PC Tech Thread

I had the same issue. Bought a CPU and donated it quickly after flashing. A faff and annoyance.

I seem to remember this is part of the reason I bought a motherboard/CPU bundle from AWD. They did the BIOS update for you. Seems like a ballache otherwise.

I'd like to upgrade my PC.

Main aims are quality of life and faster IO - in particular I want to go from thunderbolt 3 to 4 (and have more of those ports even if they're not all tb4 but some flavour of USB 3 - I currently have 2 x tb3 and 2 x usb 3.1/2 in c). I'd like better networking (more ethernet options but also open to better BT/wifi). I don't hate my case but I can't use one of the usb ports in the front by design which seems silly.

I'd like an attractive case with really good IO - ideally a way of connecting TB4 to any ports at the front so I can plug in drives without having to reach around. What I currently do is have the back of the computer facing me. It's not pretty and actually the connections on the B550 ports are stiff, awkward and feel flimsy. I'd like something with a bit more space around the ports so I don't have to use needle nose pliers to change a cable.

I'd like a motherboard that can do the above and make use of more nvme drives without clogging alongside my processor and GPU. Is there a limit on nvmes? I'd love 4 internally but open to sticking with 2.

Currently I'm pretty happy with performance and unless I go the threadripper route (which I will at some stage) I don't expect anything that will boost it.

So I suspect I want a new motherboard and case and the rest can stay? Plus potentially a TB4 card assuming TB4 isn't native on any AMD compatible motherboards?

Currently:

5950x
vision b550 d mobo
vision 3090
64gb 3600 corsair vengeance rgb (2x32gb)
wd black sn850 4tb x 2
noctua nh d15s
4 x nf s12a
corsair 4000d airflow

My end goal is to be copying data from cameras as fast as I possibly can with no bottlenecks.
Then I want to edit as fast as I can natively on the nvme rather than over a cable (usually less than 4TB per project - typically 1-2TB)

Current workflow if I'm on a shoot and backing up to portable drives:

Camera > card > reader (acceptable bottleneck here depending on the card/reader) > backup to laptop and also to portable drive simultaneously > finish shoot and come home to backup to computer nvme > when that's done I duplicate to the raid (tb2, still, using a tb3 adapter ) then edit on the computer and when I'm finished do a project backup to the raid, export proxies of rushes and do a cloud backup of the proxies and projects, retaining the master rushes for 12 months unless otherwise paid.

Portable field drives I use:
https://www.westerndigital.com/en-gb/products/portable-drives/sandisk-pro-g-drive-pro-thunderbolt-3-ssd#SDPS51F-002T-GBANB
https://www.westerndigital.com/en-gb/products/portable-drives/sandisk-pro-g-drive-usb-3-2-ssd#SDPS11A-002T-GBANB
My field laptop is an old macbook pro. Will upgrade to a new one with TB4 this year which will help bottlenecks there.
My RAID is an old TB2 g-raid (still chugging away after nearly a decade and due an upgrade - looking at a couple of these daisy-chained for desktop aesthetic even though softraid: https://www.owcdigital.com/products/thunderblade )
Cards typically some flavour of CF/SD/ Red mini mags / arri codex.

In before @chrisbmx116 says get a M1 Ultra Studio

Have you looked at the M1 Ultra Studio?

I have a POS desktop PC.
Currently it has an HDD, I would like to swap to an SSD, at least for the Windows installation.
The motherboard is old (Asus something with an A6 AMD 2.2ghz cpu)
Originally it had 4gb ram, which was upgrade to 10gb from a kind forumers donation, and soon will have another 16gb to play with (not sure what the limitations of the board are, so will be at least 16gb, possible more if it can take it)

My questions are:

1. I think the existing HDD is SATA, so I guess I need a SATA SSD? (do other mounts exist?)
   
2. Is it likely the motherboard will have multiple sockets for additional storage? I wouldn't mind keeping the old HDD as a storage device
   
3. Moving the Windows 10 installation from the HDD to the SSD, do I
   need to flash a fresh image and go through the "rigmarole" of a
   clean install, or is there an "easy" drag and drop option?
   
   

As I type these questions I feel like a bit of an idiot and should know better.

I couldn't find any with TB4 on the front panel, the best I found was the one I purchased... Asus x570 ProArt WiFi... This has two TB4 on the back and I use one to carry video too (from the GPU, looped back in and then out on the TB cable). That then terminates on my desk with a CalDigit dock... Giving me a thunderbolt on my desk.

Looking at what you have... I'd be considering just a motherboard change and some minor upgrades to provide the workflow you want.

Thanks. That looping idea is a good one for cable management - presuming the caldigit doesn't bottle neck speeds? Saw this earlier which i guess would do something similar with the display ports https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/Accessories/ThunderboltEX-4/
A dock would also be an idea to alleviate some pressure on just 2 usb c shaped ports (trying to migrate all my cables/peripherals to usb-c) with the x570

Not even fucking about, my Nerd box has an X570 with TB3 GPU loop back (internally even maybe? Can't even remember) which I used for my LG 5K in both macOS and W10.

A dock would also be an idea to alleviate some pressure on just 2 usb c shaped ports (trying to migrate all my cables/peripherals to usb-c) with the x570

This is basically what I do.

My PC weighs too much and is on fixed shelving behind the desk. My desk is a mechanical sit/stand desk. I have a single USB-C/TB cable (the expensive Apple one) coming from the PC to the desk, where it terminates in a CalDigit dock which then takes everything on the desk (monitor, mouse, keyboard, streamdeck, webcam, webcam, yubikey, audio interface) and still provides me with a TB port on my desk which I can easily get to and the memory card slot.

What I have sounds like what you're going for... but I didn't get there via the case front panel, the dock solved it. There's no slow down in the speed from doing this so long as you have a good dock (but it looks like you've been spendy in the past and wouldn't hesitate at something like the CalDigit TS4).

👌

Is there a particular reason why you’d like 4x NVMe drives internally, instead of 1 or 2 drives of a higher capacity?

If there is, and you need full bandwidth to all PCIe/NVMe devices, then Threadripper/EPYC/Xeon-W are your only choices. Consumer Ryzen/Intel i9 platforms have too-few PCIe lanes to support more than a couple of devices at full bandwidth.

Note also that consumer NVMe drives, even ‘prosumer’ ones like the Samsung 980 Pro, are all hobbled in terms of sustained write speeds. For example, a 2TB 980 Pro has a quoted write speed of ‘~5GB/s’, but will only hit that for a small fraction of its capacity, and fall back to under 2GB/s afterwards once the SLC-alike cache is exhausted. Enterprise/server NVMe drives actually sustain their quoted write speeds across the entire drive with no slowdown.

I use 3.8TB Samsung PM9A3 drives (same controller as 980 Pro but with enterprise firmware and better NAND chips) in RAID5 arrays for uncompressed video ingest and editing servers; they hit 4GB/s sustained sequential writes per drive all day.

Also consider the fact that M.2 drives are difficult to cool and will easily overheat and throttle if pushed hard. I only use U.2 form factor drives for this reason; their chips are more spread out and they run much cooler. I use PCIe bifurcation risers with re-driver chips that split a 16-lane slot into 4x 4-lane U.2 connectors:

1 Attachment

Is there a particular reason why you’d like 4x NVMe drives internally,

Purely a perception of speed.

Also the thought in my head that I could make a RAID from them but this may not be possible unless softraid (or at all)?

I'll see how persuasive I can be to my wife that I need something called a threadripper.

Are you running Windows as your main bare-metal OS? If so, there’s little point in aspiring to NVMe RAID as the built-in Windows software pooled drive implementation is shite, and hardware NVMe RAID cards that use enough PCIe lanes to warrant the exercise are expensive.

A decent single 4-lane U.2 Gen4 enterprise drive will give you sustained sequential ~7GB read/~4GB write speeds. I have several Samsung PM1735 Gen4 8-lane PCIe add-in card drives which give 8.5GB read/4GB write sustained from a single drive, running on Windows media servers (Dataton Watchout).

Do you really need more speed than the above?

this is getting stupid, I don't think I will be colouring in the rest of the cores.

1 Attachment

2x EPYC 7443?

No, it's some type of Xeon Gold, we are still all Intel for some reason, only had two AMD machines for testing last year.

Anyone got any tips for working out if a PSU is faulty except for straight up replacing it with another one? Getting some random shutdowns when the system is under load (3d rendering), after which the PSU needs to be switched off and on again to restart. Googling suggests this is likely to be a PSU issue but feels painful shelling out £300 for a replacement without knowing if it's really the issue.

Faulty GPU drivers could easily cause random shutdowns and that's where my first thought would go.

Are there any syslogs that might indicate a GPU driver issue?

I've had similar symptoms with faulty RAM.

£300 for a PSU??

Pretty sure I’ve tried a a couple of different drivers before but will try updating to the most recent ones.

@aggi how were you able to work out it was the ram? Test the sticks one by one?

@chez_jay running dual 3090’s so using a 1200w psu

using a 1200w psu

#golfthread with energy prices as they are

I had crashing GPU intensive tasks which were caused by old firmware of the motherboard, update fixed it. Didn't shut down the whole machine though.

running dual 3090’s so using a 1200w psu

Isn't 1200w cutting it a bit fine with 2x 3090s? Tried removing one and seeing if it makes any difference?