[Doc_Gonzo]

Hello peeps!
I am back and need to build a new multi purpose rig. My main question is about the new intel CPU's - how do they perform in BOINC? Do the economy cores slow it down?
I kinda figured that I would go with AMD for this build and if I can afford it, do you think going AMD is worth the cost at this time?
I know that I could more easily afford an AM4 ZEN 3 build and as I have always been with INTEL, it being a dead platform does not bother me that much.
What to do???

Any and all advice is much appreciated!

P.S. What's with the cases with no slots for a DVD drive and so few 3.5" HDD slots?! Geesh - I thought that picking a case would be the easy part!!

 

[shilka]

P.S. What's with the cases with no slots for a DVD drive and so few 3.5" HDD slots?! Geesh - I thought that picking a case would be the easy part!!

The Define 7 XL has room for up to 20 hard drives 16 if you want fans in the top and back and 14 with the 5,25 adaptor for two 5,25 devices

Define 7 XL

The Define 7 XL sets a new standard for what you should expect from a full tower case in terms of modularity, flexibility and ease of use.

www.fractal-design.com

There is also a Meshify 2 Xl but that lacks the 5,25 adaptor
Edit: also on another note you get 28 PCI-E lanes with Intel and you only get 24 with AMD if that matters to you

 

[Jimbodiah]

CDrom is so 1990. Use an external usb cdrom to rip all you old CDs into ISOs and just mount those as virtual drives.

 

[Redwoodz]

The Define 7 XL has room for up to 20 hard drives 16 if you want fans in the top and back and 14 with the 5,25 adaptor for two 5,25 devices

Define 7 XL

The Define 7 XL sets a new standard for what you should expect from a full tower case in terms of modularity, flexibility and ease of use.

www.fractal-design.com

There is also a Meshify 2 Xl but that lacks the 5,25 adaptor
Edit: also on another note you get 28 PCI-E lanes with Intel and you only get 24 with AMD if that matters to you

What? I see 20 PCIE lanes on Raptor Lake and 28 for Ryzen4 from the cpu.

 

[Sir Beregond]

P.S. What's with the cases with no slots for a DVD drive and so few 3.5" HDD slots?! Geesh - I thought that picking a case would be the easy part!!

Nobody uses discs anymore and SSD's have gotten cheap for 1TB-2TB capacities so most mainstream users don't need HDD's anymore as their secondary drives.

Just speaking of the general market here.

 

[Jimbodiah]

I don't even have SATA SSDs anymore, all M.2 now. Any HDD I have for storage is done through a USB docking station where I just plug the bare HDD into when I need to offload from my drives.

 

[Hold my Pickle]

"Nobody uses Discs anymore..." looks over at 8-Track and record collection.....

 

[shilka]

Nobody needs HDD´s anymore? most people these days buy a NAS server and throw their drives in that so yes most dont add HDD´s to their PC´s anymore but HDD´s are not dead they are still by far the cheapest when it comes to price per TB and the only option for larger sizes

There are still many use cases for HDD´s nobody other than Nimbus makes an SSD bigger than 8 TB and those 8 TB SSD´s still cost a ton of money and many users still need more than 8 TB maybe not gamers and like i said they throw them in a NAS but thats still a computer

HDD prices has come down in price a lot hell where i live with prices being 30% higher than the US i can still buy a Seagate X20 18 TB for $320 and the 20 TB is about $430
134 TB in total in two machines and i still dont have a ton of free space left

 

[Sir Beregond]

"Nobody uses Discs anymore..." looks over at 8-Track and record collection.....

I also said the general user. Who is installing or running games from discs, watching DVD's on PC, etc. Nobody, that's who.

 

[Jimbodiah]

Placing them externally, like in a NAS is why newer generation boards have fewer sata connectors and less cases with drive bays.

 

[Doc_Gonzo]

Thanks to everyone who replied!
I have 2 x 4TB hard drives and an 8TB back up drive. I also have a 1TB 2.5" SSD, which I know can be mounted anywhere with a bit ot sticky velcro. I don't really use DVD's myself but I do burn photo discs, CD's for the car and the occasional film for friends and family and things like drivers for my Printer are on disk. I guess I can get an external drive for that if it comes to it.

The Define 7 XL has room for up to 20 hard drives 16 if you want fans in the top and back and 14 with the 5,25 adaptor for two 5,25 devices

Define 7 XL

The Define 7 XL sets a new standard for what you should expect from a full tower case in terms of modularity, flexibility and ease of use.

www.fractal-design.com

There is also a Meshify 2 Xl but that lacks the 5,25 adaptor

Thanks for the case suggestions.They are both a bit on the expensive side but I should have mentioned a budget, which is around £150, preferably less but I will spend more if absolutely necesary!

Placing them externally, like in a NAS is why newer generation boards have fewer sata connectors and less cases with drive bays.

I had wondered aboout that!! I will look into NAS enclosures - thank you!
Ihave found the Asus TUF Gaming GT501VC for around £130 delivered and it has space for 4 x 3.5" drives but no 5.25" bays. I think I can live with that. . .
unless anyone knows that it would be a poor choice?

Back to the AMD or Intel - this is strictly BOINC related. I have looked at some results tables and it seems that AMD rigs are placing higher than Intel. So AMD?
Having never run an M.2 type SSD, I will definitely be getting at least a 1TB drive.
Question - if I populate all the M.2 storage space on a motherboard, do they use resources allocated to SATA ports? Or is that a board specific thing?

Thanks again everyone!

 

[shilka]

Thanks to everyone who replied!
I have 2 x 4TB hard drives and an 8TB back up drive. I also have a 1TB 2.5" SSD, which I know can be mounted anywhere with a bit ot sticky velcro. I don't really use DVD's myself but I do burn photo discs, CD's for the car and the occasional film for friends and family and things like drivers for my Printer are on disk. I guess I can get an external drive for that if it comes to it.


Thanks for the case suggestions.They are both a bit on the expensive side but I should have mentioned a budget, which is around £150, preferably less but I will spend more if absolutely necesary!

I had wondered aboout that!! I will look into NAS enclosures - thank you!
Ihave found the Asus TUF Gaming GT501VC for around £130 delivered and it has space for 4 x 3.5" drives but no 5.25" bays. I think I can live with that. . .
unless anyone knows that it would be a poor choice?

Back to the AMD or Intel - this is strictly BOINC related. I have looked at some results tables and it seems that AMD rigs are placing higher than Intel. So AMD?
Having never run an M.2 type SSD, I will definitely be getting at least a 1TB drive.
Question - if I populate all the M.2 storage space on a motherboard, do they use resources allocated to SATA ports? Or is that a board specific thing?

Thanks again everyone!

Chipsets and CPU´s only have so many PCI-E lanes so depending on the motherboard having more than two NVME drives might drop the GPU down to x8 instead of x16 and some of the SATA ports will no longer be useable

You are better off with one big NVME or a good old SATA SSD´s if you need lots of space

Also NVME drives are only faster for some tasks such as editing and other heavy workloads for day to day use and gaming they are not more than 2-4 seconds faster at most

Synthetic benchmarks and large numbers on the marketing make them seem far better and faster than they actually are when there is not all that much that can use the faster speeds

 

[Doc_Gonzo]

Chipsets and CPU´s only have so many PCI-E lanes so depending on the motherboard having more than two NVME drives might drop the GPU down to x8 instead of x16 and some of the SATA ports will no longer be useable

You are better off with one big NVME or a good old SATA SSD´s if you need lots of space

Also NVME drives are only faster for some tasks such as editing and other heavy workloads for day to day use and gaming they are not more than 2-4 seconds faster at most

Synthetic benchmarks and large numbers on the marketing make them seem far better and faster than they actually are when there is not all that much that can use the faster speeds

Thats very good to know - thank you! I was looking at the fastest M.2 drives but there is quite a big price difference between those and the ones with what seems to be an average speed.
If it's not really noticable in real world usage, I will definitely bear that in mind

 

[shilka]

Thats very good to know - thank you! I was looking at the fastest M.2 drives but there is quite a big price difference between those and the ones with what seems to be an average speed.
If it's not really noticable in real world usage, I will definitely bear that in mind

There is no major difference out in the real world between a good gen 3 drive and the fastest gen 4 drive (there are no gen 5 drives that i know of yet)
If you are looking for an NVME drive make sure you find one that uses TLC NAND and NOT QLC NAND and also make sure it has a DRAM cache

The drives i would buy are the Seagate Firecuda series either the old 510 the 520 or the newest 530
I have a 2 TB 520 i wanted the 530 but needed a new drive ASAP and the 530 was out of stock

 

[bhav]

Nobody uses discs anymore and SSD's have gotten cheap for 1TB-2TB capacities so most mainstream users don't need HDD's anymore as their secondary drives.

Just speaking of the general market here.

Anyone who cares about data retention and backups is still using them. Many gamers have a NAS. Imagine that 4+ Tb game collection on SSDs suddenly failing and having to download it all over again and losing save files.

 

[Jimbodiah]

Backups are external, so do not impact slots/ports in the PC. I haven't used HDDs in my computer for 5+ years, but I still have a dozen for backups and storing stuff I hardly ever use.

 

[Mick5008]

I think everyone got side tracked by HDD vs SSD / m.2 drives vs what the the OP actually wanted help on. Choosing amd or Intel for CPU lol.

 

[Doc_Gonzo]

If you are looking for an NVME drive make sure you find one that uses TLC NAND and NOT QLC NAND and also make sure it has a DRAM cache
The drives i would buy are the Seagate Firecuda series either the old 510 the 520 or the newest 530

Useful info - thank you. I had read about the TLC NAND being better but had not read about DRAM Cache and the alternative. I will keep the Firecuda series on the shortlist.
I came across this handy spreadsheet which goes into detail about various SSD's - in case anyone else wants to research a particular model.

Anyone who cares about data retention and backups is still using them. Many gamers have a NAS. Imagine that 4+ Tb game collection on SSDs suddenly failing and having to download it all over again and losing save files.

I see that external backups and NAS enclosures are more of a 'thing' than they used to be and I'll be looking into an external solution for sure

I think everyone got side tracked by HDD vs SSD / m.2 drives vs what the the OP actually wanted help on. Choosing amd or Intel for CPU lol.

LOL - Yes, but it has saved me from asking a few other questions and I think I have found a way to check CPU performance in BOINC myself.
I would still like to hear from anyone running an 12th or 13th Generation Intel CPU on BOINC though.
At the moment I am thinking I should go with an AM5 build. Mainly for the higher number of performance cores and the longevity of the platform.

 

[Jimbodiah]

Wait for new AMD 3D lineup end of january, decide then. If you can't wait, get intel, they dominate for gaming at the moment and allow higher memory sticks (7200-8000 vs 6000-6400 on amd). Also AMD AM5 means you can only get DDR5, while intel still offers the choice of ddr4/ddr5 on most boards, in case you already have good ram it could save you a pretty penny. If you go ddr4 then you can get Z690 motherboards which are cheaper now that Z790 is out. Z790 is better for DDR5, higher clocks, that is about the only difference to Z690.

 

[Doc_Gonzo]

Wait for new AMD 3D lineup end of january, decide then. If you can't wait, get intel, they dominate for gaming at the moment and allow higher memory sticks (7200-8000 vs 6000-6400 on amd). Also AMD AM5 means you can only get DDR5, while intel still offers the choice of ddr4/ddr5 on most boards, in case you already have good ram it could save you a pretty penny. If you go ddr4 then you can get Z690 motherboards which are cheaper now that Z790 is out. Z790 is better for DDR5, higher clocks, that is about the only difference to Z690.

Cheers bud - I will await the 3D lingup and see what happens then! I am not particularily bothered about gaming results but more towards mult- core performance work load threads.
i do not have DDR 4 memory carry - overs to worry about. Coming from DDR 3, it sems pointless to go for DDR 4.
I can only see AM5 gettign stronger with time. . . but maybe I am wrong?