I got my dream computer. Here's how that went bad for me
polycounter lvl 9
This is going to sound like I'm gloating, I'm sorry about that. I am not posting this to rub it in anyone's face, but to tell you about some of the pitfalls of "The Thing That Should Not Be".
Uh...? Specks I guess. Yeah, wait no.
So in April of 2024 my beloved gramma died at the age of 92, of not wanting to live any longer. She left us some money and I want to be clear right now: as much as the money has helped I would throw it all into a cesspit and light it on fire if it would bring my gramma back. [pause to cry about that. Keep pausing. Okay. I'm okay. I'm not okay. Give me a minute]
When we got the money I set out to do one of the things you do with a bunch of free money. Buy stuff! And I promised myself a decade ago that if I had the money ever I would buy a Titan computer from www.titancomputers.com.
2 cpus, at 128 cores each for a total of 512 threads (but only 2ghz, more on that below)
Uh...? Specks I guess. Yeah, wait no.
So in April of 2024 my beloved gramma died at the age of 92, of not wanting to live any longer. She left us some money and I want to be clear right now: as much as the money has helped I would throw it all into a cesspit and light it on fire if it would bring my gramma back. [pause to cry about that. Keep pausing. Okay. I'm okay. I'm not okay. Give me a minute]
When we got the money I set out to do one of the things you do with a bunch of free money. Buy stuff! And I promised myself a decade ago that if I had the money ever I would buy a Titan computer from www.titancomputers.com.
2 cpus, at 128 cores each for a total of 512 threads (but only 2ghz, more on that below)
2 nVidia Ada cards, so a 4090 series cuda processor and 48 gigs of gRAM
A terrabyte of RAM
Now when you read that you're probably thinking "Why? Why would anyone do that?" Well you wouldn't be the only one. Every person who knew what they were talking about, upon hearing my specs, had pretty much the same reaction. An AMD exec who checked into my hotel reacted impressed and said, "So you built the server yourself" and when I said, "It's not a server, it's a workstation!" Looked at me like I had just proposed we eat his dog. So its name became Atrociter (latin, one who commits atrocity. Laudatory.)
So let's get to where this goes sideways. First, it's a server motherboard, so installing drivers from inside the system is next level impossible for a stupid shlub like me. It's got a copy of windows 11 on it, and there are times where it DOES NOT LIKE that arrangement.
Straight out of the box we run into minor problem 1. It has a THREE MINUTE boot time. "Yeah, nomzod. Duh. It's running through 256 cores." Well you're much smarter than me, because I didn't count on that. Rebooting this thing is like the 90's all over again, when you would reboot your computer, go make a cup of tea, go to the bathroom, have a ciggy, take the dog for a walk, and when you get back your computer has another THREE MINUTES to go.
Now when you read that you're probably thinking "Why? Why would anyone do that?" Well you wouldn't be the only one. Every person who knew what they were talking about, upon hearing my specs, had pretty much the same reaction. An AMD exec who checked into my hotel reacted impressed and said, "So you built the server yourself" and when I said, "It's not a server, it's a workstation!" Looked at me like I had just proposed we eat his dog. So its name became Atrociter (latin, one who commits atrocity. Laudatory.)
So let's get to where this goes sideways. First, it's a server motherboard, so installing drivers from inside the system is next level impossible for a stupid shlub like me. It's got a copy of windows 11 on it, and there are times where it DOES NOT LIKE that arrangement.
Straight out of the box we run into minor problem 1. It has a THREE MINUTE boot time. "Yeah, nomzod. Duh. It's running through 256 cores." Well you're much smarter than me, because I didn't count on that. Rebooting this thing is like the 90's all over again, when you would reboot your computer, go make a cup of tea, go to the bathroom, have a ciggy, take the dog for a walk, and when you get back your computer has another THREE MINUTES to go.
That's a minor problem, but it is sometimes exhausting when you're trying to sideload a driver and you have to keep rebooting.
Minor problem 2: Hey didja know that most programs aren't designed to run on 256 cores??? Yeah! They take up like 8 threads, and then run at 2/3rds the speed of a "nuthin special" gaming rig. Photoshop for instance takes as long to load as it did in 2003.
Aside: All other problems with adobe (and that's a lot of other problems) aside, why do they think I would like a program with MORE popups? With more time and more clicks between me and OPENING A DOCUMENT? Are they getting paid by the time I spend using their programs?
Minor problem 2: Hey didja know that most programs aren't designed to run on 256 cores??? Yeah! They take up like 8 threads, and then run at 2/3rds the speed of a "nuthin special" gaming rig. Photoshop for instance takes as long to load as it did in 2003.
Aside: All other problems with adobe (and that's a lot of other problems) aside, why do they think I would like a program with MORE popups? With more time and more clicks between me and OPENING A DOCUMENT? Are they getting paid by the time I spend using their programs?
This does not bring us to major problem 1, but I'm going there anyway. This thing is loud as all bejesus-shit. Out of the box it's running all six fans at 100%. All the time. I start looking in to just how hot this thing is, and safe tolerances and stuff. But all the software I can find is designed for ONE cpu, and faced with two it garbles the data. Some software is showing my CPU at 60°C so I start looking for another to check and I get anywhere from 55° to 107°!!!
So that's a problem. And I get some help, (Shout out to @Wellbot on discord!) trying to figure out how to install/access/jury rig fan/temp support.
But it's a server! What need does a server have to run quiet enough you can have a conversation within 10 feet of it! It's on a rack in an airconditioned room, just blowing away.
Within a week of getting the thing, I void the warranty and crack the case to install a Corsair ICE fan control box. That goes fine and I'm seeing temps like 55°-60°, which is inside the tollerances for the CPU. WHEN IT FEELS LIKE REPORTING THE TEMPS. Which it does not, all the time. Windows also like to just randomly uninstall the program too, so that's choice.
Am I happy I got the thing?
No. I'd much rather have more years with my gramma. My children were old enough when she died to have concrete memories of her, and I considered that the very least I could ask for. But I would ask for so much more than that. As a consolation prize it sucks, but next to time with gramma everything does.
But part of the consolation is that I won't need another computer for 10 years or more. That's good. And a render that had taken Arnold 8 hours and 42 minutes on my previous computer, Atrociter did in 17 minutes, at double the resolution and double the samples.
But it's a server! What need does a server have to run quiet enough you can have a conversation within 10 feet of it! It's on a rack in an airconditioned room, just blowing away.
Within a week of getting the thing, I void the warranty and crack the case to install a Corsair ICE fan control box. That goes fine and I'm seeing temps like 55°-60°, which is inside the tollerances for the CPU. WHEN IT FEELS LIKE REPORTING THE TEMPS. Which it does not, all the time. Windows also like to just randomly uninstall the program too, so that's choice.
Am I happy I got the thing?
No. I'd much rather have more years with my gramma. My children were old enough when she died to have concrete memories of her, and I considered that the very least I could ask for. But I would ask for so much more than that. As a consolation prize it sucks, but next to time with gramma everything does.
But part of the consolation is that I won't need another computer for 10 years or more. That's good. And a render that had taken Arnold 8 hours and 42 minutes on my previous computer, Atrociter did in 17 minutes, at double the resolution and double the samples.
I didn't have a conclusion ready when I started this and I'm surprised to find that I still don't. Thank you for reading. It's been a ride.
Replies
Apparently, "more of everything" is not necessarily an improvement in a linear manner.
As for the new PC; a bitter pill to swallow, but a lesson none the less. Next time research. If you render on the same machine you work on, I can see the merit. But if you do game stuff and bakes... yeah, that's so overkill it's not even funny.
SUBHEAD: Unexpected Pitfalls
So I got sick of microslop's shit for the very last time in November of last year. I didn't post on microslop's forums that I was switching to linux, and then keep using microslop's products. I just did a buncha research about which distro would be best for me and downloaded the .iso
And that was it's own ordeal because I found out that the distro I chose could not support my "unique hardware situation". I tried rhel for a hot second before I realized that the rhel "community" is that their enterprise people build a custom framework for your giant production office, and then don't post anything about that online.
Anywhere.
So after 8 false starts I got Fedora 43 up and working!
I want to make an aside here. If you want to ditch microslop and you're worried about the learning curve in linux, there's a simple test.
If I tell you that you need to make a new D-WORD in your microslop registry. And you know the basic outline of what to do because you've done it before; you are ready for linux
Then I told you about the pitfall part, but in the future!
Linux uses a couple of systems to get around the fact that everything is built for microslop. The most common of these is wine, which stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator". Putting the acronym in the acronym, but go off king. Wine creates all the folders and all the pieces that your microslop software expects to see when it comes home from the slop pit after a hard day of slopping. It has a folder that is named a letter C and colon, it has a facsimile registry for your microslop program to write to when it installs. It has some c++ distributables, and some .NET frameworks. All just to install your microslop app, and then an extra layer that turns your linux commands into windows commands and back again so you can actually use your app.
Now when you extend this metaphor to microslop exectutives you see a funny thing—I'm being told I had a point here
Wine is compatible with only 64 logical cores. It will work for some things. But anything that requires the .NET framework tells me to go error myself. So a ton of avenues are closed to me. I joined a forum because there is NOTHING about this online. Posted my question. Waited a WEEK for one of the mods to approve it. And it now has 40 views and 0 replies.
I'm feeling the love
On the other hand I have a microslop key I extracted from the slop pits, and I can use it to set up a virtual windows and use that. I don't like that it's more ways for microslop to be annoying at me. But I do like that when I tell it to go away it disappears.
But I'm having issues there to. My server motherboard has server BIOS and I'm 98.674% sure that my hardware is ready for a good VMing. But all the guides are written for people with workstation BIOS. And there is no documentation about whether my CPU is up to the VMagheddon. So windows isn't installing and I need a day that I don't want to get high, so I can sit down and figure it out. 94.538% sober isn't cutting it!
Oh more problems! Get this!
I have an issue with CoolerControl, a fan management program. The screen looks like seizure inducing static when I open it. I go to the discord and post an issue and they pry into my specs, and finally one of the devs says, "I remember seeing a guy a couple months ago with this issue. But he had two ADA cards."
And I'm like, "Uh... I too... have two ADA cards."
And he says, "nice"
So that bug is not getting fixed anytime soon I'm thinking
We're coming up on the 2 year anniversary of my grandmother's death. I will occassionally feel very very sad for no reason. And then I remember the reason. Great-gramma avoided anything to do with computers with studious disinterest. Until, at the age of 85 she found out that an ipad made playing solitaire a whole hellofa lot easier. And that her religious community had sent her over 5,000 emails over the last 15 years. I imagine it would be very difficult to explain any of this to her in a way she could understand.
I still want to though