True for Seti crunching, the slot speed is not that important. I didn't know if the host was also a gaming platform. The drop in slot speeds DOES impact gaming.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Also worth making sure the radiator fans & pump are on the right headers if the motherboard doesn't have a dedicated pump header.
When I got my system from the supplier, I had to swap them around & put the radiator fans on the CPU fan header, the pump on a System header. Dropped CPU temperatures by 5°c.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Installed AMD Ryzen Master. It puts the idle temperatures between 36.46C and 41.12C (weirdly specific).
Got more weird trouble: my second SSD is found in the BIOS and by Windows but isn't accessible. I didn't use encryption on it in the previous system, so don't know what happened there. Am investigating.

Using Win10 1909, it installed in under 5 minutes. I could get used to that after years of 45 minutes with a CD then several hours with Windows Update.

My living room smells of new hardware burning in. :)

I did move the radiator fans to the motherboard, which works fine. Thanks for that hint.

Oh and perhaps that x8 vs x16 has impact on gaming when you have a 144Hz or faster monitor, I have two 60Hz monitors still, so not impacting here.

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Got more weird trouble: my second SSD is found in the BIOS and by Windows but isn't accessible. I didn't use encryption on it in the previous system, so don't know what happened there. Am investigating.

In Computer Management, Disk Management, what does it show for Layout, Type, File system, Status?

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Grant
Darwin NT

It specifies it's an SSD (because it's connected via SATA, I think), Layout Simple, Type Basic, File System NTFS, Status Healthy). It contains three partitions, E: (Logical), F: (primary) and 92GB unallocated. Something is fishy here as that unallocated space shouldn't be there.

This whole system is a learning curve. In the manual it says that M.2 drives take precedence over SATA drives, yet when I booted with the USB stick the SATA SSD was set to Primary, over the M.2 SSD.
There is some data on that drive that I wanted to keep, so tomorrow I'll switch it back to my old system, back it up, format it and then put it back in the new system. If only for once things would go without a hitch. Well, installing games via Origin, UPlay and Steam at the same time at least works without problems. :)

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on nearly any motherboard, you need to manually set boot device priority manually if you have anything other than a single HDD/SSD device, not USBs plugged in and no optical drive. with multiple devices you'll almost always have to do some level of manual adjustment.

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Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

It specifies it's an SSD (because it's connected via SATA, I think), Layout Simple, Type Basic, File System NTFS, Status Healthy). It contains three partitions, E: (Logical), F: (primary) and 92GB unallocated. Something is fishy here as that unallocated space shouldn't be there.

Expand the status column. A UEFI BIOS actually reserves a chunk of drive space from memory.
My single drive system with a M2 SSD, shows as DIsk 0, which is in 3 parts.

Volume              Layout    Type    File System    Status                                                      Capacity
C:                  Simple    Basic   NTFS           Healthy (Boot, Page file, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)   930.50 GB
Disk 0 partition 3  Simple    Basic   (blank)        Healthy (Recovery Partition)                                529 MB
System Reserved     Simple    Basic   NTFS           Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)                 500 MB

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Grant
Darwin NT

Meanwhile, running benchmarks.
Deus Ex Mankind Divided crashes on 3480x2160 as it runs out of video memory .
Deus Ex MD 1920x1080, Ultra, DX12, Min 21.1, Max 39.0, Avg 28.7 FPS.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1920x1080, Max 191, Min 106, Avg 145 FPS.
3840x2160, Max 174, Min 95, Avg 135 FPS.

CPU temps during benchmarks 38, 39C.

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My NVMe drive is shown as one partition, healthy, boot, page file, active, crash dump, primary partition.
The Sata drive shows as four partitions, E: (Healthy, logical drive), F: (healthy, primary partition), System Reserved (system, active, primary partition, but only 579 MB) and 92.59GB unallocated.

I'll try a partitioning program next.

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The Sata drive shows as four partitions, E: (Healthy, logical drive), F: (healthy, primary partition), System Reserved (system, active, primary partition, but only 579 MB) and 92.59GB unallocated.

Had that drive ever been formatted with a Linux file system, with a couple of FAT/NTFS partitions? Don't know what Disk Manager would make of a Linux files system- hence 2 logical drives, system reserved, and that very large unallocated space.

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Grant
Darwin NT

No, it came out of a Windows 7 system, thus NTFS.

As I said, I will put it back in the old system tomorrow, must do that anyway as it holds a game I play and forgot about. Hope it's still there. 🤞

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Put it back in, Windows installed some device drivers, up pop the two partitions I know about (with games and old page file). I can get there and move things. So, will do a backup of the main partition to the NAS, then reformat this drive with Samsung Magician, then move it over. Maybe it's an incompatibility between Windows 7 and 10 way of writing data to a drive?

Edit: ah... I am not the owner of the drive because my new system has a different username. So I have to take ownership of it. Will try that after backing the contents up to the NAS.

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This is my first post to any thread here, but after reading through this Ryzen thread, I picked up on some good info. I am in the process of upgrading my pc, and am building 2 new ones. I am planning on 2 x 3900 Ryzen builds, 1 dedicated to Seti/Einstein the other will be 80% dedicated ( I got to play my games), and this one (the soon to be upgrade) will be 100% dedicated but it's so old, I don't even want to mention what it is (can anyone say SINGLE CORE?)

I am writing because if I need tech help after I get these built, would it be ok to ask some of you what direction I may need to go to improve performance?

I have specs of R3900x, MSI MPG X570 GAMING EDGE WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard, DDR4 cl14 3600 4x16gb

Would it help Seti/Einstein if I also added 20 TB (5x4 TB Toshiba x300) of raid 10 storage on 1 system (would they be able to use it?)

These will be ran behind a VPN, Wireless router, through a network switch, and can be set up for remote desktop use if need be.
Thanks for your time and consideration.


Alcohol is not the answer. "that's good, because I wasn't asking alcohol any questions"

I am writing because if I need tech help after I get these built, would it be ok to ask some of you what direction I may need to go to improve performance?

Yes. Our best expert is probably Keith who is running both the 3900x and the 3950x. He runs them at "full tilt" someplace near 4Ghz and I believe he also runs E@H. He has come up with parameters that let him run them "cooler" than stock auto temperatures.

Are you going with Air Cooling or Liquid Cooling for your cpus?

And what kind of Video cards?

And what is your target OS? (Windows, Linux, other?) :)

Respectfully,
Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Will have to go air cooling (Noctua NH-U9S 46.44 CFM CPU Cooler) each will be in a 4U server case, so height is an issue. I plan on "push pull" so I will add another fan opposite of this small tower cooler. (water cooled is not an option because of the design of the cases, and I don't trust water around my pc's (call me old fashoned, crazy.) Don't get mad when "I told you so" after your CPU blows up from a leak.

Video card will be Asus Radeon RX 5700 8 GB TUF Gaming X3 OC Video Card (in "80% unit" ) the other will be a low cost video card just to get by so for now it's TBD.

O/S will be windows 10, it's the only O/S I am familiar with (so much for Linux.....) I really don't want to learn Linux.

I fully support the research that has been ongoing. And I have done the best I can with what I have to help. I don't have a ton of money (I have allotted $1,800-2,000 per build,) and hope to have these built by spring (April-May), and will be glad to contribute even more computer time with these builds.

Parts have been and will be ordered, as time permits. (pcPartpicker is the best).

thanks Tom, appreciated.

"To error is ... mmm beer".. Homer Simpson. DOH

Will have to go air cooling (Noctua NH-U9S 46.44 CFM CPU Cooler) each will be in a 4U server case,

I am running Air Cooled Noctua on my 3900x and the Wraith cooler than came with my 2700x/3900x on the 3950x. I am not running either of them with Turbo. I have tried turbo to see where the temps went (UP!) but can't afford the electricity to run at Turbo-speeds.

Video card will be Asus Radeon RX 5700 8 GB TUF Gaming X3 OC Video Card (in "80% unit" ) the other will be a low cost video card just to get by so for now it's TBD.

O/S will be windows 10, it's the only O/S I am familiar with (so much for Linux.....) I really don't want to learn Linux.

Once you are setup and running someone will mention the Lunatics Distro for Windows. My experience is the cpu tasks would run upto 30% faster than standard Seti but that was years ago. You may find the standard Seti cpu tasks are plenty fast.

If you are going to crunch Seti on the RX 5700 you should take a look at the sticky thread on the issues that Seti etal are having with the OpenCL drivers not quite working right.

If you can find a used Nvidia Gtx 1060 3GB card for the "other" machine I believe you will be pleased with it running 7-9 minutes per Seti gpu task (under Windows). If you want to run that card on your other Boinc projects you will need to confirm it has enough memory to run them. So may need the 6GB version of that card.

Tom
ps. Yes I once ran a single cpu on Seti@Home :)

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Okay and then the new SSD died. Windows won't boot, can't repair it either as it can't find an existing Windows on any drives. Trying to install Windows yields "We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one". Well, that tells me the thing is dead. it can be found in the BIOS, and fdisk can see it but beyond that, nada.

I can get there via the command line. See the contents of the drive, so it is all right. Now, how to fix it?

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Would it help Seti/Einstein if I also added 20 TB (5x4 TB Toshiba x300) of raid 10 storage on 1 system (would they be able to use it?)

Not really as neither project thrashes the discs that much.

If you are going to crunch Seti on the RX 5700 you should take a look at the sticky thread on the issues that Seti etal are having with the OpenCL drivers not quite working right.

AMD are not the best choice of GPU for SETI just now as their performance is a long way behind the price-point equivalnet nVida. A good thread to have a look at is Shaggie's FLOPS reality one (https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=81962) - his newest data is here https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=81962&postid=2018703. These figures are with the "stock" applications running under Windows, but there is a "Special" application, only available under Linux, that moves the high-end nVidia offerings up another step (nearly double the speed of the same GPU under Windows).

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Fixed it. Rewrote the boot files using the guide on this page. Of course trouble keeps following me as now the main partition of the old SSD is gone. Back to Diskpart. ;-)

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Once you are setup and running someone will mention the Lunatics Distro for Windows. My experience is the cpu tasks would run upto 30% faster than standard Seti but that was years ago. You may find the standard Seti cpu tasks are plenty fast.

The stock gpu apps in the Lunatics installer are the same stock apps at Main. No difference. The cpu apps however in the Lunatics distro are MUCH faster than the stock apps at Main. Install the apps with the Lunatics installer and then find the SoG app thread for tuning parameters.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)