#2

[M344587487]

That is a big case at 82L, good thing volume isn't a relevant metric. Compare that to this ( https://www.asus.com/Mini-PCs/Mini-PC-PN50/overview/ ) 0.65L case (probably ~0.85L when considering the external power brick) containing a Zen 2 laptop part that tops out at 8C16T. Admittedly the laptop parts are less performant and you need some multiple of them to match the throughput of your beast, but the density of the potential cluster is impressive.

[Xyzzy]

Originally Posted by M344587487

That is a big case at 82L, good thing volume isn't a relevant metric. Compare that to this ( https://www.asus.com/Mini-PCs/Mini-PC-PN50/overview/ ) 0.65L case (probably ~0.85L when considering the external power brick) containing a Zen 2 laptop part that tops out at 8C16T. Admittedly the laptop parts are less performant and you need some multiple of them to match the throughput of your beast, but the density of the potential cluster is impressive.

We have an Asus PN61 that we use for our daily driver. It is very tiny as you noted. The first attached picture shows it inside our new case for comparison. The second attached picture shows how small the power brick is.

PS - The Asus PN* series is actually a bit larger than they need to be. They have room in the bottom of the case for a 2.5" hard drive.

[Uncwilly]

Need a banana in the picture, power bricks vary too much.

[lavalamp]

Originally Posted by Mark Rose

You missed the Fractal Define 7 XL then. With the purchase of extra trays it can hold 16 + 2 3.5" drives, plus five 2.5" devices.

I did see that case, I believe I rejected it due to the drives not being vibration damped. I think some are, some aren't. In the end I went with a rackmount case which I THOUGHT had vibration damping, but turned out not to, so that worked out great.

Originally Posted by chalsall

How many SATA ports does your standard MB support?

4 - 8 typically, but for people who want a lot of drives, there are other ways. I'm using an HBA to provice 16 SATA/SAS ports at the moment. It's not a typical use case of course, but there are many non-typical users and I was lamenting the lack of options.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by lavalamp

... and I was lamenting the lack of options.

I copy you. Loud and clear.

I hate that I have to take the DVD drive offline to bring four (4#) storage devices online for a RAID 6 configuration.

We work with what we're given. It often costs more coin to bring additional channels online.

Shouldn't be. But that's where we find ourselves.

[Xyzzy]

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard...-MASTER-rev-10
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/QN7...0-aorus-master

We spent a while deciding on a motherboard. Most of the decision was tied to choosing between the X570 or B550 chipset. In the end, the B550 won because:

We dislike active cooling on chipsets.
We only ever plan to run one GPU and one M.2 SSD.
B550 boards are about $100 cheaper than X570 boards.

In the B550 motherboard realm, only the ASRock "Taichi", the Asus "Strix B550-E Gaming" and the Gigabyte "Aorus Master" interested us. In the end the Gigabyte won because it has the best VRM setup even when compared to X570 boards. It also has a full coverage backplate which we think is really neat. We probably don't need that level of VRM engineering, but we like the idea that they overbuilt it.

The only feature it lacks that we would like to have is an onboard USB-C header and a BIOS reset button. Other than that it has been fantastic so far. (We have the system running already but we haven't had time to post about all the parts yet!)



We paid $279.99 + $26.60 sales tax plus free shipping for this part.

[PhilF]

You did good!

Gigabyte is my favorite motherboard brand. You'll have fun trying to wear that one out...

[Xyzzy]

Originally Posted by kruoli

From my personal experience with my new Zen 2 work machine, there might be some trouble to get a chip stable at DDR clocks at (and surely above) 3,600 MHz. Sometimes, it is running multiple DCs without any problems. But my current DC already has four round-off-errors. When I first encountered this, I overvolted RAM and SOC slightly and it helped for a while. No, the ambient temperatures seem to be too high or something. Nothing in this machine is overclocked in any way. I only applied the RAM profile which itself reported to be designed for.

We don't have the memory we ordered just yet, but we threw in a pair of used memory sticks for testing. (User jvang just got these. Had we known he was buying them we would have asked him to maybe sell them to us.)

So far we have tuned:

3,666MT/s memory speed
1,833MHz Infinity Fabric (FCLK:UCLK:MCLK)
CAS 15-15-15-15-36-50
Memory at 1.35V. (At 1.3V sometimes only one stick is recognized.)

It has been stable so far running memtest and mprime's torture test.

3,733 MT/s won't boot at all with FCLK:UCLK:MCLK.

[masser]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

3,733 MT/s won't boot at all with FCLK:UCLK:MCLK.

I wouldn't try the MUCK:UGLY:FUCK setting.

Where's that dumb jokes thread when you need it?

[Xyzzy]

https://www.asus.com/us/Graphics-Car...8G-EVO-GAMING/
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/78k...o8g-evo-gaming

We don't need a fancy video card, but we bought one anyways. We chose a 5700XT because it uses a 7nm manufacturing process, sports a PCIe 4.0 interface and has fantastic open source drivers baked into the Linux kernel. We specifically did not choose Nvidia because they choose to not be open source friendly.

We arrived at this particular model because of how it is packaged. Basically we like how it looks! Most 5700XT cards are very similar in cost and features. This model had a real bad initial release with messed up cooling problems, but the "EVO" refresh fixed all of that. It has a zero-RPM fan deal that we really like and the back plate looks super cool. (We have a thing for back plates!) The back plate even has thermal tape connecting it to the PCB.

https://hothardware.com/reviews/asus...-xt-evo-review




We paid $419.99 + $39.90 sales tax plus free shipping for this part.

[lavalamp]

Originally Posted by PhilF

You did good!

Gigabyte is my favorite motherboard brand. You'll have fun trying to wear that one out...

And my least favourite. I'll never buy another gigabyte product as long as I live.