Help to choose components for a Ryzen rig

[M344587487]

Originally Posted by retina

Oh. That point had completely failed to register with me. It sounds like a terrible design flaw if the CPU can't boot without a GPU.

It's up to the motherboard, most check for an iGPU or GPU on boot. I was working on old info, headless seems to be better supported in more motherboards now but you'll likely need to change a setting in the bios (and probably have a spare GPU handy for the initial install). YMMV.

[retina]

Originally Posted by M344587487

It's up to the motherboard, most check for an iGPU or GPU on boot. I was working on old info, headless seems to be better supported in more motherboards now but you'll likely need to change a setting in the bios (and probably have a spare GPU handy for the initial install). YMMV.

Sounds awful. I don't understand what a (i)GPU has to do with the CPU booting. They are independent systems. I also don't understand how the mobo can check for a GPU, since a mobo by itself has no CPU. In every system I have here, none of them has a GPU.

[M344587487]

Originally Posted by retina

Sounds awful. I don't understand what a (i)GPU has to do with the CPU booting. They are independent systems. I also don't understand how the mobo can check for a GPU, since a mobo by itself has no CPU. In every system I have here, none of them has a GPU.

No GPU at all? No iGPU, and no graphics chipset built into the motherboard? My memory doesn't go back to before the Athlon days, but every system I have ever touched (consumer systems admittedly) has had some sort of GPU in it. I'm not surprised that some board makers made the mistake of expecting a video-out on boot on a consumer product, at least some added a setting in the bios to fix it.

[retina]

Originally Posted by M344587487

No GPU at all? No iGPU, and no graphics chipset built into the motherboard?

Well of course they have the basic VGA on the mobo. But that is not a GPU (IMO). Perhaps we have different ideas about what constitutes a GPU?

[M344587487]

In this context I meant GPU to be something that can output video to a screen. AM4 boards do not have a graphics chipset, so to do video-out they rely on an iGPU in an APU, or a discrete card. Early versions of some AM4 motherboard bios checked for a video-out and failed to boot without one. I don't know if headless support is a problem now, my information is old. I'll see if my system can do it next time I can reboot.

[retina]

Originally Posted by M344587487

In this context I meant GPU to be something that can output video to a screen.

Okay, well that is definitely different from the normal meaning of GPU. Any mobo with VGA output won't need an additional GPU card.

[M344587487]

Originally Posted by retina

Okay, well that is definitely different from the normal meaning of GPU. Any mobo with VGA output won't need an additional GPU card.

OK, I think we are kind of on the same page now. If by VGA output you mean that an AM4 motherboard with VGA/DVI/HDMI ports built into the motherboard won't need a GPU card or APU for video-out then you are incorrect. Those ports are there to be driven by an APU, there is no graphics chipset on any AM4 motherboard AFAIK, and most/all of them have ports. For video-out on AM4 your choices are:
a) Get an APU (which contains an iGPU) to drive the motherboards ports
b) Get a GPU card and use the ports on that.

Did you already understand that and you're telling me something I don't know? I feel like I'm saying the same thing repeatedly and I'm worried I may be going insane.

[masser]

Originally Posted by robert44444uk

I don't know anything about graphics cards. Clearly I'm looking to spend as little as possible but are there better options which do not use much power?

If you just want an energy-efficient choice and need a GPU for display, the 710 should be fine.

If you want to TF for GIMPS (or write GPU code for your project...), you might want to consult http://www.mersenne.ca/mfaktc.php?sort=gpw. Cryptocurrency mining is now disrupting the GPU market, but I bought a GT 1030 for $70 a few months ago and it is more powerful than the 710, but still relatively energy-efficient.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by masser

If you just want an energy-efficient choice and need a GPU for display, the 710 should be fine.

This is a standard trick the vendors use. They insist you need a video card to drive the monitors. You don't usually need this; the motherboard can usually drive at least two monitors.

[LaurV]

We like how this thread progressed... Unluckily we have no "vote it up" button. We didn't intervene because our Ryzen knowledge goes asymptotically to zero, but for sure, we learned a lot from it. On the SSD vs HDD debate, we would never buy a cheap HDD (in our life we succeeded to destroy at least 14 HDDs), but we also see no utility on buying a SSD. They have a lower life time and less useful space, which the high price won't justify, unless you specifically buy it for speed and/or for the "solid" particle of its name, i.e. you want to use it in some industrial machine which is exposed to mechanical shocks or use it in your car (some car audio/video players have SSDs).

The average size (mature technology, not the last one which have a larger size but is not "tested by time"), new (not reused), medium price (not cheap), new (did I say new? If I forgot to say it, I will say it again: new), HDD is the way to go, ALWAYS. If you need large storage space, like for example 2 or 4 TB, then better buy more smaller HDD than one bigger. Never buy "the biggest on the market" or "the fastest on the market". Two 500G or two 1T HDD will consume "insignificantly" more current than a single 2T HDD, and you will praise you for the genius idea of splitting your information on two HDDs, in case one of them starts to fail - you will always have failure signs before the big disaster happens, and will have an immediately fast way to move important rubbish from here to there... (of course, this is not a substitute for a safe backup, as it was discussed many times on this forum). When it comes to HDD, NEVER buy old (refurbished) HDD, and NEVER buy the last fashion, biggest, fastest, most expensive shit on the marked. Did I say that? (sorry, getting older, my memory is getting shorter...). Note the "bold underlined scream" vs "underlined but not bold scream".

The previous generations HDDs with sizes 500G to 1T are right now mature technology, very good, large enough, cheap. The best price performance compromise. You need more speed, buy a 10k rpm instead of 7.2k rpm, or so.

If you need even MORE speed, then better buy more RAM and use any ramdisk tools. This beats any SSD anyhow.

The only place where paying for a good, expensive SSD worth is if you need an "anti-shock" (shock proof) system, like I said, in an industrial line or so. I know there are some very cheap SSDs, but they are crappy too, they use Flash chips which are only guaranteed 10 to 20 thousand writings, and they use algorithms to write files in different pages/blocks to uniformly wear off the Flash cells, and if you do not have a lot of free space, they will be gone in a year or so. They are designed to work well with a lot of free space, so the files you read and write rotate through this free space. Like you have a very big storage warehouse and you put few boxes with bricks inside, which you never move, then you have more than 50% of the storage room free, and you put a box with vegetables inside which you take out and put it back every day to prepare your food, but to avoid destroying the floor of the warehouse, you put the vegetable box every day in a different place. You can only put it in the same place 10 times before the floor is destroyed. Now if you fill the warehouse with bricks in such a way that only 3 places remain free for your vegetable box, your warehouse floor will be destroyed in 30 days. Then, you will have to take out all crates with bricks (reformat, etc), and you will not be able to put all of them back, as this time, your storage space is 3 places smaller, and you still need space for the vegetable box.

When you buy a cheap SSD, you have to think "why are they cheap"? They are cheap because they use crappy Flash chips, and because they are small. The price goes up with the quality, and with the size of the disk. I do not mean mechanical size, I mean capacity to store information. And smaller SSD means less free space to rotate the files, which means shorter life of the "warehouse floor". Any flash cell has a limited number of writings (the bits can be erased, i.e. flip from 0 to 1*, only a limited number of times, fixed by the fabrication process). For cheapest flash, that is about 10 to 15 thousand times. Expensive flash goes in both directions (yes, there are reasons one may want a flash cell writable only 27 times, and that is more expensive to make than a normal 10k-times flash cell), in the upper side up to 100k or 1 million erase cycles.

Your operation system is periodically writing temporary files to disk, and every time you put your system in hibernation, or when you try to allocate more RAM than you have, huge files are written to the disk, beside of the "normal" activity you do, like creating your own files and documents, editing them, etc.

Compare the cases when you have a 128G SSD filled 85% with files that don't move much (about 19G free), against the case you have a 256G filled with the same files (147G free), the larger one will last, with the same daily usage by your OS, 147/19=7 times longer, i.e. it will have a life time of 7 years, instead of one year. Of course, your mileage will wary according with how much you stress that disk. Doing for example CRUS work like "starting a new base" is extremely HDD intensive operation, it saves/modifies a lot of small files on the disk, and you better use a ramdisk tool for it, otherwise yous SSD is Kansas going bye-bye very soon...

Currently we own a single 60G SSD which was a give-away from our company, and we use it as a system drive in an old computer, which we don't use much.

Beside of it, we own 19 other "normal" HDD, mostly of 500G, few of 1TB, in 6 different computers, each computer having at least 2 HDD inside. This excludes 4 laptops we own (all quite old). We are happy with this.

Company laptop (excluded from above, as it is not owned by us, we only use it) has SSD+HDD.

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* for reasons related to fabrication process, when the flash cells are "manufactured" on silicon, all bits are in 1, therefore you program them by writing zeros in some of the bits, but then you can only write back the ones in "blocks", when all the zeros in one block are "erased" back to 1 simultaneously, so yes, it is not a mistake, you erase a region of the flash by simultaneously switching all 0 bits to 1 inside of the region. Switching a 0 to 1 only in a byte, or word, or any area smaller than a block is not possible.

[Mark Rose]

Originally Posted by masser

If you just want an energy-efficient choice and need a GPU for display, the 710 should be fine.

If you want to TF for GIMPS (or write GPU code for your project...), you might want to consult http://www.mersenne.ca/mfaktc.php?sort=gpw. Cryptocurrency mining is now disrupting the GPU market, but I bought a GT 1030 for $70 a few months ago and it is more powerful than the 710, but still relatively energy-efficient.

+1 to the GT 1030.

The GT 710 is based on the Kepler architecture from 2012. The GT 1030 is based on the Pascal architecture from 2016 and is current generation. It does use 11 more watts at peak (30 vs 19), but is about 3 to 8 times faster, depending on the task. Additionally, the GT 1030 supports hardware accelerated decoding of h265 video, which is the new standard, while the GT 710 does not.

If you can't afford the 1030 right now, by all means, the 710 isn't the end of the world. In fact, if you plan to upgrade the GPU in the future the 710 may be the better deal as you'll be spending less overall. But if you're building yourself a general purpose machine that you want to work well in five years, the 1030 is a much better way to go.