I've got a desktop PC and not afraid to admit it thread

[Slushbox]

theboss said:

I built a new machine recently with an emphasis on photo editing -

Nvidia Quadro P2000

33 megapixels, 30-colour hence the Quadro card.
.

Yeah. Quadro! Feel those dense black fonts! I like the Quadros for photo editing/Lightroom.

My Dell Outlet 'Dentus et Scratchio' desktop PC arived today. £300 for an Inspiron small desktop, with i5-7400 and 8GB RAM.

Could not find a dent or a scratchio, but there was a fingerprint on the front panel. I'll accept that for the £120 price cut they gave me.

As to drives, it came with, er, a Toshiba 1TB 7200rpm spinner. I've got a couple of SSD's on the desk ready to install, but the thing is fast enough already. That might change: the greedy apps are InDesign and Publisher, but so far, it whistles along. There's another 8GB of RAM in the post.

I put in the low profile Quadro card after an hour of Windows 10 updates. Sanity is restored after a horrible week squinting at the laptop.

[dmsims]

theboss said:

I built a new machine recently with an emphasis on photo editing -

32GB 3200Mhz RAM (will upgrade to 64GB)

I just loaded a 960MB scan into Photochop and it uses just over 1GB RAM

What are you using that RAM for ?

[theboss]

dmsims said:

theboss said:

I built a new machine recently with an emphasis on photo editing -

32GB 3200Mhz RAM (will upgrade to 64GB)

I just loaded a 960MB scan into Photochop and it uses just over 1GB RAM

What are you using that RAM for ?

Currently about 6,000 50MP RAW files all with 1:1 previews stored on the NVMe - open LightRoom and scroll through a few collections and before you know it the LR process is committing 24GB+ of RAM. I guess just loads a ton of stuff from its preview cache. Due to the screen resolution (equivalent to 16 x 1080p displays) i might have several hundred thumbnails on the screen at any one time.

Add a few dozen browser tabs, other windows apps, etc.

I’ll double it at some point just because the board will take it, and because it will be nice having the option to spin up a few Hyper-V VMs with a useable 8GB RAM or more, although its all a bit pointless given that I have some servers a few feet away (the desktop will be far quicker for quickly throwing together the odd VM, but the servers will allow me to deploy many more for complex scenarios e.g. proof of concepts).

[RizzoTheRat]

theboss said:

I built a new machine recently with an emphasis on photo editing -

i7-8086 (hex core 4Ghz)

I find it quite amusing that this chip exists. My first pc had the original 8086 processor,which ran at something like 8Mhz

[Jinx]

My little corner of the room.....

[snuffy]

My set up, which is not as neat and tidy as some on here !

[dmsims]

snuffy said:

My set up, which is not as neat and tidy as some on here !

My OCD cannot look at that with the monitors all at different heights

[snuffy]

dmsims said:

My OCD cannot look at that with the monitors all at different heights

The outside two are 27.5" and the middle one is 31.5". The tops of the displays themselves are pretty much in a line because the middle one has smaller bezels.

[droopsnoot]

snuffy said:

My set up, which is not as neat and tidy as some on here !

Do the blank displays on the left-hand rear monitor just show ever-cascading views of the same desktop, like a hall of mirrors?

[P-Jay]

theboss said:

I built a new machine recently with an emphasis on photo editing -

i7-8086 (hex core 4Ghz)
32GB 3200Mhz RAM (will upgrade to 64GB)
Intel Optane 900p 280GB for OS and lightroom library/cache
Old Crucial 1TB SSD as a scratch / temp drive
2 x Seagate 10TB mirrored for storage
Nvidia Quadro P2000
Dell UP3218K 8K screen

33 megapixels, 30-colour hence the Quadro card.

My desktop image is a photo I took myself in Bryce Canyon in 2016 using a 50MP Canon 5DS, shrunk down to 7680 pixels on the long edge to fit the screen, the detail has to be seen to be believed.

Totally echo the comments above re SSD - I haven’t had a PC with OS on spinning disk for years. In fact my first SSD equipped machine is a 2006 thinkpad which my kids still use with Windows 10, it’s not only bulletproof but totally useable despite a dual core 1.4Ghz CPU and 4GB RAM. It’s incredible how CPU/memory minimum standards have barely changed in a decade.

I’ve just ordered a machine to almost the exact same spec for a client. He wants it for Solid Works, we started down the Xeon road but Solid works rate clock speed over everthjng else so 8086k (40th Anniversary Editon no less).

I’m fairly excited to see how it performs.

[theboss]

P-Jay said:

I’ve just ordered a machine to almost the exact same spec for a client. He wants it for Solid Works, we started down the Xeon road but Solid works rate clock speed over everthjng else so 8086k (40th Anniversary Editon no less).

I’m fairly excited to see how it performs.

It’s a good setup. Not sure exactly what sort of workload SolidWorks constitutes but the good thing about the 8086 is that it provides a very good mix of single threaded and multi-threaded performance, especially for the money.

Some apps like Lightroom vary depending on your workflows - most processes are predominantly or exclusively single-threaded so clock speed is everything, then you run a big import/export or batch conversion of some sort and it’s all parallel and will saturate a large number of cores. So it’s about finding the optimal balance for the particular work you do.

I can’t rate the Intel Optane NVMe highly enough either - its expensive per GB but worth it for OS and temp/cache volumes.

[Slushbox]

I was pharting about yesterday attempting to upgade me new Scratch and Dent Dell desktop from W10 Home, to W10 Pro.

Then a chum presented me with a dead 2007 laptop, with Windows 7 Pro on it, and bingo! I'm now upgraded to W10 Pro.

As mentioned in other threads, you can still recycle old W7 Pro licence keys onto a new W10 Home pooter, either as an upgrade, or a fresh install.

Viz: To upgrade (in W10 home), select the Start button, then select Settings > Update & security > Activation.

Type in the new (old) W7 Pro licence key. Backup all your work first, though the upgrade doesn't erase work files or vital stuff like Office licences.

[snuffy]

droopsnoot said:

Do the blank displays on the left-hand rear monitor just show ever-cascading views of the same desktop, like a hall of mirrors?

Ah, that's actually a mate's set up and he'd sent me a photo just then.

[curlyks2]

New build...

[Slushbox]

curlyks2 said:

New build...

There are three unused slots! Kindly add some more stuff. :-)

Does that mysterious green fluid or the tubes break down over time? I keep seeing YouTube vids on 'my water cooled PC leaked. '

[Zod]

Slushbox said:

curlyks2 said:

New build...

There are three unused slots! Kindly add some more stuff. :-)

Does that mysterious green fluid or the tubes break down over time? I keep seeing YouTube vids on 'my water cooled PC leaked. '

There may not be enough PCIE lanes to do so.

I had a leak a couple of years ago. It was small and only killed one stick of RAM and an M.2 NVME drive.

[CryptoSuperDave]

thought i'd share a pic, this is my office at home, under the desk ive got my 2 x gpu rig (RX570 8gb), FX-8350 and 8GB RAM, CPU is watercooled though its a bit of a mess beyond that.. not like some of the tasty rigs in this thread .. I tried to do my cabling nice but that soon went tits up
I haven't fired up a game in ages as tend to run the PC for mining, plus general usage, chilling with Netflix (app) doesn't effect the mining hashrate much so its well used, a laptop drives the left screen for work
I really need to upgrade the left monitor (24") to match the right at some stage as it does annoy me a little!..

[Funk]

CryptoSuperDave said:

...tend to run the PC for mining, plus general usage, chilling with Netflix (app) doesn't effect the mining hashrate much...

Is it really worth trying to mine against the Chinese uber-mines? What is it that you mine for? I would be fascinated to see how your costs stack up (hardware and electricity) against what you make on the crypto if you'd be prepared to share as I thought the profitability went out of home mining a long time ago.

[CryptoSuperDave]

Funk said:

Is it really worth trying to mine against the Chinese uber-mines? What is it that you mine for? I would be fascinated to see how your costs stack up (hardware and electricity) against what you make on the crypto if you'd be prepared to share as I thought the profitability went out of home mining a long time ago.

i have another rig under there - an old pc someone was throwing out, celeron processor (hardly any power to run) so threw in a spare decent psu i had from an old rig and put in a rx580 pulse (which is smaller than the other nitro+ 's and just squeezed in the case!) ..
those 3 cards give me approx 0.05ETH a week (paid at same time every thursday! - ethermine).

Its not much at the moment as ETH has crashed hard (hopefully bottomed out), but my first month payout was near 300 (end of last year), i flipped it into an ico which i sold when it hit its first exchange in march (sold for 2.5x buy in) - so my GPUs are basically paid for and more since then (initial cost was 3 x £225)
i dont hold the ETH i move it on into whatever looks good, its free play money and my outlay is paid for because of flipping around.
running costs i would guess around a £1/day but at the same time i started mining i also swapped every bulb in the house for LEDs - was fed up of the mrs and kids leaving lights on all the time, we also have 3 of those multi arm ceiling lights in 3 rooms (5 x 60w bulbs!) .. basically since i started mining our electricity costs have not increase as it coincided with a swap out of every inefficient light bulb in the house! (in fact we even had a rebate from our supplier 4 months ago)

i certainly wouldnt buy a new gpu for mining at the moment, but if you have them already they are just profitable to run after electricity costs. hopefully ETH picks back up in price though as id like to start holding it rather than flipping it. current price of 0.05 ETH is only about £9 ! ..

if i wasnt active in flipping it though and just mined and held onto it then yeah i'd still be waiting to pay off the initial hardware costs!

its not going to get you rich but it is a nice hobby.. i work from home so the pc needs to be on all the time anyway so may as well make it pay for itself :-)

[curlyks2]

Zod said:

There may not be enough PCIE lanes to do so.

24 lanes used, 40 spare. Another GPU will go in at some point.