The Power PC Thread [f*ck off consoles]

[Maccy]

And if you're serious @Sheilas’ Wheels I could see if I could sort some discount from OcUK for you.

 

[Daniel]

And if you're serious @Sheilas’ Wheels I could see if I could sort some discount from OcUK for you.

Very. But we can’t do anything until we get our planning permission.
These will be used to run Trackman IO so need to be plenty powerful enough.
(I know nothing about computers)

 

[SharkyUK]

Very. But we can’t do anything until we get our planning permission.
These will be used to run Trackman IO so need to be plenty powerful enough.
(I know nothing about computers)

Golf sim?

 

[Maccy]

Very. But we can’t do anything until we get our planning permission.
These will be used to run Trackman IO so need to be plenty powerful enough.
(I know nothing about computers)

I'd up the memory to 64gb if running a full Trackman setup, our local sim place found they had to increase it.

 

[R3k1355]

of all the things you'd expect Mr Potato to be working on, a Golf simulator certainly isn't one of them.

 

[mace¬]

of all the things you'd expect Mr Potato to be working on, a Golf simulator certainly isn't one of them.

He is going to be the caddy.

 

[Daniel]

He is going to be the caddy.

You’ve seen Line of duty too?

Sniff sniff

 

[Geddes]

is the B650 Motherboard still the one of the ones to go for with the latest CPU's, I'll be having the new PC for another 8 or so years, i know the B650 has the update for the new CPU's or should i wait for the latest Motherboards to go down in price like the X870?

 

[SharkyUK]

is the B650 Motherboard still the one of the ones to go for with the latest CPU's, I'll be having the new PC for another 8 or so years, i know the B650 has the update for the new CPU's or should i wait for the latest Motherboards to go down in price like the X870?

The B650 is still a very good purchase (but there are caveats). If you're not planning on buying until towards the end of the year, I'd wait and see what the prices and features are like on the X870/B850 boards. If you're looking at 8 years for your next PC, I'd personally want to lean towards the higher-end stuff to try and "future-proof" as much as possible.

 

[Ray Gin]

The B650 is still a very good purchase (but there are caveats). If you're not planning on buying until towards the end of the year, I'd wait and see what the prices and features are like on the X870/B850 boards. If you're looking at 8 years for your next PC, I'd personally want to lean towards the higher-end stuff to try and "future-proof" as much as possible.

Fitted the 5090 yet?

 

[SharkyUK]

You can stick your K24 swaps where the sun don't shine, GPU swaps FTW.

I was in a rush so the pics are a bit cr4p. I was in the middle of working so didn't have long! Thankfully, the swap went without issue and I didn't have to reinstall Windows or anything like that. Worked first time, which I think is also a first.

The new nVidia 5090 RTX ROG Astral OC 32GB is on the left, the outgoing 4090 ROG Strix OC 24GB is on the right.

Honestly, the 4090 is such a good looking GPU. And a beast. And probably the best GPU I've ever had. Even today, the performance is blistering. It still has over a year warranty left on it, too. Just sayin'... I think the Strix 4090 looks better than the Astral 5090.

The Astral is about a half centimetre shorter than the Strix (due to the Strix having a really nice LED trim on the end) but the Astral is thicker due to the extra cooling and 4-fan design. The Astral also weighs in at just over 3kgs! One of those extendable supports is included to support the weight but, thankfully, I have a better solution as my motherboard was designed for multiple GPUs and includes metal adjustable brackets that hold it solidly in place with zero sag.

Front:
Top - Astral 5090
Bottom - Strix 4090

Back:
Top - Astral 5090
Bottom - Strix 4090

Time to plug and play.

Hopefully, the 1600W PSU I run will be ok for now. Or until the 6090 arrives.

I've been too busy with work to really try it. I ran a quick "bench" on my path tracing project and found a 38% increase in raw CUDA performance. A couple of games I've tried and the performance is blistering. But so was the 4090 if I'm honest! It runs nice, no coil whine (which is a bonus!), and so far so good. No crashes, no black screens, no issues at all.

 

[Geddes]

The B650 is still a very good purchase (but there are caveats). If you're not planning on buying until towards the end of the year, I'd wait and see what the prices and features are like on the X870/B850 boards. If you're looking at 8 years for your next PC, I'd personally want to lean towards the higher-end stuff to try and "future-proof" as much as possible.

Yeah that’s what I kinda thought but wasn’t sure, yeah I’m planning on when the Windows Update runs out, so the higher end I presume you meant the X870/B850 as you mentioned? Yeah I’m trying to future proof.

As for the CPU I’m more leaning towards the 9700X the 9800X3D is way above my budget I think. See what the prices are down the line as you say

 

[Wilkeh]

@SharkyUK How much you looking at for the 4090?

 

[SharkyUK]

@SharkyUK How much you looking at for the 4090?

I haven't set a figure yet mate, they still command strong money! However, I have a few people already interested in it and I promised a friend first dibs! I'm happy to give you a shout if the others fall through?

 

[charltjr]

Have you seen the water block that der8auer is about to launch for your card @SharkyUK? 2.5kg on it’s own

 

[Wilkeh]

I haven't set a figure yet mate, they still command strong money! However, I have a few people already interested in it and I promised a friend first dibs! I'm happy to give you a shout if the others fall through?

Oh no problem at all mate. It was more of a curiosity thing tbh My EVGA 3080Ti still going strong at 3840x1600

 

[SharkyUK]

Have you seen the water block that der8auer is about to launch for your card @SharkyUK? 2.5kg on it’s own

I, er, may have been following this closely... I need to reinforce the floorboards in my upstairs office first, though...

 

[SharkyUK]

Oh no problem at all mate. It was more of a curiosity thing tbh My EVGA 3080Ti still going strong at 3840x1600

Glad you're still happily rocking the 3080Ti, mate - great card.

Realistically, my "old" 4090 (with warranty in place) is still fetching around 1400 quid secondhand. Or thereabouts. They are still 2k+ brand new, although hard to get hold of as they are no longer manufactured.

 

[Adamm.]

Oh no problem at all mate. It was more of a curiosity thing tbh My EVGA 3080Ti still going strong at 3840x1600

I still run my 3080ti at 4k still getting anywhere between 100-140 FPS which for proper PC nerds would get laughed at but coming from a console gamer is good enough for me. I was tempted to drop monitor but think I prefer visual quality over extra frames that I probably wouldn't notice.

 

[SharkyUK]

The Astral 5090 is mental. I just fired Forza Motorsport 8 up, whacked on the ray tracing, and had a quick play. The videos below aren't as smooth as the gameplay due to recording on the 5090 as well as running the game with ray tracing... The game itself is buttery smooth. The replays up the quality of the rendering but drop to 30fps unfortunately. However, it looks fantastic. Ray tracing FTW.

Please excuse the cr4p driving (using Xbox controller).

 

[ChrisR]

Your old 1080 is still going strong as well

 

[Geddes]

looks like the 5060 is a flop, the 9060 is due soon iirc. Or is it worth looking at the 9070xt, it's around from £660 on amazon a tthe minute, what sort of price should i press the buy button? I think the AMD cpu 9700x is the one i'm set on now. just bought the memory now 2X16gb 6000 CL30 at £100 it dropped from £110

 

[Beauvais Motorsport]

@Flob Any experience with workstation gpus for cad?

Im getting another i9 14900k replaced by intel directly because scan wanted me to do my own testing of the cpu first and expected me to take apart my current amd build to do so...
I need a psu and gpu for another full build and was thinking dedicating it for cad and coding but don't know if theres any point in going for a quadra or sticking to a geforce?

 

[Touring_Rob]

If its Solidworks get a used Quadro from ebay, an RTX4000 is under £200 used - Solidworks is more stable with a Quadro, its on their approved list of GPU's and you get realview graphics and a few other bits enabled when you have the right card.

Saying that my workstartion runs well with a 3090.

Coding wise, ignore - anything will be fine unless you are doing some super swanky stuff which has the option to compile on the gpu.

 

[Ph1 Tom]

looks like the 5060 is a flop, the 9060 is due soon iirc. Or is it worth looking at the 9070xt, it's around from £660 on amazon a tthe minute, what sort of price should i press the buy button? I think the AMD cpu 9700x is the one i'm set on now. just bought the memory now 2X16gb 6000 CL30 at £100 it dropped from £110

9070XT all the way

 

[Beauvais Motorsport]

If its Solidworks get a used Quadro from ebay, an RTX4000 is under £200 used - Solidworks is more stable with a Quadro, its on their approved list of GPU's and you get realview graphics and a few other bits enabled when you have the right card.

Saying that my workstartion runs well with a 3090.

Coding wise, ignore - anything will be fine unless you are doing some super swanky stuff which has the option to compile on the gpu.

Didnt expect them to be that cheap, Ive had a lot of bullshit with my builds last year so want to splurge a bit. Theres a rtx 6000 for over 1k on ebay and new on scan for 3k. I guess niche so low demand used?

Current is 4070ti super which works fine but might as well have a dedicated cad rig cause man maths.

 

[Touring_Rob]

With Solidworks I have genuinely never noticed the difference between a low end Quadro and a highend one, maybe if the assemblies are massive? All I know is they claim better stability and for the most part I would agree.

My last work station had a P4000 and an i7 with 64GB ram and worked flawlessly for 5 years. My current has a thread ripper and a gaming card and has also been good, I get occasional crashes which are very annoying but on the whole its been fine.

Current comp is just a high end Alienware Desktop too, its a bit noisy but all the faf etc. of building something was removed and it came with a decent 3 year warranty, someone at work has a similar Alienware and Dell came out to change the motherboard which again was faff free and worth it.

Before that I worked off a Dell Precision laptop for years (with Quadro), if you are thinking of moving about a bit maybe get one of them?

Edit *Solidworks until quite recently had very minimal multi core support - I think most functions are still performed on a single core. So buying a processor with the best single core performance rather than one with 24 cores is also a good move. I just fancied playing Cyberpunk on my work computer during Covid so spec'd the Ripper.

 

[Geddes]

9070XT all the way

Yeah it looks like it may well be the case. Hoping it will drop down slightly

 

[Beauvais Motorsport]

With Solidworks I have genuinely never noticed the difference between a low end Quadro and a highend one, maybe if the assemblies are massive? All I know is they claim better stability and for the most part I would agree.

My last work station had a P4000 and an i7 with 64GB ram and worked flawlessly for 5 years. My current has a thread ripper and a gaming card and has also been good, I get occasional crashes which are very annoying but on the whole its been fine.

Current comp is just a high end Alienware Desktop too, its a bit noisy but all the faf etc. of building something was removed and it came with a decent 3 year warranty, someone at work has a similar Alienware and Dell came out to change the motherboard which again was faff free and worth it.

Before that I worked off a Dell Precision laptop for years (with Quadro), if you are thinking of moving about a bit maybe get one of them?

Edit *Solidworks until quite recently had very minimal multi core support - I think most functions are still performed on a single core. So buying a processor with the best single core performance rather than one with 24 cores is also a good move. I just fancied playing Cyberpunk on my work computer during Covid so spec'd the Ripper.

It’s a good shout with laptop especially next year for studying, quick search on ebay brings up Lenovo and dell with decent specs. I can do this workstation build right now and especially with the i9 its reasonably future proof (if the i9 doesn’t pack up) so I'm thinking I can pickup a laptop next year before I go.

Yeah I read about the single core performance, something about the sequential order of things

Theres a bunch of different quadro models I dont know the difference, I like to minimise the tessellation deviation especially with gears so not sure if some models are better suited for graphics like that, Ill have a search!

 

[SharkyUK]

It’s a good shout with laptop especially next year for studying, quick search on ebay brings up Lenovo and dell with decent specs. I can do this workstation build right now and especially with the i9 its reasonably future proof (if the i9 doesn’t pack up) so I'm thinking I can pickup a laptop next year before I go.

Yeah I read about the single core performance, something about the sequential order of things

Theres a bunch of different quadro models I dont know the difference, I like to minimise the tessellation deviation especially with gears so not sure if some models are better suited for graphics like that, Ill have a search!

Are you purely using Solidworks? Or will you also be using the GPU for other things like high-end rendering and simulation? If the former, the nVidia RTX A4000 (16GB VRAM) is a great GPU and comes with all the benefits of workstation-class GPUs (as opposed to gaming GPUs).

 

[SharkyUK]

looks like the 5060 is a flop, the 9060 is due soon iirc. Or is it worth looking at the 9070xt, it's around from £660 on amazon a tthe minute, what sort of price should i press the buy button? I think the AMD cpu 9700x is the one i'm set on now. just bought the memory now 2X16gb 6000 CL30 at £100 it dropped from £110

Avoid the 5060 GPUs, even the 16GB version. Pointless and bandwidth limited. If you've got around 650 quid to spend on the GPU, definitely look at the 9070XT from AMD (unless you are interested in nVidia's RTX specific stuff, but you'll end up having to pay a fair bit more).

 

[Geddes]

Avoid the 5060 GPUs, even the 16GB version. Pointless and bandwidth limited. If you've got around 650 quid to spend on the GPU, definitely look at the 9070XT from AMD (unless you are interested in nVidia's RTX specific stuff, but you'll end up having to pay a fair bit more).

Yeah thanks, I’m set now on the 9070xt, need to save up and spend the extra on it, is there a certain one I should look out for . Not clued up on the names either nvidia and amd.

also I’m looking at having a duel monitor set up for my new system soon, need a new 2nd monitor . Is it simple to set up with the say 9070xt and 2 monitors? is the power from the gpu from 2 monitors minimal?

 

[Ray Gin]

Anyone got any ideas as to what this noise could be? Had this PC for maybe 3 years now and it’s always made this noise. Sometimes the time between each noise will be a bit longer. It’ll happen for maybe 5-10 minutes then I won’t hear it again for ages

5800x3d
3080
32gb ddr4 ram (it was originally 16gb)

 

[SharkyUK]

Yeah thanks, I’m set now on the 9070xt, need to save up and spend the extra on it, is there a certain one I should look out for . Not clued up on the names either nvidia and amd.

also I’m looking at having a duel monitor set up for my new system soon, need a new 2nd monitor . Is it simple to set up with the say 9070xt and 2 monitors? is the power from the gpu from 2 monitors minimal?

They are all pretty much the same. Personally, I quite like ASUS products as I've had good experiences with them over the years. I think there is an ASUS TUF 9070XT but it will probably be at the higher end of the 9070XT price range. You can't go wrong with any really. When you've got your money together and ready to pull the trigger, visit somewhere like Overclockers and see which model fits your budget. Then pull the trigger.

Yeah, dual monitor setup is a piece of cake and the 9070XT can easily drive the two monitors without breaking a sweat. Plug the two monitors into the wall sockets, connect two HDMI or DisplayPort cables from the back of the 9070XT to the monitors, and you're good to go. All you'll need to do in Windows is set your Display Settings to enable the second monitor. It's as easy as that.

 

[Beauvais Motorsport]

Are you purely using Solidworks? Or will you also be using the GPU for other things like high-end rendering and simulation? If the former, the nVidia RTX A4000 (16GB VRAM) is a great GPU and comes with all the benefits of workstation-class GPUs (as opposed to gaming GPUs).

Rendering no but I will be doing fea. I don’t know how the 2 different types of GPUs work, even with small assemblies in Solidworks with tessellation set to max it slows down a lot with a 4070 ti super, I like to be able to visualise gears in detail especially. Budget maybe 1300 ish

 

[SharkyUK]

Rendering no but I will be doing fea. I don’t know how the 2 different types of GPUs work, even with small assemblies in Solidworks with tessellation set to max it slows down a lot with a 4070 ti super, I like to be able to visualise gears in detail especially. Budget maybe 1300 ish

Ah, FEA. I'm assuming you are doing the FEA through Solidworks Simulation? Unfortunately, I think Solidworks still does the FEA heavy-lifting on the CPU side, only using the GPU for visualising. As this means you can be CPU-limited, you would need to ensure you have the best performing CPU you can fit into your budget AND as much RAM as you can squeeze in, too.

As you are running FEA at max. tessellation, this can massively increase the computational cost. The bottom line is more tessellation, higher granularity, more interacting parts in the simulation. If your mesh size increases by a factor of n in (x, y, z) then even sparse matrix solvers will increase in complexity between O(n x n) and O(n x n x n) typically - depends on the solver and mesh quality. It's not just the number of elements that causes the performance hit, it's how those increased number of elements interact with each other and that can easily blow-up the solver calculation time. If you can use a different FEA with GPU solver support then there are some substantial gains to be had.

Gaming class GPUs (like the 4070Ti) are not really recommended for FEA and engineering simulation where accuracy and solver performance is essential. For starters, they are designed for peak performance rather than longevity and accuracy. Also, gaming GPUs have terrible FP64 performance compared to a workstation class GPU. The 4070Ti has ~0.05TFLOPS of FP64 performance. The RTX A4000 has ~0.39TFLOPS (almost 8x more FP64 performance). Games don't need the accuracy and are designed to be run at FP32 precision. FEA, CAD and engineering require FP64 if accuracy is important to you.

Additionally, you pay a bit extra for workstation cards as you are paying for certified cards and drivers that have had extra testing against industry standard software. The workstation GPUs also have improved performance for things like line drawing, virtualisation, layering, and are designed to run 24/7 without error. They also have ECC which means the memory can self-correct 1-bit memory errors and ensure data integrity and accuracy. They are designed for peak fault tolerance and stability as opposed to peak performance (like gaming GPUs).

 

[Cookie]

Anyone got any ideas as to what this noise could be? Had this PC for maybe 3 years now and it’s always made this noise. Sometimes the time between each noise will be a bit longer. It’ll happen for maybe 5-10 minutes then I won’t hear it again for ages

5800x3d
3080
32gb ddr4 ram (it was originally 16gb)

View attachment 1744522

Does it stop if you stop any of the fans spinning? Kinda sounds like something is hitting one

 

[Beauvais Motorsport]

Ah, FEA. I'm assuming you are doing the FEA through Solidworks Simulation? Unfortunately, I think Solidworks still does the FEA heavy-lifting on the CPU side, only using the GPU for visualising. As this means you can be CPU-limited, you would need to ensure you have the best performing CPU you can fit into your budget AND as much RAM as you can squeeze in, too.

As you are running FEA at max. tessellation, this can massively increase the computational cost. The bottom line is more tessellation, higher granularity, more interacting parts in the simulation. If your mesh size increases by a factor of n in (x, y, z) then even sparse matrix solvers will increase in complexity between O(n x n) and O(n x n x n) typically - depends on the solver and mesh quality. It's not just the number of elements that causes the performance hit, it's how those increased number of elements interact with each other and that can easily blow-up the solver calculation time. If you can use a different FEA with GPU solver support then there are some substantial gains to be had.

Gaming class GPUs (like the 4070Ti) are not really recommended for FEA and engineering simulation where accuracy and solver performance is essential. For starters, they are designed for peak performance rather than longevity and accuracy. Also, gaming GPUs have terrible FP64 performance compared to a workstation class GPU. The 4070Ti has ~0.05TFLOPS of FP64 performance. The RTX A4000 has ~0.39TFLOPS (almost 8x more FP64 performance). Games don't need the accuracy and are designed to be run at FP32 precision. FEA, CAD and engineering require FP64 if accuracy is important to you.

Additionally, you pay a bit extra for workstation cards as you are paying for certified cards and drivers that have had extra testing against industry standard software. The workstation GPUs also have improved performance for things like line drawing, virtualisation, layering, and are designed to run 24/7 without error. They also have ECC which means the memory can self-correct 1-bit memory errors and ensure data integrity and accuracy. They are designed for peak fault tolerance and stability as opposed to peak performance (like gaming GPUs).

Thank you for the write up! I currently have a new i9 14900k, mini itx, 64gb ram and case spare, just need psu and gpu. I could go to 96gb but would drop budget for gpu. I wouldn’t run tessellation highest when running fea especially in an assembly but would like to be able to go reasonably high. I don’t think I’ll using a dedicated fea program like ansys for a while which I’m sure is far more optimised than solidworks.

For what I’m seeing the a5000 prices used I could go for one, if it means a decent future proofed build..

 

[Daz...]

Anyone got any ideas as to what this noise could be? Had this PC for maybe 3 years now and it’s always made this noise. Sometimes the time between each noise will be a bit longer. It’ll happen for maybe 5-10 minutes then I won’t hear it again for ages

5800x3d
3080
32gb ddr4 ram (it was originally 16gb)

View attachment 1744522

As @Cookie said, that sounds exactly like something hitting one of the fans.

 

[Geddes]

With me thinking of going for a dual monitor set up, what are you using or what would you recommend. Wouldn’t mind the 2nd screen where I could have it both horizontal and vertical