Phoebe specification

Mercury

Member
You're speaking as if some of the components you've chosen are somehow misunderstood and will suddenly have hidden talents that will come to the fore in a few years. This isn't true. Your decisions won't make sense in a few years time. You're making objective and clear choices on components you know about or at least can ask about. There aren't some unpredictable brexit like possibilities here I'm afraid. It's all quite predictable.

Your changes make slight improvements. But nowhere near what could be deemed sensible or financially sound.

Excuse me? WTF?

Since when did I need permission to be sensible or financially sound in your opinion? And WTF? Is the relevance of unrelated political matters you chose to reference?

I've answered nicely till now, and have incorporated some of the advice I've received into the build.

I have very little time for your arrogance.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
I'd still recommend the better CPU cooler. These parts produce an extreme amount of heat.

NB the temps in the 70s under load with one of the best 280mm water coolers on the market:
https://www.techspot.com/review/1493-intel-core-i9-7980xe-and-7960x/page4.html

And still mid 60s with a 360mm water cooler
https://www.techspot.com/review/1493-intel-core-i9-7980xe-and-7960x/page4.html

This being at stock, not overclocked.

If you're buying a CPU this expensive and with this many cores it's because you need to load it right up - ergo you want the best cooler you can get your hands on.

I'm not going to speak as to the rest of the conversation here, except as an aside that:

Since when did I need permission to be sensible or financially sound in your opinion?
There is an argument that paying high prices for things that are unnecessary and perhaps sold at egregiously high prices simply teaches companies that price gouging works. Companies will keep charging ultra high prices for products showing no innovation if people who don't benefit from them keep buying them.

Only a few people actually need / leverage the performance offered, but all the others buying halo products because [insert justification] inflate demand and simply prove setting high prices works.

When people post gaming builds up with an i7 and a GTX 1050 my heart sinks, as it just shows the brand power of i7. They don't even know what an i7 is (even Intel don't these days tbf) but they know "i7 good for gaming = I buy i7". And so i7s keep getting more expensive.

Or people who buy 32gb RAM for a gaming PC at a time when RAM prices are ultra high due to supply (and other issues). They're using RAM for 2 people, for no benefit to themselves.

Also these components are made in part from rare natural resources, so buying components that won't be used is very wasteful.

Clearly that doesn't mean consumers need to get permission from other consumers. But these are a couple of potential reasons why someone might be concerned when others are wasting their money; they're not just sabotaging themselves but playing (granted, a very small) role in sabotaging things for the rest of us. It's not like fashion, buying art, vintage wines; almost everyone needs silicon, flash memory, DRAM, etc... :)

A little bit like how some consumers are now trying to throw less food away for ethical and environmental reasons.
 
Last edited:

Mercury

Member
I'd still recommend the better CPU cooler. These parts produce an extreme amount of heat.

NB the temps in the 70s under load with one of the best 280mm water coolers on the market:
https://www.techspot.com/review/1493-intel-core-i9-7980xe-and-7960x/page4.html

And still mid 60s with a 360mm water cooler
https://www.techspot.com/review/1493-intel-core-i9-7980xe-and-7960x/page4.html

This being at stock, not overclocked.

If you're buying a CPU this expensive and with this many cores it's because you need to load it right up - ergo you want the best cooler you can get your hands on.

I'm not going to speak as to the rest of the conversation here, except as an aside that:

There is an argument that paying high prices for things that are unnecessary and perhaps sold at egregiously high prices simply teaches companies that price gouging works. Companies will keep charging ultra high prices for products showing no innovation if people who don't benefit from them keep buying them.

Only a few people actually need / leverage the performance offered, but all the others buying halo products because [insert justification] inflate demand and simply prove setting high prices works.

When people post gaming builds up with an i7 and a GTX 1050 my heart sinks, as it just shows the brand power of i7. They don't even know what an i7 is (even Intel don't these days tbf) but they know "i7 good for gaming = I buy i7". And so i7s keep getting more expensive.

Or people who buy 32gb RAM for a gaming PC at a time when RAM prices are ultra high due to supply (and other issues). They're using RAM for 2 people, for no benefit to themselves.

Also these components are made in part from rare natural resources, so buying components that won't be used is very wasteful.

Clearly that doesn't mean consumers need to get permission from other consumers. But these are a couple of potential reasons why someone might be concerned when others are wasting their money; they're not just sabotaging themselves but playing (granted, a very small) role in sabotaging things for the rest of us. It's not like fashion, buying art, vintage wines; almost everyone needs silicon, flash memory, DRAM, etc... :)

A little bit like how some consumers are now trying to throw less food away for ethical and environmental reasons.

I did think about water-cooling as an option, but was afraid of it because I wasn't confident I could maintain that myself in future.

In terms of wider resource utilisation and environment you aren't wrong; it's true I will play games on this system yet also I have other ideas which is why I have specified it so heavily.

And yes not afraid to just buy this and learn from/adapt in future.
 

Mercury

Member
You are right that in due course I intend to load this CPU with work; and that's going to mean a lot of heat.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
I did think about water-cooling as an option, but was afraid of it because I wasn't confident I could maintain that myself in future.
I understand the hesitation.

That's not actually an issue though :)

The water coolers like the H100x, H115, etc are all closed loop / all-in-one solutions that need no more maintenance than an air cooler. i.e. dust the fan and heatsink/radiator from time to time.

They're not like custom loops / open loops where you need to periodically drain, flush, and refill the system.
 

Mercury

Member
I understand the hesitation.

That's not actually an issue though :)

The water coolers like the H100x, H115, etc are all closed loop / all-in-one solutions that need no more maintenance than an air cooler. i.e. dust the fan and heatsink/radiator from time to time.

They're not like custom loops / open loops where you need to periodically drain, flush, and refill the system.

Maybe the next system I will have that confidence. This time... not so much.

I did make a couple of modest changes based on feedback, and I hope these will help. It seems Phoebe has been built now (the comments of the technicians were not recorded), and so that's that for the hardware, to start with.

Next task after delivery will be to lick the software into shape; turn off all of the Windows nonsense and anything pre-installed that I can, get it network connected, AV protected according to my assessment of that plus offshore VPN, and then run up some initial programs to see if it all looks OK to me.

Begin to spool up a few games, and then in due course SQL databases but I'm in no rush for that. Step by step is my way.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
My point was that the liquid coolers require 0 maintenance beyond air coolers, and so shouldn't need any additional confidence
 

Mercury

Member
That's something I need to learn, it's changed since the last time I ordered a tower PC of any sort.

Liquid cooling did exist then, but was unusual - and risky. Units now are self-contained and interchangeable?


Phoebe is delivered Monday tomorrow; i expect it will be several months at least before I whip this system into shape.

Starting point maybe must be gentle; clear Microsoft pre-installed stuff, connect to my local networks, install essential security software, load games, and do an initial trial.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
All in one units are self-contained, yes. That's pretty much all there is to learn.

What is whipping a system into shape?

You'll want to stress test it very soon after arrival so that if there are any issues, these are exposed within the returns window. There is the warranty ofc, but if the system has big problems exposed by stress testing you may find it better to return it and start over or go with a different vendor.
 

Mercury

Member
It all did work pretty much out of the box, gradually working up now.

Airflow seems to work well, it draws from the bottom, raised on feet above my wooden tile floor, and exhausts out of the roof and rear. The case has room for me to work in if need be and a nice removable side panel for maintenance. Upper panel ventilator grille, it was supplied with an alternative solid panel (felt-lined?) but I definitely don't want that. I am grateful for the suggestions on those improvements.

I have thrown a couple of hefty games at Phoebe, and while it's a pleasure being able to ramp up the visuals she hasn't broken sweat yet doing that, I'm seeing temperatures between 30 to 50 C at most.

In terms of whipping a system into shape; I'm talking software, i like PC Speciaiist because they give me the most vanilla install I can get. Then my first job is to turn off as much as I can of any add-ons, third-party, and Microsoft junk I don't need.

Next stage will be to install SQL Server, and see how that goes. There are certain game-theoretic questions I'd like to try tackling with a mixture of brute force and human direction, but I'd like a fair bit of brute force computing power behind that part. Hence Phoebe.
 
Last edited:

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I have thrown a couple of hefty games at Phoebe, and while it's a pleasure being able to ramp up the visuals she hasn't broken sweat yet doing that, I'm seeing temperatures between 30 to 50 C at most.

There’s no way that’s the cpu temp at full throttle, must be a gpu bound game.
 

Mercury

Member
There’s no way that’s the cpu temp at full throttle, must be a gpu bound game.

I don't have fgures for CPU temp at present; this was GPU temp and also keeping an eye on general ambient case temeperature.
I would take recommendations for reputable open-source tools to measure this.

At present I am rather relying on the fact that it all looks sweet, and the air-flow from the rear fan is good. Remember I don't care about any one game.
 

Mercury

Member
Update is available; I have run Phoebe at full stretch for 12 hours, running AI chess analysis. This takes the GPU to 98% capacity solid for that time, it maxed out at 74 to 75 C then.

All 16 CPU cores were engaged, but at present GPU bound. Require more parallel processing. Additional GPU may be needed.
 

Mercury

Member
Chess engines

One of the reasons I purchased over-specified hardware was to run chess engines; and AI.

Phoebe is currently running OK, I'm getting a tiny bit of heat radiated from the upper rear of the system but not too much so far.

Tournaments are going, I have given Stockfish 10 and Komodo 9 (Komodo is a proprietary and inferior program, I would have to purchase a license for the latest version).
they are both presently granted up to 12 cores and several gigabytes so far against Leela Chess Zero, which is presently running my GPU to 75C and 98% solid for hours when active.

So far Stockfish is barely holding its own to draw, or losing. While it is analyzing a few billion positions per move, versus a few million considered by Leela.
The disparity is on the order of 1:1000.

We will see how this works out, but I think I may require another GPU at least.

Mercury
 
Top