Thank you for the data point. So now that you downclock the 3800X, you've just got yourself a 3700X (3.6GHz) that was binned for higher overclock (and maybe less power efficiency). I think on Linux, the following is doing the same - I've set it up on a laptop to keep BOINC quiet while I'm working on it:

 echo 90 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/max_perf_pct
 echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo

The measurements are believable and you have chosen a good sweet spot (below a certain frequency, fixed system consumption parts dominate). This again shows that normal air cooling should be sufficient for a 3700X.

It is also my observation that turbo boost is pretty harmful and dialing a CPU down a notch also increases its credit/watt value - we could actually plot this for various processors.

Yes its like a 3700x. The added benefit is its quiet, at the lower threshold of my hearing and not irritating. A fan control program from the manufacturer of the motherboard which I use to auto control fans, sets the fans at about 6-700 rpm when Boinc is running when I am at 90%. At 100% cpu utilization the fan control program ramps up the fans and they get loud. Lots of fans in my case.

Well I hope I was some help with the data. I only build the pc's for myself many years apart so I am not much help besides the data I have for my pc. My career was heavy construction and mining and I am retired. It's 5:41 am here, told myself that when I retired I would sleep long and get up late. Well I am still up early and even sleep less. Must be one of them god jokes.
Stay safe and I hope our work goes to develop a vaccine. That would be great.

Yes its like a 3700x. The added benefit is its quiet, at the lower threshold of my hearing and not irritating. A fan control program from the manufacturer of the motherboard which I use to auto control fans, sets the fans at about 6-700 rpm when Boinc is running when I am at 90%. At 100% cpu utilization the fan control program ramps up the fans and they get loud. Lots of fans in my case.

Running without "turbo-boost" also has the added benefit of using less electricity :)

Tom M

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Help, my tagline is missing..... Help, my tagline is......... Help, m........ Hel.....

I did turn PBO off after I thought about it. Is that what you mean by turbo boost?

Or is turbo boost what AMD did with a 3700x and turned it into a 3800x? PC is just a hobby. When I was in school we studied tube theory.

I did turn PBO off after I thought about it. Is that what you mean by turbo boost?

"Turbo-boost" is what I call any of the technologies by Intel and AMD that cause a cpu to run beyond its "normal" top rated speed. In the ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero motherboard I am using there is a place to disable PBO. And there are two other places to disable "cpu boost". I have them all disabled.

When in doubt run all the way through your bios to make sure you have it disabled "every place."

I also have my TDP on my Amd 3950x limited to 65 watts.

So for the most part my cpu is running about 3.3GHz or less.
It doesn't maximize production but it maximizes production at the minimum cost possible. (I think).

Tom M

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Help, my tagline is missing..... Help, my tagline is......... Help, m........ Hel.....

Do you think this one could do the trick for now, costing $525 upfront?

- Gigabyte B450M DS3H Ultra Durable
- G.SKILL 16GB (2x8GB) Aegis DDR4 3000MHz CL16 KIT F4-3000C16D-16GISB
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X AM4 BOX
- Kingmax 120GB SATA3
- FSP400-60APN 85+

Do you think this one could do the trick for now, costing $525 upfront?

- Gigabyte B450M DS3H Ultra Durable
- G.SKILL 16GB (2x8GB) Aegis DDR4 3000MHz CL16 KIT F4-3000C16D-16GISB
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X AM4 BOX
- Kingmax 120GB SATA3
- FSP400-60APN 85+

Do you have a video card on hand? I don't know if that Motherboard will let you boot without one plugged in, and you'll probably want one to at least get setup.

Do you think this one could do the trick for now, costing $525 upfront?

- Gigabyte B450M DS3H Ultra Durable
- G.SKILL 16GB (2x8GB) Aegis DDR4 3000MHz CL16 KIT F4-3000C16D-16GISB
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X AM4 BOX
- Kingmax 120GB SATA3
- FSP400-60APN 85+

I am told the 3700x is the "sweet spot" between price and performance for the Ryzen 3000 series.

You may want to buy an MB with the largest number of PCIe slots you can rather than just 3 slots. 5 sometimes 6 are very common for that Chipset. You also want to confirm that the bios support "Above 4G" incase you start wanting to run more than 2-3 video cards.

And you will want at least one video card for setup as the other responder said.

Respectfully,
Tom M

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Help, my tagline is missing..... Help, my tagline is......... Help, m........ Hel.....

That's actually a good question.

Have you seen a motherboard that wouldn't boot without a GPU? If yes, do you know a way I could look this fact up on this specific model?

As per the top post, a GPU can be borrowed during installation (or I could image the SSD directly using an external enclosure on a different computer), but no GPU would be needed for operation.

Thank you for the insights.

Please see the top post about the other parts of my requirements. No GPU should be needed for operation and I could borrow one for installation if it doesn't support PXE out of the box. I hope it boots without a GPU after setup, though... haven't seen one that doesn't.

The more features a motherboard has, usually the greater its power consumption, so I would be extra reluctant to pay for any feature that shall not be used. Also the more expensive board one gets today reduces the budget for the next board 5 years from now. Also a friendly discount is available for this specific RAM kit and motherboard at the moment.

If I decided to pop in a GPU after a few years in the end, it would still definitely not be 6 of them and then the PSU would be prove to be underpowered for that build. I follow the policy to build something that you are sure will be optimal right now, not build something that may sometime have features that could "come in useful". It's usually more efficient use of resources.

Also, if such a build turns out okay, I could recommend it to friends as well and maybe get a second one too and/or swap with my peers when they would also be building something. So if the original requirements outlined in the top post would be extended with GPU folding support, a second, GPU-specific "most efficient build" forum thread should be created (lot's of questions there, regarding cooling, power, risers, I/O usage, such tweaks that you mention, probably better motherboards, how many CPU cores of what kind per GPU, what kind of GPU for most efficiency, etc).

That's actually a good question.

Have you seen a motherboard that wouldn't boot without a GPU? If yes, do you know a way I could look this fact up on this specific model?

As per the top post, a GPU can be borrowed during installation (or I could image the SSD directly using an external enclosure on a different computer), but no GPU would be needed for operation.

I can 100% say the gigabyte ultra durable motherboard I have on my core 2quad from ~2008 will not boot without a GPU. It just beeps (presuming you have a pc speaker attached to the motherboard).

From that point forward, I’ve either built intel boxes (comes with integrated video), AMD APUs (comes with integrated video), or a 2700x (It has a 1080ti for gaming / folding in it), so I can’t say if new motherboards will boot without video. I would just assume no, as it is going to be a very uncommon use case.

I see. I found a few positives signs for this chipset, but I haven't found a concrete answer for this motherboard yet:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/ASRock/comments/ff2e2s/is_there_b350b450_asrock_mobo_for_am4_with/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ur5ni/dear_am4_users_can_you_boot_without_a_gpu_and_if/
- https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/asus-prime-b450m-a-or-prime-b450-plus-headless.18832054/#post-32163396
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/a45nk4/headless_ryzen/ebbsy16/

I guess we'll just have to try and if it won't boot, I'll grab some cheap/second hand option preferably from the non-power hungry passive kind, like a GT710 for $40, a GT210 for $15 or an Nvidia P283 for $5, though this would cost dearly in electricity, so I hope they underclock and undervolt well.

They can and do boot without. If they don't boot without a GPU something in the BIOS setup calls for VRAM. Finding that one can be tricky, but worth it.

Example: the KF series Intel's boost higher than the K series, even if you use a dedicated GPU with a K. Even an disabled iGPU eats into something.

I know that some/many bios offer a "pause on bios error" feature like "keyboard missing". So it seems reasonable that if you were to disable the "boot up errors pause" then a computer would boot headless (without a monitor or keyboard) but it would need by default to accept some kind of remote desktop connection.

Tom M

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Help, my tagline is missing..... Help, my tagline is......... Help, m........ Hel.....

https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/04/23/50-odroid-c4-raspberry-pi-4-competitor-combines-amlogic-s905x3-soc-with-4gb-ram/amp

Could this be a candidate for beating the efficiency of ryzen?

https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/04/23/50-odroid-c4-raspberry-pi-4-competitor-combines-amlogic-s905x3-soc-with-4gb-ram/amp

Could this be a candidate for beating the efficiency of ryzen?

In response: A bit earlier in the topic already some things have been said about this, but not conclusive yet. Please have read, its interesting enough.

Interesting read, this topic. The opinions shared represent quite some experience, more than some I do recognize.

When building a new rig specialized for sponsoring Rosetta I get caught, as some others in this topic, by the following thoughts:

Cost of ownership is an addition of investment, selling and cost of operation.
Too much focus on efficiency can cause buying expensive hardware that do not return on their investment.
Too much focus on performance can cause expensive operation because of cooling and power consumption issues.

I know the above statements are a bit cliches, and are easily said without any risk. I understand that.

Without wanting to put the sensible middle of the road solutions mentioned here (Ryzen 3700X, Bronze PSU, no Christmas tree motherboard but with decent VRM) to the discussion we still do not have any bearings regarding:

initial costing of rig
its use of power
and its output of calculations (RAC)

It is easy to state an opinion like this. I know. Writing a message in a topic is not so difficult and not so time consuming. Trying to get answers to the three questions above takes loads of time. While we all need to do exactly the same thing to measure something that can be compared with the results of someone else. Only then we are able to get some unbiased answers. Don't take me wrong, I do not doubt at all the judgment and experience of the respondents in this topic, and do not want to discuss their opinions. We only should try to give some foundation to all those mostly valid opinions in some numbers.

So if we should like to have some answers we should benchmark, benchmark and benchmark again. But before we can start benchmarking we should agree on what to measure and what information should be involved. This is a challenge itself :) (and I think it should be a separated topic as well). Benchmarking in a reproductive way is difficult, and do not be surprised that later on advancing insight will force us to alter that benchmark itself.

A first step can be is defining how to benchmark and how we sensibly can measure what we want to know. To get thinking started:

RAC: How to measure? How long to get an average result with enough resolution, against what side conditions (what do we allow to run on the OS besides the calculations)?
Measuring power consumption: what meters to use (define a standard?), what to measure? Again how long to get an average result (we can Make RAC leading for this period)
Most difficult and chaotic variable: against what cost hardware can be brought and sold economically. Many depencies, in what part of the world is brought and sold, special deals etc.

So do not start testing yet, we first need to agree how to test.

Looking at raspberry Pi 4, 4GB only, I'm seeing the following from my experience.

Credit:
4 threads on a raspberry pi is going to land around 800 - 900 average credit.
a 12 year old Core2Quad generates about 2500 average credit
A Ryzen 3600 generates around 9000 average credit (from what I've seen looking at other accounts)

Price:
Raspberry pi 4:
The base board is running 50-65 depending on where you shop.
You'll need a heatsink for running Rosetta on 4 threads. So far the most efficient passive heatsink I'm aware of is the FLIRC case, adding about $16.
Power supply is going to be about $10, but you can reduce this by getting 1 power supply to manage multiple pis. I'm looking at about $4 per pi best case.
Flash card will run about $5 for a cheap one.
total $81 - 96

Power:
Without significant power optimization the pi4 is pulling 4 watts on average.
Core2 quad pulls about 95watts
Ryzen 3600 (unknown.. 65+ watt?)

Value:
Points per watt - you'll need around 10 Pis to likely match the points of a Ryzen 3600, which is going to run around 40 watts. Pi is likely the winner here.
Points per dollar - old core2quads can be found extremely cheap (my dad picked up several from a University swap meet for $20 each last year). A Ryzen system should be able to be had for 500-600 as discussed above. The Pis will come in last here.
Management - You'll have multiple OSes to manage with the Pis, so they are the least user friendly.

Unless you're strictly focused on points per watt, you'll probably be better off going with a Ryzen system, or finding some old hardware super cheap.

i overclocked my pi4 and got pretty close to a 1000 points just yesterday
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=13732&postid=95358#95358

but make sure you've got a good heatsink firmly attached while overclocking and fan blowing at it as the loads can drive pi4 up to 80 deg C
pretty hot really
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=271933
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=271933&start=25#p1649751

i'd think both high core count (preferably hyper threaded) desktop processors or that modest Pi4 is a decent platform to run r@h
the high core count hyperthreaded Ryzen and Intel processors
are bringing in extreme numbers that makes them look like the top 500 tier supercomputers in the past
(or if you like actually much faster than the past top 500 supercomputers, the reason is that those supercomputers are vector computers and these are conventional cpu loads run at supercomputer speeds, i.e. those supercomputers can't even do this)

you can also see them outgunning everyone (else) in the number crunching prowess
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/top_hosts.php

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/cpu_list.php

CPU model                                                                       Number of   Avg. cores  GFLOPS  GFLOPs/
                                                                                computers   /computer   /core	computer
Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 158 Stepping 13]   43          16.00       6.24    99.90
Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900X CPU @ 3.70GHz [Family 6 Model 85 Stepping 7]        11          20.00       5.01    100.22
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor [Family 23 Model 113 Stepping 0] 	        1367        16.10       5.29    85.15
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32-Core Processor [Family 23 Model 49 Stepping 0] 	55          61.67       5.42    334.44
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X 24-Core Processor [Family 23 Model 49 Stepping 0]  49          44.49       5.47    243.23
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 6-Core Processor [Family 23 Model 113 Stepping 0]             306         11.86       5.28    62.56

BCM2835 [Impl 0x41 Arch 8 Variant 0x0 Part 0xd08 Rev 3]                         929         4.00        2.07    8.29
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2310M CPU @ 2.10GHz [Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7]         69          3.96        2.07    8.17

that BCM23835 with the 'Part 0xd08' is actually a Pi 4, it really is a BCM2711 quad-core A72 superscalar ARM processor
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bcm2711/README.md
that i3 for a comparison, i think that i3-2310M is a notebook computer part number. those are designed more towards saving power then drive performance unlike the desktop processors, but they are nevertheless faster than the non-superscalar processors)

between the choices i'd think is one's comfort in terms of how much resources one prefers to commit to the project as well as to various other considerations such as fan noise, power consumption, cost, etc
i've got a Pi4 running almost for a full day and i'd occasionally crunch on my deskdop. this could help alleviate some hard choices e.g. if the pc is in the bedroom and it would be noisy to run it on all night. while a Pi4 can be located away in a well ventilated isolated corner so that one won't be bothered by fan noise.
imho a fan and good heat sink is really pretty needed for a Pi4 to run these loads

Looking at raspberry Pi 4, 4GB only, I'm seeing the following from my experience.

Credit:
4 threads on a raspberry pi is going to land around 800 - 900 average credit.
a 12 year old Core2Quad generates about 2500 average credit
A Ryzen 3600 generates around 9000 average credit (from what I've seen looking at other accounts)


AMD Ryzen 3990x will do 115k-120k ppd RAC. That's drawing 280 watt total for cpu, although the ppd doesn't reduce much throttling at 200W. So if you could get a pi to run to 900ppd you would need say 133 of them to equal a 3990x.

The pi's would cost by your figures, I'll take the mid price at 88.5*133 =$11770

They would draw 480 watts in total.

This is just for comparison of course, but the 3990x is cheaper, more efficient, plus you have an awesome pc.