So… I really really want to move back to using Linux at home full time. Currently my desktop is dual-booting Windows 10 and Qubes 4.0 but I’d love to banish windows either to a VM or to my rack in my laundry room.
Currently I’ve got a lot of gear lying around, so this could involve some slimming down of my hoard of hardware. I’m also mulling a move to AMD wholesale… partially for the core-count of the new threadrippers and partially for the better hardware support. Also ECC RAM support is a must for me and Intel’s i9s lack support for that.
My main desktop:
Dual Xeon E5-2630 v3 (16 cores/32 threads total)
128GB ECC DDR4 1866
Pair of 1080 Ti
Pair of 1TB Samsung SM961 SSDs (one for qubes | one for windows)
Bunch of 4TB SSHDs
1500W PSU
Dell U3818dw 3840x1600 ultrawide (this has two HDMI 2.0 and a built-in USB KVM)
I also have another system lying around spare with a rackmount case that I could use as a steam host: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/cros13/builds/#view=xHxYcf
Dual E5-2695 v2 (24 cores total)
128GB ECC DDR3 1600
A few SSDs & 4TB HDDs
1250W PSU
Both have 10GBe and there’s a 10gbit switch in the rack.
If I go threadripper the plan would be to sell the xeon board/cpus and go for a 2990wx on a Asus Zenith Extreme.
Questions:
VM and GPU Passthrough or move one of the 1080Ti to the rackmount and use steam streaming?
Sell the 1080Ti on the desktop and buy a Vega64?
If I go threadripper 2 will I need a 2nd older chip to upgrade the BIOS on the Asus board or is there any way of ensuring I get a board shipped with the right BIOS?
Will the 2990wx and Asus board (temporarily) play nice with my 1866 ECC DDR4 or would I need to sell that for cents on the euro and replace?
The rackmount dual Xeon is less than ideal for Windows Gaming use… should I sell (later) and build something more power efficient (i’ve got an i3-7100 & a mini-itx board lying around somewhere) or would VMing the Windows install and passing through the 1080 (with the usual caveats about Code 43) allow me to free up the cores and memory for other duties?
Think that’s about enough for my first post
Hi all!
Personally I’d say go with intel, you have to patch kernels and do all sorts of other nasty business with the AMD HEDT at the moment, and bios updates are randomly breaking other virt features for people on X399
Really though it just depends on whether you think the hassle is worth the savings.
of these two I’d say keep the nvidia card, Vega cards are almost all bugged and won’t soft reset properly in virtual machines.
If you’re going to upgrade and hassle-free virtualization is a priority, just grap a newer xeon or inthel HEDT platform.
And if I go the steam streaming route are these issues a problem if I’m not doing VM hardware passthrough? I usually compile a kernel myself and I’d be looking at Arch not Qubes so a few patches are not a barrier if they fix the problems for the moment and fixes hit the vanilla kernel later on.
The issue I have is Asus screwed up my board revision (Z10PE-D8 v1) so I need to move board (or go through a warranty claim) to go to v4 Xeons. And the newer Xeons than the v4 need a new board and are very poor value.
Currently I’ve waited a year and a bit with my board on a box pending a resolution to the issue (NSFW cameo by my naked foot): https://imgur.com/OkOiiQ0
I have a case ready to take whichever CPU/board combo wins out… but I need to tidy this thing up before another year slips by.
Outside of virtualization (i.e. the steam streaming scenario) are the Vega 64s usable on linux?
home streaming should work fine, it’s just a less known platform quirk that’s caused a lot of people trouble in the past.
as long as you use the most recent kernel, sure. they’re still behind the nv blobs in some things though, particularly game compatibility and compute performance.
VM and GPU Passthrough or move one of the 1080Ti to the rackmount and use steam streaming?
-> Use 1080 Ti for steam streaming.
Sell the 1080Ti on the desktop and buy a Vega64?
–> I guess you won’t see big difference here.
If I go threadripper 2 will I need a 2nd older chip to upgrade the BIOS on the Asus board or is there any way of ensuring I get a board shipped with the right BIOS?
–> You will be needing old chip to upgrade the current bios.
Will the 2990wx and Asus board (temporarily) play nice with my 1866 ECC DDR4 or would I need to sell that for cents on the euro and replace?
–> Well this is still new you can have a look on youtube by seeing relevant videos or can consult system integrators. orAMD support.
The rackmount dual Xeon is less than ideal for Windows Gaming use… should I sell (later) and build something more power efficient (i’ve got an i3-7100 & a mini-itx board lying around somewhere) or would VMing the Windows install and passing through the 1080 (with the usual caveats about Code 43) allow me to free up the cores and memory for other duties?
–> My recommendation here if you are building for gaming build from scratch and for VMing you should use Xeon.
It could have been, as in: it isn’t part of the X399 platform. However, AMD has said that all of the boards released before TR-2XXX series came out did ship with some way of flashing the bios without a CPU.
