PC Build 2020

September 01, 2020

PC Build 2020

Requirements

reduce noise (priority 1)
reduce power (priority 2)
optimized in processing videos
code compilation

Thoughts

Opted for an air cooled 3950X against a water cooled system because of some doubts regarding maintenance and possible issues...
There are some air cooled threadripper rigs but honestly the balance between noise/power consumption/use is not ok for my purposes (oversized)
The threadripper platform quad DDR4 was very tempting though for RAM performance... But in the end I favored modesty with dual DDR4 at a quite low CL, anyways I expect the Graphic Card to do or at least support most of the CPU intensive processing jobs.
Unfortunately the support in the tools I use for video processing for OpenCL is not good, so probably I'll have to pick an nVidia card.

Components

Component	Size(s)	Description
Motherboard	X570	ASUS Prime X570-P
CPU	3950X	AMD Ryzen™ 9 3950X boxed
CPU Cooler	NH-D15	Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4
Case	Define R6	Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C Black Midi-Tower
PSU	750W	750W Seasonic Focus PX - 80 Plus Platinum
RAM	32GB	32GB GSkill Trident Z RGB DDR4 - 3200 (2x 16GB) F4-3200C14D-32GTZR
Storage	1TB	Samsung 970 EVO Plus - M.2 2280 M.2 (PCIe 3.0) SSD
Storage	8TB	Western Digital WDC WD8004FRYZ-01VAEB0 (01.01H01) SATA III 6G
Adapter	USB-C	Delock 66432: Adapter for the internal USB-3.0 (19 pin header) to USB Key A
Graphic	TBD	unclear, at the moment an old PCIe 2.0 passive card is in use (later, RTX 2070S, RTX 2080?)

NOTES:

I had to suffer to buy RGB memory because the shop I bought it only had that one on stock. The version without RGB is F4-3200C14D-32GTZ.
There was not much benefit in taking PCIe 4.0 SSD, that M.2 module is really fast
The adapter was needed to make the USB-C port work (no Key A connector on the motherboard) to connect the cable from case
Another bunch of SATA disks will come into the system at a later time (from previous rig once tests are complete)

Installation, known issues

The cooler was modified to make both FANs work in pull mode (not enough place due to tall RAM)
Initially with BIOS v1407, RAM was instable and POST unsuccessful
Bios update (v2606) required to clear the RTC RAM (shortcut 2 pins on the motherboard) otherwise the system didn't POST at all
With BIOS v2606, the RAM performs well at the XMP profile settings (14-14-14-34- timings, 1.35v)
There are still sporadic POST issues (Hint 1, Hint2, Hint 3)
Disabled FAST boot (seems to help POST RAM checks to pass)
Issue in getting SMART over NVMe to work in gnome-disk, due to a missing upstream feature in udisks (See #386, #433)

Software

Further installation is performed using bios 2606 and RAM running at 14-14-14-34@3200MHz (XMP)

Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
500MB EFI / Rest Ext4 filesystem

NOTES:

ZFS is still experimental on linux and repair tools availibility are low.
LVM is not setup because I do not intend to make any changes to the main system storage.
The FAN sensor values are not yet readable from the vanilla linux kernel + modules in 20.04.1 LTS (super IO chip NCT6798D not fully supported)
CPU FAN + temperature is readable

The problems with the sensors are related to the hwmon driver nct6775.

nct6775: Found NCT6798D or compatible chip at 0x2e:0x290
ACPI Warning: SystemIO range 0x0000000000000295-0x0000000000000296 conflicts with OpRegion 0x0000000000000290-0x0000000000000299 (\AMW0.SHWM) (20190509/utaddress-204)
ACPI: If an ACPI driver is available for this device, you should use it instead of the native driver

A workaround could be using the boot parameter acpi_enforce_resources=lax (but it's risky). Added output of my acpidump -b to that ticket.

Tests

Basic tests to ensure correct cooling, CPU operation and DRAM stability

CPU stress tests went ok
RAM tests performed with DRAM voltage at 1.35v (1 pass PassMark free OK) but there are POST issues
RAM tests performed with DRAM voltage at 1.34v (1 pass PassMark free OK + 4 Passes in a row OK)
Running PC with Fast Boot disabled and DRAM voltage at 1.35v

Benchmarks

Results: OpenBenchmarking.org

pts: Phoronix Test Suite
Linpack Extreme
TFM Tyler's Frame Machine
Unigine (part of pts)
Hyperfine
IOZone
Bonnie++
sysbench (part of pts)
fio (part of pts)
netperf
hardinfo
LLCbench

Phoronix Test Suite

pmbench

2 x 16384 MB DDR4-3200MT/s F4-3200C14-16GTZR

    Percentile Classification Of Current Benchmark Run
    MEMORY
        pmbench
            1 - 50%:          88th
            2 - 50%:          89th
            4 - 50%:          94th
            8 - 50%:          84th
            1 - 100% Reads:   88th
            2 - 100% Reads:   88th
            4 - 100% Reads:   75th
            8 - 100% Reads:   69th
            1 - 100% Writes:  65th
            2 - 100% Writes:  73rd
            4 - 100% Writes:  73rd
            8 - 100% Writes:  66th
            1 - 8.R.2.W:      85th
            2 - 8.R.2.W:      75th
            4 - 8.R.2.W:      93rd
            8 - 8.R.2.W:      76th

Linpack extreme

Tests mainly CPU/Memory/Cooling stability.

Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-Core @ 3.50GHz (16 Cores / 32 Threads), Motherboard: ASUS PRIME X570-P (2606 BIOS), Chipset: AMD Starship/Matisse, Memory: 2 x 16384 MB DDR4-3200MT/s F4-3200C14-16GTZR, Disk: 1000GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB, Graphics: MSI NVIDIA NVA8 1GB, Audio: NVIDIA HD Audio, Monitor: TOSHIBA-TV, Network: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411

OS: Ubuntu 20.04, Kernel: 5.4.0-47-generic (x86_64), Desktop: GNOME Shell 3.36.4, Display Server: X Server 1.20.8, Display Driver: modesetting 1.20.8, OpenGL: 3.3 Mesa 20.0.8, Compiler: GCC 9.3.0, File-System: ext4, Screen Resolution: 1920x1080

Benchmark:

Current date/time: Fri Sep 11 17:42:33 2020

CPU frequency:    4.365 GHz
Number of CPUs: 1
Number of cores: 16
Number of threads: 16

Parameters are set to:

Number of tests: 1
Number of equations to solve (problem size) : 20000
Leading dimension of array                  : 20000
Number of trials to run                     : 1
Data alignment value (in Kbytes)            : 4

Maximum memory requested that can be used=3200404096, at the size=20000

=================== Timing linear equation system solver ===================

Size   LDA    Align. Time(s)    GFlops   Residual     Residual(norm) Check
20000  20000  4      14.714     362.5091 2.588746e-10 2.291607e-02   pass

Performance Summary (GFlops)

Size   LDA    Align.  Average  Maximal
20000  20000  4       362.5091 362.5091

Residual checks PASSED

Stress test:

Linpack Xtreme v1.1.3 by Regeneration

Current date/time: Fri Sep 11 17:44:33 2020

CPU frequency:    4.315 GHz
Number of CPUs: 1
Number of cores: 16
Number of threads: 32

Parameters are set to:

Number of tests: 1
Number of equations to solve (problem size) : 22611
Leading dimension of array                  : 22611
Number of trials to run                     : 20
Data alignment value (in Kbytes)            : 4

Maximum memory requested that can be used=4090514884, at the size=22611

=================== Timing linear equation system solver ===================

Size   LDA    Align. Time(s)    GFlops   Residual     Residual(norm) Check
22611  22611  4      60.533     127.3300 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      59.983     128.4979 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      60.095     128.2595 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      59.940     128.5910 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      60.365     127.6842 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      59.800     128.8918 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      60.109     128.2299 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      59.867     128.7473 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      59.998     128.4654 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      59.988     128.4871 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      59.838     128.8094 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      59.998     128.4664 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      60.005     128.4515 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      60.009     128.4432 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      59.780     128.9350 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      60.304     127.8149 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      60.361     127.6928 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      60.219     127.9941 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      61.212     125.9193 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass
22611  22611  4      60.350     127.7167 3.636039e-10 2.527392e-02   pass

Performance Summary (GFlops)

Size   LDA    Align.  Average  Maximal
22611  22611  4       128.1714 128.9350

Residual checks PASSED