Either the cpu (an AMD Phenom II 6-core) or the motherboard died.
I checked the powersupply and all voltages are present (3.3, 5 and 12 Volt).
When switching on, only the fans rotate, the bios does not produce any beep.
I decided that after 10 years, it was time for a big upgrade and I ordered the following components:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 cores, 24 threads)
• MB: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING
• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200MHz
• Storage: Samsung 970 PRO NVMe M.2 SSD 1TB
• Case: Be Quiet! Silent Base 601 Midi Tower
• PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 500W
• CPU cooler: Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH Edition
• Additional case fan: Be Quiet! SilentWings 3 PWM 140mm
• Monitor: Benq BL2420PT 24" 2560x1440 QHD 16:9 IPS LED

For me, the goals are stability, silence and fast parallel processing (I often compile software, mostly Qt-based).
I also need to compile sometimes a windows version of my software so I need a lot of RAM and extra cpu cores in order
to run Virtualbox.
I rarely play games, so I decided to re-use the old, simple AMD Radeon graphics card which has a passive heatsink.
Doom I & II, Quake I and Quake III Arena runs smooth also on this simple graphics card. These are the only games I
occasionally play.

First thing I did was updating the bios to the latest version which can be done in advance (without having an OS installed)
by inserting a pendrive with the bios firmware file in a designated USB connector and pushing a button on the motherboard.

Then I installed the OS, openSuse Leap 15.2 with kernel 5.3.18 and KDE Plasma 5 desktop, from a pendrive.
Installation was fast and within 15 minutes I had my new pc up and running.

Interesting observation was that now my maximum download speed increased from 400Mbs (old motherboard with Realtek LAN)
to 880Mbs. The new motherboard uses an Intel 2.5GB LAN chip. (I have an FTTH connection, 1Gbs down, 100Mbs up.)

I'm very satisfied with this new pc because it's very quiet, very fast and no need to tweak anything.
Everything was plug and play as is usually the case when using Linux and paying a bit of attention when selecting
new hardware. Compiling Qt 5.12.9 from source using the command make -j24 takes less than 2.5 minutes.
On my old pc it took 12 minutes.

[BravoV]

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 cores, 24 threads)
• MB: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING
• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200MHz

For me, the goals are stability ..

Did you ever consider ECC RAM ? Especially for stability and long term reliability.

[brucehoult]

Looks like a decent machine.

I haven't used qt since a job I had in 2004. Thought I'd quickly check it out and try a build on my machine. The git checkout is taking *forever*. Several hours already.

[brucehoult]

Looks like a decent machine.

I haven't used qt since a job I had in 2004. Thought I'd quickly check it out and try a build on my machine. The git checkout is taking *forever*. Several hours already.

And it's only up to qtdeclarative. A ton of subdirectories to go yet.

[Mattjd]

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 cores, 24 threads)
• MB: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING
• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200MHz
• Storage: Samsung 970 PRO NVMe M.2 SSD 1TB
• Case: Be Quiet! Silent Base 601 Midi Tower
• PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 500W
• CPU cooler: Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH Edition
• Additional case fan: Be Quiet! SilentWings 3 PWM 140mm
• Monitor: Benq BL2420PT 24" 2560x1440 QHD 16:9 IPS LED

For me, the goals are stability, silence and fast parallel processing (I often compile software, mostly Qt-based).
I also need to compile sometimes a windows version of my software so I need a lot of RAM and extra cpu cores in order
to run Virtualbox.

This is a fine  setup, I initially thought your PSU wattage was too low but see you don't have a GPU? Did you actually build this? How is it running? I'm very very confused, the 3900x or any X series Ryzen has no iGPU so you need a discrete GPU. Unless you just forgot to mention it.

Other than that this looks good. Nice job on getting sufficient RAM. People think 32gb is a lot but for the Ryzens to really shine they need it. For example, if you bought the 3950x, its recommended to get 64gb to really push it.

[Black Phoenix]

This is a fine  setup, I initially thought your PSU wattage was too low but see you don't have a GPU? Did you actually build this? How is it running? I'm very very confused, the 3900x or any X series Ryzen has no iGPU so you need a discrete GPU. Unless you just forgot to mention it.

Other than that this looks good. Nice job on getting sufficient RAM. People think 32gb is a lot but for the Ryzens to really shine they need it. For example, if you bought the 3950x, its recommended to get 64gb to really push it.

But he have a GPU, he mentions it later on the same thread:

I rarely play games, so I decided to re-use the old, simple AMD Radeon graphics card which has a passive heatsink.
Doom I & II, Quake I and Quake III Arena runs smooth also on this simple graphics card. These are the only games I
occasionally play.

[brucehoult]

He said he's reused the Radeon graphics card from his old machine.

[Karel]

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 cores, 24 threads)
• MB: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING
• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200MHz

For me, the goals are stability ..

Did you ever consider ECC RAM ? Especially for stability and long term reliability.

Nope, I didn't think about it... 

[Karel]

Looks like a decent machine.

I haven't used qt since a job I had in 2004. Thought I'd quickly check it out and try a build on my machine. The git checkout is taking *forever*. Several hours already.

I always download the tarbal form a mirror ftp site: https://download.qt.io/static/mirrorlist/

[Karel]

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 cores, 24 threads)
• MB: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING
• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200MHz
• Storage: Samsung 970 PRO NVMe M.2 SSD 1TB
• Case: Be Quiet! Silent Base 601 Midi Tower
• PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 500W
• CPU cooler: Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH Edition
• Additional case fan: Be Quiet! SilentWings 3 PWM 140mm
• Monitor: Benq BL2420PT 24" 2560x1440 QHD 16:9 IPS LED

For me, the goals are stability, silence and fast parallel processing (I often compile software, mostly Qt-based).
I also need to compile sometimes a windows version of my software so I need a lot of RAM and extra cpu cores in order
to run Virtualbox.

This is a fine  setup, I initially thought your PSU wattage was too low but see you don't have a GPU? Did you actually build this? How is it running? I'm very very confused, the 3900x or any X series Ryzen has no iGPU so you need a discrete GPU. Unless you just forgot to mention it.

Other than that this looks good. Nice job on getting sufficient RAM. People think 32gb is a lot but for the Ryzens to really shine they need it. For example, if you bought the 3950x, its recommended to get 64gb to really push it.

I am re-using and old, passively cooled, Radeon HD 4350 graphics card:

[0db]

I am re-using and old, passively cooled, Radeon HD 4350 graphics card:

how "Linux friendly" is it? 

[Karel]

I am re-using and old, passively cooled, Radeon HD 4350 graphics card:

how "Linux friendly" is it? 

Very friendly. AMD provides hardware register info of their GPU's to the community and the opensource drivers are on par with AMD's closed source
counterparts (according to Phoronix).
AMD Radeon cards are plug and play on Linux. Even this old simple card plays Quake III Arena very well.
No need to install anything.

[brucehoult]

Looks like a decent machine.

I haven't used qt since a job I had in 2004. Thought I'd quickly check it out and try a build on my machine. The git checkout is taking *forever*. Several hours already.

I always download the tarbal form a mirror ftp site: https://download.qt.io/static/mirrorlist/

Probably an idea. Anyway next morning and it's done. I was only getting around 100 KB/s checkout speeds on 100 Mbps internet.

I used the instructions at https://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_5_from_Git#Getting_the_source_code except the configure failed until I added -no-opengl.

Code: [Select]

$ mkdir qt5-build
$ cd qt5-build
$ ../qt5/configure -developer-build -opensource -nomake examples -nomake tests -no-opengl
$ time make -j64
:
:
real 5m13.674s
user 170m2.127s
sys 24m50.008s
$ uptime
 11:45:52 up 5 days,  2:46,  1 user,  load average: 47.48, 34.71, 19.86

My 32 core 2990wx is using more than 12 cores a good amount of the time -- look at the load average, though (user+sys)/real only equals 8.01 -- so it's interesting that yours is so much faster. Are this year's chips so very much better? Or are you using different configure options?

[Karel]

Looks like a decent machine.

I haven't used qt since a job I had in 2004. Thought I'd quickly check it out and try a build on my machine. The git checkout is taking *forever*. Several hours already.

I always download the tarbal form a mirror ftp site: https://download.qt.io/static/mirrorlist/

Probably an idea. Anyway next morning and it's done. I was only getting around 100 KB/s checkout speeds on 100 Mbps internet.

I used the instructions at https://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_5_from_Git#Getting_the_source_code except the configure failed until I added -no-opengl.

Code: [Select]

$ mkdir qt5-build
$ cd qt5-build
$ ../qt5/configure -developer-build -opensource -nomake examples -nomake tests -no-opengl
$ time make -j64
:
:
real 5m13.674s
user 170m2.127s
sys 24m50.008s
$ uptime
 11:45:52 up 5 days,  2:46,  1 user,  load average: 47.48, 34.71, 19.86

My 32 core 2990wx is using more than 12 cores a good amount of the time -- look at the load average, though (user+sys)/real only equals 8.01 -- so it's interesting that yours is so much faster. Are this year's chips so very much better? Or are you using different configure options?

Yes, I use the following options because I link static and I want to keep the executable as small as possible:

Code: [Select]

./configure -v -prefix /usr/local/Qt-5.12.9-static -release -opensource -confirm-license -c++std c++11 -static -accessibility -fontconfig -skip qtdeclarative -skip qtconnectivity -skip qtmultimedia -qt-zlib -no-mtdev -no-journald -qt-libpng -qt-libjpeg -system-freetype -qt-harfbuzz -no-openssl -no-libproxy -no-glib -nomake examples -nomake tests -no-compile-examples -cups -no-evdev -no-dbus -no-eglfs -qreal double -no-opengl -skip qtlocation -skip qtsensors -skip qtwayland -skip qtgamepad -skip qtserialbus -skip qt3d -skip qtpurchasing -skip qtquickcontrols -skip qtquickcontrols2 -skip qtspeech -skip qtwebengine


[brucehoult]

OK. I installed freetype fontconfig and cups dev packages to get that to work.

Much faster, but it seems my 32 core is still a little slower than your 12 core. Those 2nd gen chips are good!

Code: [Select]

real 2m52.332s
user 73m38.355s
sys 9m28.145s
 21:22:27 up  7:53,  1 user,  load average: 37.62, 24.79, 13.60

(user+sys)/real is now 28.9, so it's using most of the cores most of the time.

Doing just "make clean && make" instead of a completely new build directory got me 2m43.4s.

[BravoV]

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 cores, 24 threads)
• MB: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING
• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200MHz

For me, the goals are stability ..

Did you ever consider ECC RAM ? Especially for stability and long term reliability.

Nope, I didn't think about it... 

Too bad, this ECC memory, imo, is one of the hidden gem that Ryzen has. This used to be luxurious feature only available for server grade cpu.

On my 3700X, linux rasdaemon managed to catch the corrected bit flips twice , yay , though not easy to deliberately invoke that errors, failed at windows as the os was not properly booted in the process, only at linux.

[brucehoult]

On my 3700X, linux rasdaemon managed to catch the corrected bit flips twice , yay , though not easy to deliberately invoke that errors, failed at windows as the os was not properly booted in the process, only at linux.

Twice in how long?

[BravoV]

On my 3700X, linux rasdaemon managed to catch the corrected bit flips twice , yay , though not easy to deliberately invoke that errors, failed at windows as the os was not properly booted in the process, only at linux.

Twice in how long?

In about 48 hours, if my memory serves me well.

The problem was, to have the system at the edge of stability, but still can "properly" booted. At windows I spent so many hours but failed to capture it, as the OS it self was not running in good shape (unstable).

Finally , at linux, and then did some weird timings combination and overclock the mem clock, with below 1.2V Vddr  , and spent many hours  , finally able to capture that two precious corrected bit flips which happened at the exact location in the memory, weakest spot I guess.

[brucehoult]

Ok. So on a machine with stock settings it's going to be much much less.

[Karel]

I can run memtest86 overnight to see what happens...

[Karel]

OK. I installed freetype fontconfig and cups dev packages to get that to work.

Much faster, but it seems my 32 core is still a little slower than your 12 core. Those 2nd gen chips are good!

Code: [Select]

real 2m52.332s
user 73m38.355s
sys 9m28.145s
 21:22:27 up  7:53,  1 user,  load average: 37.62, 24.79, 13.60

(user+sys)/real is now 28.9, so it's using most of the cores most of the time.

Doing just "make clean && make" instead of a completely new build directory got me 2m43.4s.

Maybe also the Samsung 970 PRO NVMe plays a role here.

[Mechatrommer]

On my 3700X, linux rasdaemon managed to catch the corrected bit flips twice , yay , though not easy to deliberately invoke that errors, failed at windows as the os was not properly booted in the process, only at linux.

Twice in how long?

In about 48 hours, if my memory serves me well.

The problem was, to have the system at the edge of stability, but still can "properly" booted. At windows I spent so many hours but failed to capture it, as the OS it self was not running in good shape (unstable).

Finally , at linux, and then did some weird timings combination and overclock the mem clock, with below 1.2V Vddr  , and spent many hours  , finally able to capture that two precious corrected bit flips which happened at the exact location in the memory, weakest spot I guess.

running "at the edge of stability", overclock and all that... just to capture some bit flips, to prove what?

[BravoV]

Ok. So on a machine with stock settings it's going to be much much less.

No, that is not the purpose of ECC RAM, suggesting to read further on it.

[BravoV]

On my 3700X, linux rasdaemon managed to catch the corrected bit flips twice , yay , though not easy to deliberately invoke that errors, failed at windows as the os was not properly booted in the process, only at linux.

Twice in how long?

In about 48 hours, if my memory serves me well.

The problem was, to have the system at the edge of stability, but still can "properly" booted. At windows I spent so many hours but failed to capture it, as the OS it self was not running in good shape (unstable).

Finally , at linux, and then did some weird timings combination and overclock the mem clock, with below 1.2V Vddr  , and spent many hours  , finally able to capture that two precious corrected bit flips which happened at the exact location in the memory, weakest spot I guess.

running "at the edge of stability", overclock and all that... just to capture some bit flips, to prove what?

To prove that ECC RAM works at Ryzen ? 

[brucehoult]

OK. I installed freetype fontconfig and cups dev packages to get that to work.

Much faster, but it seems my 32 core is still a little slower than your 12 core. Those 2nd gen chips are good!

Code: [Select]

real 2m52.332s
user 73m38.355s
sys 9m28.145s
 21:22:27 up  7:53,  1 user,  load average: 37.62, 24.79, 13.60

(user+sys)/real is now 28.9, so it's using most of the cores most of the time.

Doing just "make clean && make" instead of a completely new build directory got me 2m43.4s.

Maybe also the Samsung 970 PRO NVMe plays a role here.

My components:

1TB Samsung 970 Pro M.2
128GB DDR4-2400/2666 PC4-19200/21300
Gigabyte X399 AORUS Gaming TR4

There's plenty of RAM for caching everything so it shouldn't even be hitting the SSD much.