I’ve finally managed to upgrade my setup. I was hoping that I would be able to write a regular article, but due to the fact that I needed to return the monitor and waited for a week for another one, I still haven’t started writing it.
Nonetheless I’d like to share with you what I’ve got and why I decided to go for certain options.
PC configuration
I had some hard decision to make. I like my Macbook Pro, but it’s already old, not so great when it comes to efficiency (8GB RAM, 128 GB of SSD and 2-core i5) and my fiancee occupied it most of the time. However, new Macbooks that would cost me 3 times that much as the final setup that I have, so I decided to postpone the decision of buying it until I have more cash and till now build a PC myself from scratch and return to Linux for some time. I’ve always wanted to build my own PC, so I finally I had a reason to do it. Moreover, my fiancee crashed my monitor, so I had a good reason to rebuild entire workspace.
I assumed that I would assemble a machine on “better than average” components, so that they would still be fresh in 2-3 years’ time and have some upgrade potential without the need to throw everything away. On the other hand I was aiming at good productivity performance without the need to excel in games, so I could cut down on the GPU. The results were following:
- Ryzen 7 3700X CPU,
- 32 GB of RAM clocked at 3200 MHz (highest the CPU would work with without overclocking) from Adata,
- MSI X570-A PRO motherboard,
- Samsung 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe 970 EVO,
- Radeon RX 580 Dual OC 8GB,
- ilentiumPC Supremo L2 650W 80 Plus Gold,
- SilentiumPC Navis RGB 240 2x120mm cooling,
- ASUS PCE-AC55BT wireless card,
- SilentiumPC Astrum AT6V TG Pure Black chasis.
Total cost: about 5000 PLN. Additionally I have a Philips 346B1C/00 Curved monitor. I was looking for something that would fit my desk, so I had to resign from buying 2×27 inch monitors and went for a single on in 21:9 ratio. Also I think that Full HD is a bit too poor definition as for today’s standards, to I went for UWQHD and a USB-C port for easier switching between laptop and desktop and getting rid of a cable for power supply for laptop.
Q&A
Why not Intel?
Because AMD has been a strong choice for productivity, 3rd generation Ryzen CPUs provided excellent performance in this area and AMD has better compatibility when it comes to sockets. So I was afraid I would need to buy a new motherboard if I wanted to upgrade Intel and now I know that if I upgrade to 5th generation Ryzen I would still be able to mount it on the same AM4 I already have.
Why not Windows/macOS?
Costs. Pure and simple. I wanted to save up a little bit and for programming that I do on everyday basis Linux is a perfect choice, especially that Docker, which I utilize a lot is a Linux-first technology. It turns out that I don’t do videos, so having tools for this task isn’t crucial. I can still install Windows on Virtualbox and maybe I’ll buy a Macbook in the future. I don’t have anything against any of those systems (actually I miss my Macbook a bit :-D).
Why Ubuntu?
Because I wanted a balance between stability and frequent releases. I wanted a machine for work, so it couldn’t be any distro where I would spend hours trying to fix the most simple errors. I have good community support, I can install Spotify and Steam and WiFi and Bluetooth drivers out of the box, so why should I bother?
Do you play games if you have a dedicated GPU?
Yup, Company of Heroes. Anything else works fine on PS4.
Why not Nvidia?
Because AMD has better open-source drivers and if I want to play around with them, I will be able to do it more easily.
How is the water cooling?
Looks nice, but it’s a bit louder than I expected it to be. I guess I need to tune it a little bit. On the other hand I tested it while compiling git using parallel jobs and I got stable 67oC. That’s something.
You still use iPhone. Is it convenient?
Hell no. I can browse some files (like KeePassXC database) and photos (they’re completely unordered) and only when connecting through cable. To actually share files I need Dropbox or Google Drive (which fortunately I can mount easily in my file browser). Apple integrates smoothly only with itself :-/
Do you plan any upgrades?
Maybe I’ll buy some additional RAM to fill the remaining 2 slots, but beside this I feel fulfilled. As I say I wanted a setup that would be suitable for work next 2-3 years.
Benchmarks
Time to see some numbers. I’d like to show how much I’ve gained by upgrading. I don’t mean to show that this dedicated PC is faster than my old 2015 Macbook Pro with 2-core i5, because it’s obvious that it’ll beat it. I just want to show how much difference there is. In order to do it I ran 7 zip benchmark for 1 and 16 threads. First, Macbook Pro:
$ 7z b -mmt=1 -mm=LZMA
7-Zip [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=utf8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,4 CPUs x64)
x64
CPU Freq: 3080 3082 3003 3070 3087 3093 3086 3092 3050
RAM size: 8192 MB, # CPU hardware threads: 4
RAM usage: 435 MB, # Benchmark threads: 1
Compressing | Decompressing
Dict Speed Usage R/U Rating | Speed Usage R/U Rating
KiB/s % MIPS MIPS | KiB/s % MIPS MIPS
22: 3409 100 3332 3317 | 39212 100 3353 3348
23: 3336 100 3407 3399 | 38158 99 3328 3303
24: 3177 100 3425 3416 | 37643 100 3319 3305
25: 3047 100 3490 3480 | 37360 100 3332 3325
---------------------------------- | ------------------------------
Avr: 100 3414 3403 | 100 3333 3320
Tot: 100 3373 3362
$ 7z b -mmt=16 -mm=LZMA
7-Zip [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=utf8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,4 CPUs x64)
x64
CPU Freq: 3057 3097 2982 3003 3051 3015 3096 3086 3093
RAM size: 8192 MB, # CPU hardware threads: 4
RAM usage: 3530 MB, # Benchmark threads: 16
Compressing | Decompressing
Dict Speed Usage R/U Rating | Speed Usage R/U Rating
KiB/s % MIPS MIPS | KiB/s % MIPS MIPS
22: 8856 374 2306 8615 | 101502 383 2258 8657
23: 8152 364 2284 8307 | 99550 382 2254 8613
24: 7873 358 2365 8466 | 96234 380 2226 8447
25: 6964 349 2280 7952 | 92620 371 2219 8243
---------------------------------- | ------------------------------
Avr: 361 2309 8335 | 379 2239 8490
Tot: 370 2274 8412
Macbook-Pro-Zuziaczek-2:~ Zuziaczek$
And now my Linux
→ 7z b -mmt1 -mm=LZMA
7-Zip [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=pl_PL.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,16 CPUs AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor (870F10),ASM,AES-NI)
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor (870F10)
CPU Freq: - - - - - - - - -
RAM size: 32126 MB, # CPU hardware threads: 16
RAM usage: 435 MB, # Benchmark threads: 1
Compressing | Decompressing
Dict Speed Usage R/U Rating | Speed Usage R/U Rating
KiB/s % MIPS MIPS | KiB/s % MIPS MIPS
22: 5882 100 5723 5723 | 54374 100 4643 4643
23: 5140 100 5238 5238 | 54082 100 4681 4681
24: 4736 100 5093 5093 | 53636 100 4709 4709
25: 4511 100 5151 5151 | 52999 100 4717 4717
---------------------------------- | ------------------------------
Avr: 100 5301 5301 | 100 4688 4687
Tot: 100 4994 4994
→ 7z b -mmt16 -mm=LZMA
7-Zip [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=pl_PL.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,16 CPUs AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor (870F10),ASM,AES-NI)
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor (870F10)
CPU Freq: - - - - - - - 1024000000 -
RAM size: 32126 MB, # CPU hardware threads: 16
RAM usage: 3530 MB, # Benchmark threads: 16
Compressing | Decompressing
Dict Speed Usage R/U Rating | Speed Usage R/U Rating
KiB/s % MIPS MIPS | KiB/s % MIPS MIPS
22: 58058 1406 4017 56480 | 661466 1480 3813 56417
23: 55323 1437 3922 56368 | 653726 1481 3818 56561
24: 53282 1463 3915 57289 | 643195 1482 3810 56456
25: 49600 1411 4015 56632 | 630542 1481 3789 56116
---------------------------------- | ------------------------------
Avr: 1429 3967 56692 | 1481 3808 56388
Tot: 1455 3888 56540
How does it relate to everyday tasks? Well, I was able to compile git in 9 seconds using 16 parallel jobs and drop unit test times in a dockerized python project from 1 minute 13 seconds to 50 seconds using sequential test execution.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in comments. I’ll be happy to answer.