A Machine for the project

LarsNet · 2021-09-21, 00:52

MOD;s please move this to the correct forum if needed.

I have 5k for a new machine dedicated to this project, could i please ask for assistance on what to buy to best contribute.

Thank you,

Lars

paulunderwood · 2021-09-21, 01:16

Get a water cooled 32 core AMD with a couple of secondhand AMD Radeon VII GPUs.

Alternatively buy a cheaper computer with sufficient RAM and 4 Radeon VIIs. (I see the secondhand market for R7's on eBay is still stupid.)

chalsall · 2021-09-21, 01:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

Alternatively buy a cheaper computer with sufficient RAM and 4 Radeon VIIs.

Alternatively... Rent some kit "in the cloud".

Seriously. Unless you're working with PII or other seriously sensitive knowledge, leveraging on someone else's CapEx makes the most sense for compute.

LarsNet · 2021-09-21, 01:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

Get a water cooled 32 core AMD with a couple of secondhand AMD Radeon VII GPUs.

Alternatively buy a cheaper computer with sufficient RAM and 4 Radeon VIIs. (I see the secondhand market for R7's on eBay is still stupid.)

How much ram would you recommmend?

LarsNet · 2021-09-21, 01:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by chalsall

Alternatively... Rent some kit "in the cloud".

Seriously. Unless you're working with PII or other seriously sensitive knowledge, leveraging on someone else's CapEx makes the most sense for compute.

Do you mean like Amazon AWS or something else? I honestly have never priced anything like that before

a1call · 2021-09-21, 01:33

I used newegg's builder to build my 1st ever build. Worked like a charm for me but I have been working with PC's for decades. AMD CPU's should give the biggest bang for the buck. Number of cores is probably the most important variable, and as mentioned by PaulUnderwood, make sure to use liquid cooling if you are going to crunch the devil out of your hardware.
If you use the newegg make sure to change the sorting criteria away from staff-picks and go for highly-rated instead.
Good luck.

LarsNet · 2021-09-21, 01:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by a1call

I used newegg's builder to build my 1st ever build. Worked like a charm for me but I have been working with PC's for decades. AMD CPU's should give the biggest bang for the buck. Number of cores is probably the most important variable, and as mentioned by PaulUnderwood, make sure to use liquid cooling if you are going to crunch the devil out of your hardware.
If you use the newegg make sure to change the sorting criteria away from staff-picks and go for highly-rated instead.
Good luck.

I had a water cooled device i built myself about ten years ago, which is a fav project,so i'm all for it.

paulunderwood · 2021-09-21, 01:37

The GPUs have 16GB each, enough to do two sets of P-1 factoring. So 16GB would be more than enough for the mainboaord. However on a more cores board it would be nice to have 64GB.

But I reiterate that secondhand R7s are over priced. I can get 60% of the work done by one on an old Xeon Phi which cost me 600 bucks -- a lot of the price was import taxes from the USA.

LarsNet · 2021-09-21, 01:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

The GPUs have 16GB each, enough to do two sets of P-1 factoring. So 16GB would be more than enough for the mainboaord. However on a more cores board it would be nice to have 64GB.

But I reiterate that secondhand R7s are over priced. I can get 60% of the work done by one on an old Xeon Phi which cost me 600 bucks -- a lot of the price was import taxes from the USA.

Here's a weird question, what's a good first thing to get involved with (or what did you first get started with). I'm so new to this, i'm not sure where to start.

paulunderwood · 2021-09-21, 02:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by LarsNet

Here's a weird question, what's a good first thing to get involved with (or what did you first get started with). I'm so new to this, i'm not sure where to start.

You have a few options for heavy duty prime number crunching. Number 1 is GIMPS, maybe you feel lucky and could find the next largest prime. Number 2 is PrimeGrid. They have plenty of sub-projects and it is fairly easy to hook up to their server. Number 3 do you own thing for example search for primes of the form 127*2^n+1. There are plenty of options in the "big primes" world/. Number 4 do some factoring. Number 5 If you were so inclined, you could use a nice 32/64 core AMD machine to do some ECPP work -- record primes for this take the order of a couple of months each.

I started years back with a program called PrimeForm for Windows which is now obsolete due to improvements in code -- it morphed into the extant OpenPFGW. There is also the program LLR. Primegrid have their own client softwares. Finding a top5000 prime nowadays is pretty routine for "small" primes of 1/2 million digits.

kriesel · 2021-09-21, 02:20

Assuming GIMPS project or related (OBD, double mersennes, etc):

Try some Colab free cloud computing and many different assignment types & applications, on CPU and on GPU when you can get one, learn what you like before you spend anything.

Own NVIDIA RTX, or GTX1650, for TF, which does not need DP, nor much GPU ram.
AMD GPUs for DP performance for everything except TF; 8GB GPU ram is enough for up to 500M P-1 stage 2;
enough CPU & ram to service the GPUs & do a little local mprime / prime95/mlucas.
For more than 3 GPU P-1 simultaneously, Windows needs more than 16 GB CPU ram, so get a Mobo that allows at least 32.
It doesn't take much CPU power to keep multiple RadeonVIIs or equiv (RX6900XT) happy & well fed. I have a Celeron G1840 doing that duty with Radeon VIIs.

Be cautious about loading heavily a CPU and motherboard with multiple GPUs. CPU plus IGP maxed out by prime95 and mfakto respectively blew out VR components on a mobo, with arcing & a little flame, not good for the GPUs etc. An i7-4790 did that on an Asrock BTC Pro 2.0. And its replacement.

I've enjoyed the economy and features that buying used workstations offers (designed for maintainability; dual Xeons; lots of ram; ECC ram for reliability; economical enough to pay for years of electricity; good documentation and in-chassis labeling; enough space & power for multiple GPUs)

Those that are savvy enough to write the leading software know that GPUs offer more throughput/$ or watt.

2021-09-21, 00:52	#1
LarsNet Mar 2021 2²·11 Posts	A Machine for the project MOD;s please move this to the correct forum if needed. I have 5k for a new machine dedicated to this project, could i please ask for assistance on what to buy to best contribute. Thank you, Lars

2021-09-21, 01:16	#2
paulunderwood Sep 2002 Database er0rr 2³×3×11×17 Posts	Get a water cooled 32 core AMD with a couple of secondhand AMD Radeon VII GPUs. Alternatively buy a cheaper computer with sufficient RAM and 4 Radeon VIIs. (I see the secondhand market for R7's on eBay is still stupid.) Last fiddled with by paulunderwood on 2021-09-21 at 01:22

2021-09-21, 01:37	#8
paulunderwood Sep 2002 Database er0rr 2³×3×11×17 Posts	The GPUs have 16GB each, enough to do two sets of P-1 factoring. So 16GB would be more than enough for the mainboaord. However on a more cores board it would be nice to have 64GB. But I reiterate that secondhand R7s are over priced. I can get 60% of the work done by one on an old Xeon Phi which cost me 600 bucks -- a lot of the price was import taxes from the USA. Last fiddled with by paulunderwood on 2021-09-21 at 01:39

2021-09-21, 02:20	#11
kriesel "TF79LL86GIMPS96gpu17" Mar 2017 US midwest 2·29·127 Posts	Assuming GIMPS project or related (OBD, double mersennes, etc): Try some Colab free cloud computing and many different assignment types & applications, on CPU and on GPU when you can get one, learn what you like before you spend anything. Own NVIDIA RTX, or GTX1650, for TF, which does not need DP, nor much GPU ram. AMD GPUs for DP performance for everything except TF; 8GB GPU ram is enough for up to 500M P-1 stage 2; enough CPU & ram to service the GPUs & do a little local mprime / prime95/mlucas. For more than 3 GPU P-1 simultaneously, Windows needs more than 16 GB CPU ram, so get a Mobo that allows at least 32. It doesn't take much CPU power to keep multiple RadeonVIIs or equiv (RX6900XT) happy & well fed. I have a Celeron G1840 doing that duty with Radeon VIIs. Be cautious about loading heavily a CPU and motherboard with multiple GPUs. CPU plus IGP maxed out by prime95 and mfakto respectively blew out VR components on a mobo, with arcing & a little flame, not good for the GPUs etc. An i7-4790 did that on an Asrock BTC Pro 2.0. And its replacement. I've enjoyed the economy and features that buying used workstations offers (designed for maintainability; dual Xeons; lots of ram; ECC ram for reliability; economical enough to pay for years of electricity; good documentation and in-chassis labeling; enough space & power for multiple GPUs) Those that are savvy enough to write the leading software know that GPUs offer more throughput/$ or watt. Last fiddled with by kriesel on 2021-09-21 at 02:29

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2021-09-21, 01:33	#6
a1call "Rashid Naimi" Oct 2015 Remote to Here/There 5·467 Posts	I used newegg's builder to build my 1st ever build. Worked like a charm for me but I have been working with PC's for decades. AMD CPU's should give the biggest bang for the buck. Number of cores is probably the most important variable, and as mentioned by PaulUnderwood, make sure to use liquid cooling if you are going to crunch the devil out of your hardware. If you use the newegg make sure to change the sorting criteria away from staff-picks and go for highly-rated instead. Good luck.