You can always add some solar-panels into the mix to keep the energy cost down!
Or your own backyard wind turbine farm, if zoning laws will allow it. But you will have to clean up the shredded seagulls from your back yard every few months.
It takes about 10 years for a solar panel collection to pay for itself in the US. I have no idea what it is like in other countries
Over here in the Netherlands they say 7 years before it pays off.
Energy is very expensive in Europe, about 25 dollar cents per KWh, most of it is tax.
Last edited by Joost Buijs on Sun Sep 20, 2020 6:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Dann Corbit wrote: ↑Sun Sep 20, 2020 6:30 pm
If you notice in the IPMAN chess page, the dual Xeon you are looking at is about the same speed as a AMD 3960x at 3.9 ghz though one at the same GHz speed is listed at 80M NPS (seems puzzling).
Here is one for $1350:
I guess you can find better deals. It will also use less power. If you want the best bang for your buck, I would do a little math first and see what sort of performance you can get per dollar.
Seems like you could buy two of these for the cost of that dual xeon system
That was just the CPU. About 4000 for a system:
so maybe not such a bargain,
Maybe something like this:
Taking ideas is not a vice, it is a virtue. We have another word for this. It is called learning.
But sharing ideas is an even greater virtue. We have another word for this. It is called teaching.
Raphexon wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 11:23 am
Money now vs time later.
The 3990x will let you test twice as fast.
Seriously so?
What is happening faster in the 3990X to double speed? Is this an across the board doubling, or only in some specific type of test?
if a general chess engine NPS doubler, then that would be interesting, I guess
Doubling of cores - testing is twice as fast ( twice as many games are completed in a given time period )- with 64 cores (3990x ), I strongly recommend 256 GB RAM - nothing less than 128 GB for sure. $2000 upgrade to 3990x is a good deal - some builders in the US will charge you $2500 more for the 3990x. Don't expect a huge Elo Jump, going from 32 to 64 core is at most 30 Elo , most likely less. It's really for those that want to cut their testing time in half.
Ah! Mike, thanks for that, I didn't spot the small print from 32x to 64x
okay, now I understand the 2000 euros extra
and whoosh, now with 256 Gb RAM it's at 7650 euros
With the 3970x , which I have , the 128 GB is fine - a large hash , say 65536M hash is generally full in under 10 minutes, so a 64 core unit would definitely benefit with a larger hash. I if you get 128 GB, get the bigger sticks so your builder will leave half the RAMS slots opens so you can always upgrade RAM later without incurring additional costs- i'e. that is replacing 8x16GB sticks with 8x32GB sticks . Just get 4x32 GB sticks up front, then you only need 4x32 Gb sticks to complete the upgrade to 256 GB.
Probably going CoronaVirus crazy, I figured the 5000 euros was “expensive”, and even considering paying the price of a small car seems nuts. Will restore sanity shortly.
—
Agreed - I went through some serious twisted rationales to justify $5000 — somehow my wife was ok with it. I guess she loves me. ;>) In another twisted rationale, I feel good that I did not go for the 3990x — that would have created buyer's remorse ...
I get the opposite, remorse I didn’t spend on the full kit in the first place.
New, current-year hardware is always costly. It helps if you can assemble your own system: it seems to me it used to be the price premium for buying assembled was not so high, but now it seems to be considerable. However, I am very experienced at system building so it is not a big deal to me, even if there are problems, and there usually is some issue getting the system together and working.
The other thing you can consider is used hardware. Many companies lease high-end servers or workstations, typically for 3 years, and after they come off lease they may be sold to a liquidator and wind up on eBay. These can be very nicely priced compared to new systems and many have decently high core counts and performance. Frequently the hard drives are removed but the seller may substitute a new drive. Just for one example:
