Community post
Research diaries #20: Builing another PC
Nowadays I have some projects that require a bit more computation power than usual. So I had the nice opportunity to build a stationary computation horse. My current mindset is that laptops are not really that useful as something to do computations on from an investment perspective. It is much more cost-effective to have good mobile internet, a weak laptop with long battery-life and a stationary machine somewhere in the world into which you remotely login to for your heavy lifting. Another practical requirement for the laptop is that it is light and has a replaceable battery. I am a big fan of the ThinkPad X series. (The T430 or T530 will always have a special place in my heart. But alas it is too heavy for me now. Of course this makes them most suitable as a murder weapon if somebody insults your machine.)
For GPU stuff I do use windows. To avoid the problematic stuff of dealing with re-installations of generic software I stick to a fixed motherboard. Your windows then becomes plug-and-play. I settled on a Asus Prime B550M-A which is actually a bit different from my old motherboard but generally plug-and-play will work on motherboards of the same family. Of course if Linux had better GPU support this wouldn't be anything to fuss about :3
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is good enough for my applications (16-Core). The thermalRight is the only right cooler for your CPU :D Double fan will only set you back around 30 dollars. Great cooler for the price. I think a single fan is actually enough but I generally find that if you have 2 fans then they produce less noise than a single fan as the noise generation is not linear.
I was thinking about getting an A5000 GPU to match my CPU that but it seems a better deal to go for an A4500. An A6000 or greater is overkill and waste of research funds.
A4500 sits quite close to A5000 in terms of performance and is relatively much cheaper (at least here in Japan). A4500 has 20GB which is a couple of GB greater than the applications I plan to use it for. RTX 3090 is also not too expensive but it is quite power hungry. I matched the 20GB of the A4500 with 32GB of generic RAM which is more than enough for my level of computations.
I was thinking about getting an open case but with all the undergrads visiting my office I went for a closed case to be on the safe side. Cheap Silverstone cases are a pretty good deal. I didn't notice that the fan for my power supply would have to be located at the bottom of my case. But I just keep my machine side ways.
The total amount spent was less than that the average prof over here spends on his/her Mac setup. :D
Replies (17)
Looks like you managed to assemble your computer fine. Your cat is off. I suggest you check your cat manual again.
The computer seems to be working quite really well
I'm so far removed from the hardware world. It's been quite a while. Being as you seem like you know what you're doing, I have a question for you.
What type of hardware could I run to host a web application, and it run smoothly? I don't especially think of it as being computationally expensive, but I want to plan in the event that I have moderate success. That said, I'd like to do this as cheaply as possibly. (I know, I know. This is a tall order.)
agree
while we still havent really reached good mobile budget laptops with good battery
an LG gram (22h battery and just 1kg - at least the 16inch I think) would be a dream
but still around 800€ used
acer swift 3 is also good, only around 300€ used
but also only 3-5h battery ?
at which laptops are you looking ?
I'm Linux only :D :P
lool :D
cool you have the chance to play around with big setups ^^ and share it with us :>
xd
self-host on a pi and then look how it goes
or buy some old computer to use for self-hosting :)
I will check her feature cat-alogue :3
woelfchen suggestion is good. For pi you would have to learn/know linux.
It depends very much on your application. But if you are starting out why not just deploy it on your main machine as the investment is zero?
I think if you want to go budget a mac early 2015 might be an idea. Less than 200 dollars :D
Link
I am not sure about battery replacement stuff
I bought a ThinkPad X1 a couple of years ago when I was in China. Maybe around 900 dollars (new). At that time I didn't have to do much computational work and didn't know remote desktop-ing was a good idea. Hopefully last me 10 years :3
I think the battery duration thing is also partly related to Linux as it cannot properly optimize for long usage. I used to have a double boot on an old ThinkPad Tseries. For basic typing stuff in Latex the battery duration would be greatly in favour of Windows. I think over 30%
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I thought about it, but man have you looked at the cost of a Pi these days. Sheeeeeeesh.
Lol because my main machine is a laptop that I'm pushing to the limit. I feel like I'll need more than a Pi, but I may be mistaken. They're almost cost prohibitive for the machine that you get. I was just curious if there were any other good single board options out there.
I run Mac so I already use unix. This isn't coming from being completely naive of computers, just out of hardware. The Pentium III was still a formidable processor the last time I put anything together.
that's why I said the old computer for hosting ;)
some old dell, they are bigger but also like pis on steroids :P^^
I was going to ask about power consumption, but maybe I don't really care lol.
If you wanna commit a bit of money to it. I would buy a cheap second hand Hp microserver gen8. In NL I could get these in the price range of 125-350 euro. (125 probably something requires fixing) https://www.marktplaats.nl/l/computers-en-software/servers/q/hp+microserver/
hmmm.. looked at the 2015 macbooks with fair eyes (though I dont really like apple ^^)
and kinda see where youre coming from :)
thanks for the tip
now I've just found some other with even better battery
but still not quite the right price, maybe used
all around 10h
Thinkpad L14 Gen1 (did it already have AMD also?)
Acer Aspire 5 515-45 or something like that with AMD
HP 14 laptops in general with AMD, maybe even Chromebooks (just put linux on it)
Thinkpad X1 was a great choice :)
I will keep watching :>
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