this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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New AMD build suggestions (self.hardware)
submitted 2 months ago by peregus to c/[email protected]
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Hi community!
I'm in the process of building a new office PC for:

  • tenths of firefox tabs open some with Microsoft 365 Excel
  • some VMs because I will be installing Debian on the host, but in the office we use some Microsoft software and because, since I install, uninstall, create a lot of mess, I like to be able to go back to old snapshots or format and reinstall Windows without impacting my day to day job.

I'm still undecided about the CPU: AMD 9950x, 9700x or 7950x, but where I' completely blind is the motherboard. What I would like:

  • more than 2 PCIe slots to:
    • install a PCI USB card to pass the whole controller to a VM
    • install an extra NIC
    • I want to be able to install a graphic card in future if needed
  • more than 4 USB-A ports
  • more than 1 USB-C port
  • a well known and reliable brand

Do you have any suggestion even for an SSD (probably 4TB, in the 2-300€ range, maybe even something more) and RAM (64GB)?

Thanks!

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[–] peregus 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Well, actually my almost 10 years old i7-6700K struggles.
The problem is probably that I keep a lot of programs open:

  • Outlook
  • about 100 Firefox tabs (with 10+ addons)
  • 10+ Chrome tabs
  • 5 Edge tabs (with Excel 365)
  • 3 or 4 Excel sheets
  • MS Teams
  • Foxit Reader
  • a coupe of VMs
  • QCAD/Photoshop/Premiere for basic editing (for these software I may need a discrete GPU)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

https://www.techspot.com/bestof/amd-x670-motherboards

Hard to go wrong with the Asrock Taichi that Wendell from Level1Techs is also a fan of. Looks like memory will be your limiting factor and with VMs being part of the equation, 128gb seems like a good idea.

I am curious how well adobe software can use a dgpu in a vm. I understand things have gotten much better for gaming and maybe that'll translate into other gpu intensive tasks.

A good source of info: https://forum.level1techs.com

[–] peregus 1 points 2 months ago

I've had a look at that motherboards and they seems to only have 2 PCIe slots (I've checked the X670E and B650) About the GPU for the VMs, it can be passed through directly to them. I haven0t tried it yet, but it seems that a lot of people do so.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That still doesn't look like a very heavy workload. My older box was older then your 6700k and was fine running such stuff.

Perhaps your limit isn't the CPU. What storage and ram setup do you have, did you look at that?

I'll be honest and say that when I replaced my old crap with 7900x I did feel improvements on occasion, mostly when I really burden the pc. Plus I think having 64 gigs of ram helps there, at my old system I hit the limits sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. Now my new box just laughs at anything I try to do to it.

[–] peregus 1 points 1 month ago

The bottleneck is the CPU, I've the task manager always open and I see the CPU struggles a lot (RAM sometimes when I use too many VMs, SSD not at all).