buying a new computer

[Daniel Shawul]

I am going to try and build the pc myself -- never built one before but watching lots of youtube videos has given me confidence. Fingers crossed I don't toast one of the components since i seem to be highly charged.

The 3900x was out of stock yesterday but managed to buy one today on newegg. Based on pc part picker i need to spend atleast 1500$ before tax if I pair it with an RTX 2070 super. I am going for a cheap X570 motherboard but maybe i should go for a solid X470 without PCIe 4.0 since i probably will not have any use for the extra SSD speed. 16GB 3200 ram.

Daniel

[mwyoung]

I have heard a lot of people say you don't need a big power supply.
Experience tells me it is often a mistake to skimp there.

Suppose, for instance, that later you decide to put in two very high end Nvidia or AMD GPU cards to run LC0 because a new release has given a 50% strength boost compared to the old 2080 cards.

Suppose you decide to add a large number of disk drives so that you can store (for instance) new Syzygy DTM50 7 man files.

Or maybe you want to add a ton of RAM so you can build them.

All these things take power. The difference in price between a 650 watt power supply and a 1000 watt power supply is not very much.
I don't very much like tearing my machine apart and putting it back together.
So put in a big enough one to start with.
IMO-YMMV.

You can put what every you want in regards to a power supply. You can only have to little power.
Use the build guides I showed you. And optimize the system for future upgrades, or design it for what is needed.
The system I designed as a sample uses only 334 watts. I configured the system with a 650 watt power supply. This gives you enough head room the Overclock the CPU, and GPU with power to spare or to add another GPU.

If you plan on higher end parts and more of them. The PC Part picker will let you know if you need a bigger power supply.

But every upgrade has a dollar amount. So it depends on your budget....

[mwyoung]

I am going to try and build the pc myself -- never built one before but watching lots of youtube videos has given me confidence. Fingers crossed I don't toast one of the components since i seem to be highly charged.

The 3900x was out of stock yesterday but managed to buy one today on newegg. Based on pc part picker i need to spend atleast 1500$ before tax if I pair it with an RTX 2070 super. I am going for a cheap X570 motherboard but maybe i should go for a solid X470 without PCIe 4.0 since i probably will not have any use for the extra SSD speed. 16GB 3200 ram.

Daniel

Very nice!

And youtube is a great resource for how to build your computer. Also look at how to install a CPU cooler and with thermal paste, what thermal paste should I use, how to update the bios, and how to install the needed drives and O/S after I built my computer. And how to overclock the CPU and GPU.

If you know nothing about computers, all the answers are online, and on youtube. It is very easy.

The biggest issue most people have is knowing what is the best parts. And this is online also and on youtube... Or just ask.

And don't forget to buy case fans or extra case fans. Depending on the case you want to use and system configuration. If you want to overclock more case fans is highly recommended.

[Leo]

How to build your own faster, cheaper, better computer.
1. https://pcpartpicker.com/
2. Order your parts
3. Put the lego parts together. It is that easy....
4. Load the drivers and O/S


Sample configuration and price if you build the system yourself. A very nice chess computer for under $1500 with great quality parts. And head room to Overclock the CPU and GPU. A good CPU cooler is free with this CPU.

Base Total: $1468.84
Mail-in Rebates: -$20.00
Total: $1448.84


Nice Chess Comupter.jpg

Price to mail in the rebate: 55 cents.

[mwyoung]

Thanks for the all the replies.

Note that I do not understand much about hardware.
I read basically the following information when I do not know exactly what is the meaning of everything.

1)CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12 Core or AMD 16 Core Ryzen 9(not sure if 16 cores are faster and how much faster)
2)GPU: NVidia RTX 2070 Super
3)32 GB DDR4 RAM
4)a good CPU cooler
5)large case
6)many fans,
7)PCIe 4.0 M.2 drive.
8)new AMD motherboards. 5.0 GB/s

Don't forget a BIG power supply. Those GPU cards drink electricity with a slurp and a burp. I would say a KW is minimum,
The motherboards that support PCie 4.0 cost a lot. Figure 700 dollars.
Since you play correspondence chess you might consider 64 or even 128 GB of RAM. I read that the 3600 speed ram performs about as well and is cheaper

I gave some minimal price otherwise best performance per dollar is simply to pay nothing and continue to use the old computer that I have for more than 5 years that give me near
2.5M nodes per second for stockfish with 3 cores in the opening position(I have 4 cores but generally I use 3 in order to be able to do other things in the computer without a significant slowdown)

If you update to a AMD the days of using 3 cores for chess and one core kept free to be able to use your computer. Will be a thing of the past.
I was using 36 threads, ponder on, and fighting all of CCC. Without one hiccup. Telling me this was impossible.

AMD SMT is good, very very good.

[cma6]

MW:
I think I will take up your offer on advice re my new system in 10-12/2019. But why does everyone talk about Ryzen 3900X when next gen. Threadripper is coming up in Q4, perhaps 64 cores and certainly 32 cores?

I got this advice from ICCF friendly opponent:
"Put the graphics card in a second PC with a cheap Ryzen and access it through remote desktop protocol (connection). That way the graphics card can be fully used and is only used for lc0. Of interest is the memory required. I am getting 128GB in order to use large transposition tables.... Unwilling to touch the larger Threadrippers because of the NUMA problems so Ryzen is looking preferable."


My partial reply:
"As I understand your concept, one would put a good GPU card on a slave system and somehow control it (and lc0) over the LAN using RDP? What about RDP as a security risk? And why not have the GPU card on the master system since I would assume that graphics tasks would use relatively little of the GPU's computing power? As for the Threadripper 2950, why not wait for 10/2019 to see 3rd generation Threadripper? 128 GB of RAM definitely makes sense, but I assume that you mean for the system running lc0?"

Any thoughts on this dialog? Is it true that Threadripper is a no-no for Windows systems because of NUMA issues?

[Tom Likens]

I am waiting to buy a new desktop myself. AMD is going to release its next generation ryzen 9 cpus with 12-core (24 threads) tomorrow.
I think it will be very good hardware for stockfish at the half price of intel's cpus (500$ compared to 1100$). There 16-core version will not come out until septmember though.

If you are also thinking of buying a gpu, NVIDIA is going to upgrade its rtx lineup to their "super" versions on july 9 for the same price.
A 15% improvement on performance but price remains the same.

There will be deals on cpu and gpus because of this so look out for those.

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

It's been awhile since I've posted here, but I've built a few systems and I think you'll find the experience rewarding. Just take
your time and it will work out. I'm glad you're considering the new Ryzen 3000 CPUs, (full disclaimer I'm part of the AMD Ryzen
design team--I'm an analog circuit designer). There's a lot of me in these new CPUs, so I hope they live up to your and everyone's
else expectations.

best,
--tom

[Rebel]

Someone ever considered a refurbished workstation? I got a HP Z620, I7, 2.8-3.5Ghz, 20 cores, 40 threads, 16Gb ram, 500Gb SSD, 2 x 1 TB harddisk for under 1000 euro with 2 year guarantee.

[Dann Corbit]

Someone ever considered a refurbished workstation? I got a HP Z620, I7, 2.8-3.5Ghz, 20 cores, 40 threads, 16Gb ram, 500Gb SSD, 2 x 1 TB harddisk for under 1000 euro with 2 year guarantee.

I use mostly used server systems.
I got a 64 core system with 128 GB RAM for about 700 dollars.
And a 4x 32 core system was about $1200 ( though I do not remember the exact price).

The cost for these systems is really the electricity, and you have to deal with the noise somehow, since server room designed systems do not have to be quiet.

You can even find machines with more than two terabytes so you could build 7 man TB files if it suits your fancy.

My next machine will definitely be a modern one. I might get a 3950x, with a couple 2080 cards, but more likely the next threadripper or one of the commercial systems.

[smatovic]

...
My next machine will definitely be a modern one. I might get a 3950x, with a couple 2080 cards, but more likely the next threadripper or one of the commercial systems.

Yea, keep in mind that AMD Ryzen based systems have only 2 memory channels, compared to 4 for Threadripper, and 8 for Epyc server systems.

--
Srdja