IT... Computing....

[Pirez]

Now that it's over I can say with confidence :

Fuck IT

[Reese Riverson]

So, I'm actually going to have another server in my rack, in addition to the Dell PowerEdge R730XD and the the Dell PowerEdge C4130. The former is my storage server and the latter is the GPU server. I'm going to be adding an R730, regular version so I can run multiple VMs on it.

I originally was going to only use the R730XD with TrueNAS and it's VM capability, which is going to hold true for Plex/Emby/Stable Diffusion, but I'm going to do more experiments with the R730 chassis. Since I am out of room on PCI-E expansion on the R730XD.

Especially since I have a RTX 3060 GPU in my R730XD for Plex/Emby/Stable Diffusion, then the Dell PLX card for the front four NVMe drives (Intel Optane 905P's 1.5TB SSDs), and soon to be either 25g networking or 40g networking adapters for a speed boost.

Then the last PCI-e slot will either be more NVMe drives or... I dunno yet. Something to do with storage, no doubt.

The plans for the R730 that's coming will be for a Windows gaming VM as a test with a dedicated GPU installed, which will probably be my Titan XP card for now, then I'll also have the NVIDIA Tesla P4, a baby GPU, in for NVR duty in another VM to start out with.

I gotta figure a few more things out with that one.



Other than that, I'm going to be expanding the network as well a little bit and go from 10 gigabit to 25+ gigabit for my desktop and storage server.

Since we'll be adding solar panels in our yard, I can take advantage of having another server in place.

[PluMGMK]

As a matter of interest, what kind of power consumption are you getting on those servers at the moment?

[Reese Riverson]

As a matter of interest, what kind of power consumption are you getting on those servers at the moment?

Dell PowerEdge R730XD:

• 2 x Intel Xeon CPU E5-2687W v4
• 384GB RAM (8 x 32GB DDR4 2133 RDIMMs and 8 x 16GB DDR4 2133 RDIMMs)
• Dell Intel X710 Quad Port 10GbE SFP+ NIC
• Dell PERC H730 Mini (Embedded) (RAID Card in HBA mode)
• Dell T93GD 12Gbps SAS HBA (=9300-8e) external SAS
• Dell (P/N: GY1TD) PCI-E Extension card for front 2.5" U.2 NVMe drives.
• NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU
• 2 x Dell EMC WD Ultrastar SS540 800GB Enterprise SSD (Mirrored for OS install)
• 3 x Kioxia PM6-R KPM6XRUG15T3 15.36TB SAS 24Gb/s Enterprise SSD
• 1 x Samsung PM1643a 15.36TB SAS 12Gb/s Enterprise SSD

The system above with those specs is currently idling at:

R730XD Idle.png (8.07 KiB) Viewed 436 times

Now, the GPU server is idling higher, but here are the specs on it:

Dell PowerEdge C4130:

• 2 x Intel Xeon CPU E5-2698 v3
• 64GB RAM (8 x 8GB DDR4 2133 RDIMMs)
• 1 x Intel x520-da2 NIC
• 2 x Dell 400GB 6Gbps SATA MU MLC 1.8" SSD S3610
• 4 x NVIDIA Tesla P40 GPUs (24GB VRAM)

The system above with those specs, with a model loaded, but not currently doing anything is:

C4130 Idle.png (8.27 KiB) Viewed 436 times

The GPUs each would normally draw 10w each, but with everything loaded into VRAM, they're at 50w each. So 399w idle - 160w = 239w when the server just sits there with nothing loaded and idling currently. Now I plan to drop to lower power CPUs which will help reduce the power consumed, since this thing doesn't really use CPUs at all, everything for my AI stuff relies on the GPUs.

The CPUs I plan to put into the GPU server are the Intel Xeons Processor E5-2623 v4.

The current plan is to do that for this one.

The R730 I got arrived today. I just need to wait for components to arrive, but here:

Here's roughly how much you can get a barebones R730 for, shipped. I have CPUs on hand, what's in the GPU server may go into this thing. I have a Dell Intel X710 NIC to put in, and I'm getting RAM and the PERC RAID card off my IT buddy for this thing. As well as the front bezel and stuff.

-Edit-
Alright, I performed the CPU swap in the GPU server (C4130), and idle was a 63w drop in consumption:

C4130 Post CPU Swap Idle.png (9.58 KiB) Viewed 413 times

Which is good since even under load, that's still a 63w drop, considering only the GPUs are doing the work when the AI is in use.

[pompom454]

snip

snip

My my. Wow. You could most definitely hold an entire community like Mastodon on it. Also, maybe even PLEX. Honestly, do whatever you want!

And this reminds me that I've been working on a scripting language as of right now.

[Reese Riverson]

Technically I could even run the entirety of RaymanPC and RayWiki one of my servers alone with ease and high performance.

Though I am running Plex, Emby, and Stable Diffusion off the R730XD, which has the GPU support for it.

What kind of scripting language have you been working on?

[PluMGMK]

Technically I could even run the entirety of RaymanPC and RayWiki one of my servers alone with ease and high performance.

Are you offering?

–––

The realization has been dawning on me throughout the year, but it's now come to pass that my "modern" computer is in fact ten years old! (Well, yes, I changed the motherboard in 2018, but I swapped in a used one of the same vintage, so that doesn't really make it any newer )

And it's running grand.

When I think about the time I first started tinkering heavily – like when I first installed Linux in 2005, or got a book on PC repair in 2007 – a ten-year-old PC would be running Windows 95, and be considered "ancient"! But now? I keep my system up-to-date, I can run games the games I care about (admittedly not the newest ones ) on the highest settings, and with 32 GB of RAM I'm never starved of that… I guess the problem with keeping such old hardware at this point is less about performance, and more about power consumption… But then the lighty-uppy fans and keyboard don't exactly help with that either

What I love about having a 2014 system is that I can still run DOS and Windows 3.1 on bare metal (which I only realized in 2021!), but from what I've heard that might also be possible with some more recent systems… Still, I'm not really in the frame of mind where I want to upgrade – especially since it would involve throwing out old stuff and/or storing it indefinitely in case we need it for anything!

[The Jonster]

Wow, to have a computer around for 10 years….happy 10th birthday Plum’s computer! Meanwhile here I am, even lucky if I had a laptop that lasted more than 5 years!

I wish I was great at maintaining my laptops. Something always seems to go wrong whenever I have them long enough. Admittedly I’ve never had one that’s more than 4 years old. From my time in rpc I’ve gone through at least 5 of them (even more when I consider earlier than that!)

Laptop 1: Spilled drink on it and then buttons stopped working. Can’t remember why this one didn’t work anymore……Bootup issue?

Laptop 2: Hard drive failure

Laptop 3: RAM card issues and PC wouldn’t start up anymore

Laptop 4: Worked fine for 4 years now despite fan issues….and then I made the stupid mistake of sleeping on it when I went to bed and cracked the screen.

Laptop 5: My current one’s almost a year old now, getting slight fan issues (buzzing), started using a cooler underneath but doing great (please let this be the one!!!).

So yeah, I’m pretty bad at this. And it doesn’t help that I like to bring my laptop everywhere and I have this unfortunate habit of falling asleep at night while leaving it on. Oh and don’t get me started on USBs either!

I’ve kept most of the laptops I had in case I ever want to fiddle with them at some point (especially numbers 2 and 4).

[Pirez]

Since you two seem to be experts on... IT stuff...

Do any of you know how to put an old game on DosBox? I can't install German with Rayman on a W98 virtual machine (it freezes as soon as I try to boot the CD)

EDIT : Nevermind. Leaving the problem for two months and taking a different approach solved the issue (using Dosbox Game Launcher). German with Rayman works fine

[PluMGMK]

OK cool, you got it working! I was about to suggest trying the Rayman Control Panel (available in the Modding and Utilities section) – I'm pretty sure it supports the languages games but I haven't checked myself

[dr_st]

Wow, to have a computer around for 10 years….happy 10th birthday Plum’s computer! Meanwhile here I am, even lucky if I had a laptop that lasted more than 5 years!

Hah. I have a laptop from 2002 that still works, with its limitations. And one from 2005. And tons newer than that. I keep my computers alive way way longer than I should.

[Reese Riverson]

Technically I could even run the entirety of RaymanPC and RayWiki one of my servers alone with ease and high performance.

Are you offering?

Haha, well, while I may have the hardware to do it, I certainly do not have the datacenter internet infrastructure to do it.

Though with us going solar for our house finally, it will help ease the cost of having a few servers and networking equipment running.

[PluMGMK]

This headline put a smile on my face Microsoft Excel's Bloopers Reel – 40 Years of Spreadsheet Errors

[Hunchman801]

My laptop finally died on me, and since it looks like it might be the motherboard, and it was getting old anyway, I've decided to not bother and get a new one. I don't want to replace a component for another one to break three months down the road.... I've removed the SSD and ordered an adapter to recover the data, and now I need to choose a new one!

If anybody's got suggestions, do not hesitate. I'm looking for something light, sturdy, 13-inch, not gonna play games on it but I still want it to be fast and responsive for everyday use. Someone recommended Surface laptops but I haven't started looking yet.

[dr_st]

I only ever bought Thinkpads.

Stopped buying new Thinkpads ever since they went away completely from the traditional, almost desktop-like keyboard layout, into the slightly reduced 6-row, but I find they are still the best when it comes to keyboard ergonomics, even with the worse keyboard.

So when it's time for my workplace to replace my laptop, I always pick a Thinkpad still. The latest one is a T16 - a big one. I don't lug it every day, so I don't care. The 13" variant would be the X13.

The latest Intel is Gen 5:
https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad_X13_Gen_5
The latest Amd is Gen 4:
https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkP ... _Gen_4_AMD

If not Thinkpad, I would probably look into other business brands, such as Dell Latitude, or HP Elitebook (although personally I don't really like HP's ergonomics). Notebookcheck is probably the most serious website for laptop review, I recommend taking a look:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Ranking-T ... 925.0.html

[Steo]

I have a Lenovo laptop but I actually have an RTX 2060 in it and the idea back when I got it was that it can play games if needed. I think in Hunch's case though, the GPU isn't going to me majorly important. I feel anything with a decent CPU and some integrated graphics that aren't absolutely terrible will be more than enough. There are actually a crazy amount of options when it comes to lightweight ones at this point too, as they tend to make them fairly thin

If you were going to buy into x64 and not arm, I'd be thinking of Ryzen ones given all the stuff with Intel lately and how they cost more while also using more power. This is true for their desktops at least, and I assume you want some efficiency in a laptop since it can run on battery etc.

___

I ended up building a new PC with a Zen 5 (Ryzen 9700X). I needed to buy a new motherboard anyway and at that point it just made sense to buy something new instead. I haven't used it for that long as of yet, but it seems stable so far. I had turned it up to 105W TDP also to get the extra performance instead of efficiency vs a 7700X, as I have a 280mm AIO and it still manages to keep temps somewhat sensible and way below throttling. I will see in time if it's worth using PBO and 105W TDP, or whether I should be just using 65W. It really depends if the extra performance is worth it, as otherwise it would only perform marginally better than a 7700X but while using far less power.

[PluMGMK]

Unfortunately I don't know much about buying laptops these days

The other day, I had to remove my graphics card temporarily to get at some SATA cables – it looked like this:

Some of those yellow things in the centre are capacitors, but the more randomly-strewn yellow bits? Those are Corn Flake crumbs! The reason being that my PC case has a vacant slot for a huge heatsink on top, so stuff just falls in, and it's in the kitchen…
Also I somehow had the card installed for four and a half years without noticing the "Remove Protective Film Before Use" instruction, so I finally did that after cleaning it! Then I basically taped some paper over the top of my PC case so it doesn't get all that muck falling on it without a protective film!

On another note, I enjoyed Remy Porter's retrospective on the Y2K affair posted a quarter-century later

[Steo]

It's amazing how much dirt can actually get into a computer over time, even if you have dust filters etc. Sometimes you end up surprised and think where did all that dust even come from, since you couldn't even see any dust anywhere else.

[dr_st]

Oh sure. I am pretty sure that that one time several years ago, when the fan on the CPU heatsink in my parents' old desktop kicked the bucket, was due to dust build-up that no one was ever cleaning. I try to open up every desktop PC case at least once a year to clean it up, but I must have been neglecting their computer. Trying to be less forgetful about it these days.

[The Jonster]

Yeah I need to make it a habit to check my laptop every now and then in case of any dust build-up. Would have saved me the two fans I had to buy when I had laptop 4!

It's amazing how much dirt can actually get into a computer over time, even if you have dust filters etc. Sometimes you end up surprised and think where did all that dust even come from, since you couldn't even see any dust anywhere else.

That’s actually a very good question, where does all this dust come from? Maybe one of you nice people can give me the information?