Am Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 11:31:48AM +0000 schrieb Michael:

On Thursday, 20 February 2025 19:18:52 Greenwich Mean Time whiteman808@paraboletancza.org wrote:

Hello,

I want to build a PC with Gentoo and I need to know how much money
should I spend on it.

Only you can make this judgment. There is usually a sweet spot between performance and price. They are both measurable, but the value/cost ratio any
level of performance represents is quite subjective. Typically, a previous generation of CPUs is more cost effective, while performance increases with each generation.

To clarify, I'll tell more for what I'm going to use PC:
[…]
* it's very probable I'll want to add one or more HDDs with capacity >=
4 TB, connected by SATA,

Hmm ... AM4 socket CPUs could drive SATA x2 + PCIe x2 NVME M.2. I've read that with AM5 CPUs it's all PCIe. You will have to hook any SATA drives on the PCIe, or perhaps externally via USB.

Uhm, not quite. It is true that the I/O die inside the AM4 CPUs supports 2×SATA, which the I/O die in AM5 does not do anymore. But that doesn’t mean that boards don’t provide SATA. In fact, of all 206 AM5 boards listed in my product comparison website, exactly one model does not have any SATA ports. And that’s because it’s a server board with a non-standard form factor and Oculink instead.

* motherboard should have many USB ports, even better if it would have
USB 3 and a few USB type C,
* I'm going to work on three monitors displaying tiling wm with my
workflow based on tmux+neovim+qutebrowser+neomutt etc.

The iGPU on AM5 can drive one dedicated display, while 3 more displays can be
hooked up to the USB-C ports as DP-alt mode.

What do you mean with one dedicated display?
According to https://www.anandtech.com/show/17585/amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x-and-ryzen-5-7600x-review-retaking-the-high-end/3
the AM4 iGPU supports three displays, AM5’s four. And it does not matter which connector you use, be it HDMI¹, DisplayPort, DVI or even VGA.

However, of the mentioned 206 AM5 boards, only 56 have three display connectors, just 4 boards have four. So if you want to use more displays
than you have connectors, you need DisplayPort daisy-chaining.

Can you recommend an example PC configuration that will meet my requirements? Will PC with AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and motherboard with
installed 64 GB RAM be fine? This cpu supports up to 128 GB RAM and has integrated graphics and isn't too expensive for me.

Thank you,
whiteman808

The Ryzen 9 7950X is a beast in terms of CPU frequencies it can achieve and will make compiling any of today's software a breeze. Which brings me to ...
cooling. :-) Although it is more efficient power-wise than previous generations of CPUs, its TDP at 170W is not to be sniffed at. AMD recommends
water cooling which adds to the cost, especially if you intend to squeeze higher boost frequencies through PBO2/CO tweaking.

If you disable the boost, the CPU will run much much more efficiently, in terms of compute power per consumed unit of energy. Example: I have an 8700G APU, it’s only a 65 W chip (65 × 1.4 = 91 W top consumption). But it sits in
a cramped case with a not-so big air cooler. When I let it boost to 5.2 GHz, then just loading one or two cores makes the fan spin up loudly and the chip reaches 70 °C. If I disable boost, the processor goes only to 4.2 GHz, but even when loading 8 or more cores, the fan stays rather quiet and the temps well below 60 degrees.

--
Grüße | Greetings | Salut | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

A filled stomache is more important than studying.

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On Thursday, 20 February 2025 19:18:52 Greenwich Mean Time whiteman808@paraboletancza.org wrote:

Hello,

I want to build a PC with Gentoo and I need to know how much money
should I spend on it.

Only you can make this judgment. There is usually a sweet spot between performance and price. They are both measurable, but the value/cost ratio any level of performance represents is quite subjective. Typically, a previous generation of CPUs is more cost effective, while performance increases with each generation.

To clarify, I'll tell more for what I'm going to use PC:
* computer will be mostly used for programming in languages like C, C++, sysadmin, and testing stuff in the LXC, Docker containers, virtual
machines,
* I'll program mainly desktop applications using ncurses, wxWidgets, and embedded,
* I'm completely not interested in doing computer graphics nor gaming
(either playing games and creating),
* computer will also be used as Gentoo binary package server for my
other machines, including server, and general for compiling stuff on
Gentoo so the number of cores and threads is very important for me,
* I don't ever plan do any dual boot with Windows, I'm going to install Gentoo on PC once and use it,
* I don't want to have Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU, only AMD CPU or GPU,
even integrated Radeon will be okay for me,
* after I buy PC it's possible that I'll want to upgrade RAM up to 128
GB (I won't need more than 128 GB ever, I think),

You probably will at some point in the future, when compilers get even
hungrier than today. ;-) DDR5 128G RAM will be expensive. AM5 socket CPUs can drive ECC RAM and some MoBos like Asus X670E support it - you may wish to have ECC RAM for your coding work? Note, with ECC RAM you may not be able to achieve the advertised frequency of the RAM sticks, without tweaking frequencies and voltage.

* it's very probable I'll want to add one or more HDDs with capacity >=
4 TB, connected by SATA,

Hmm ... AM4 socket CPUs could drive SATA x2 + PCIe x2 NVME M.2. I've read
that with AM5 CPUs it's all PCIe. You will have to hook any SATA drives on
the PCIe, or perhaps externally via USB.

* motherboard should have many USB ports, even better if it would have
USB 3 and a few USB type C,
* I'm going to work on three monitors displaying tiling wm with my
workflow based on tmux+neovim+qutebrowser+neomutt etc.

The iGPU on AM5 can drive one dedicated display, while 3 more displays can be hooked up to the USB-C ports as DP-alt mode. However, not all USB-C ports feature Display Port Alt Mode functionality and whether the MoBo OEMs provide Alt Mode rather than just data through to their USB-C ports would likely
depend on the price point of their products.

Can you recommend an example PC configuration that will meet my
requirements? Will PC with AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and motherboard with
installed 64 GB RAM be fine? This cpu supports up to 128 GB RAM and has integrated graphics and isn't too expensive for me.

Thank you,
whiteman808

The Ryzen 9 7950X is a beast in terms of CPU frequencies it can achieve and will make compiling any of today's software a breeze. Which brings me to ... cooling. :-) Although it is more efficient power-wise than previous generations of CPUs, its TDP at 170W is not to be sniffed at. AMD recommends water cooling which adds to the cost, especially if you intend to squeeze higher boost frequencies through PBO2/CO tweaking.

I can't help thinking a Ryzen 9 7950X continues to be too costly. A used previous generation CPU/MoBo will get you enough performance at a much lower price point, if you are funding this purchase privately and not via a business you work for. If the former, I would look for a previous generation CPU & MoBo, plus a dedicated GPU. You could probably buy a whole system for the
cost of a new 7950X CPU alone. If the latter and you have a choice on the budget, then I'd opt for a Threadripper.
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Thursday, 27 February 2025 19:12:38 Greenwich Mean Time Frank Steinmetzger wrote:

Am Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 11:31:48AM +0000 schrieb Michael:

Hmm ... AM4 socket CPUs could drive SATA x2 + PCIe x2 NVME M.2. I've read that with AM5 CPUs it's all PCIe. You will have to hook any SATA drives
on the PCIe, or perhaps externally via USB.

Uhm, not quite. It is true that the I/O die inside the AM4 CPUs supports 2×SATA, which the I/O die in AM5 does not do anymore. But that doesn’t mean
that boards don’t provide SATA. In fact, of all 206 AM5 boards listed in my product comparison website, exactly one model does not have any SATA ports. And that’s because it’s a server board with a non-standard form factor and
Oculink instead.

I didn't express this clearly. Yes, they can run SATA via the MoBo chipset (e.g. B650/E), but eat up PCIe 4.0 capacity. I've read about users complaining their SATA SSD and SATA HDDs running slower on AM5 than AM4, but I don't have an AM5 so can't confirm.

The iGPU on AM5 can drive one dedicated display, while 3 more displays can be hooked up to the USB-C ports as DP-alt mode.

What do you mean with one dedicated display?

I've read this to mean one HDMI 4K display coming off the graphics core. Lower resolutions using DPs (shared?). I haven't looked into this aspect in more detail for more than a year now. A couple of MoBos I looked at mentioned they only supported 3 displays at a time, so I took this to be an AM5 graphics limitation. Later on I read something from AMD speaking of 4 displays. I don't know more about it.

According to https://www.anandtech.com/show/17585/amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x-and-ryzen-5-76 00x-review-retaking-the-high-end/3 the AM4 iGPU supports three displays, AM5’s four. And it does not matter which connector you use, be it HDMI¹, DisplayPort, DVI or even VGA.

I wasn't comparing AM4 to AM5 iGPUs. Although this video does offer a comparison, which I expect won't be relevant to the OP's use case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiEmCOQi5rg


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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hello,

I want to build a PC with Gentoo and I need to know how much money
should I spend on it.

To clarify, I'll tell more for what I'm going to use PC:
* computer will be mostly used for programming in languages like C, C++, sysadmin, and testing stuff in the LXC, Docker containers, virtual
machines,
* I'll program mainly desktop applications using ncurses, wxWidgets, and embedded,
* I'm completely not interested in doing computer graphics nor gaming
(either playing games and creating),
* computer will also be used as Gentoo binary package server for my
other machines, including server, and general for compiling stuff on
Gentoo so the number of cores and threads is very important for me,
* I don't ever plan do any dual boot with Windows, I'm going to install
Gentoo on PC once and use it,
* I don't want to have Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU, only AMD CPU or GPU,
even integrated Radeon will be okay for me,
* after I buy PC it's possible that I'll want to upgrade RAM up to 128
GB (I won't need more than 128 GB ever, I think),
* it's very probable I'll want to add one or more HDDs with capacity >=
4 TB, connected by SATA,
* motherboard should have many USB ports, even better if it would have
USB 3 and a few USB type C,
* I'm going to work on three monitors displaying tiling wm with my
workflow based on tmux+neovim+qutebrowser+neomutt etc.

Can you recommend an example PC configuration that will meet my
requirements? Will PC with AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and motherboard with
installed 64 GB RAM be fine? This cpu supports up to 128 GB RAM and has integrated graphics and isn't too expensive for me.

Thank you,
whiteman808

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)