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workstation buying advice

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  workstation buying advice lina <lina.lastname@gmail.com> - 2020-07-15 12:20 +0200
    Re: workstation buying advice "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2020-07-15 14:00 +0200
      Re: workstation buying advice lina <lina.lastname@gmail.com> - 2020-07-15 14:40 +0200
      Re: workstation buying advice Klaus Singvogel <deb-user-ml@singvogel.net> - 2020-07-15 15:00 +0200
        Re: workstation buying advice Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-07-15 15:30 +0200
        Re: workstation buying advice "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2020-07-15 15:40 +0200
    Re: workstation buying advice Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-07-15 14:50 +0200
      Re: workstation buying advice lina <lina.lastname@gmail.com> - 2020-07-15 15:00 +0200
        Re: workstation buying advice Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-07-15 15:30 +0200
      Re: workstation buying advice rhkramer@gmail.com - 2020-07-15 15:30 +0200
    Re: workstation buying advice ghe2001 <ghe2001@protonmail.com> - 2020-07-15 16:40 +0200

#224830 — workstation buying advice

Hi,

I am trying to get a workstation with the following configurations:

Moderkort S3647 Supermicro X11DPi-N 16DDR4 2GLAN 2NVMe 10SATA3 4+2PCIE IPMI EATX
CPU S3647 Intel Xeon Gold 6230R 2,1-4,0GHz 36MB 26-core 52-thread 150W 2,00
Kylning CPU S3647 Supermicro narrow aktiv 4U 3800rpm 38dB max 205W 2,00
Minne DDR4 32GB PC21300 2666MHz RDIMM ECC REG Samsung 1,2V 6,00
Hard disk M.2 NVMe 1,9TB SSD Samsung PM983 3000/1400 server
1,3DWPD/3years 22110 1,00
Supermicro CSE-732i-R500 EATX 2USB3, 2USB2 4*3,5 2*5,25 500W RPS tyst 21dB 1,00

That would be great to get your guys' advice as I worried I may not be
able to install Debian on it due to my past experience that my SSD was
invisible during installation. And further suggestions about the
motherboard are highly appreciated. The purpose of this workstation is
for parallel computation purposes.

Thanks with best regards, lina

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#224834

Hi,

lina wrote:
> [...] workstation [...]
> [...] Supermicro X11DPi-N [...]
> CPU S3647 Intel Xeon Gold 6230R 2,1-4,0GHz 36MB 26-core 52-thread 150W  2,00

The CPU is very recent. But it seems not to be allergic to Linux
  http://www.spec.org/cpu2017/results/res2020q2/cpu2017-20200331-21877.html

The mainboard seems to work with elderly Linux kernels:
  https://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/OS/C621.cfm?page=2


> DDR4 32GB PC21300 2666MHz RDIMM ECC REG Samsung 1,2V 6,00

One never can have too much RAM.


> Supermicro CSE-732i-R500 [...] 500W

If already your CPUs are specified to have a TDP of 150 W each then a 500 W
power supply appears dangerously close to the minimum requirements:
  https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x11dpi-n-e-atx-motherboard-review/
  "We find an idle power draw of 132 watts and Peak of 394 watts to be
   quite common"
That was with 130 W Xeons.


>  my past experience that my SSD was invisible during installation.

One would probably need to know what went wrong with which Debian release
in order to make a qualified guess for the current Debian release.


> The purpose of this workstation is for parallel computation purposes.

I would call such a thing a server. :))


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

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#224838

Hi Thomas,

Can you help me with a rational configuration for a decent computer
run solely for the computational purpose.
I am not good at it, highly appreciated.

Thanks, lina

On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 1:57 PM Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> lina wrote:
> > [...] workstation [...]
> > [...] Supermicro X11DPi-N [...]
> > CPU S3647 Intel Xeon Gold 6230R 2,1-4,0GHz 36MB 26-core 52-thread 150W  2,00
>
> The CPU is very recent. But it seems not to be allergic to Linux
>   http://www.spec.org/cpu2017/results/res2020q2/cpu2017-20200331-21877.html
>
> The mainboard seems to work with elderly Linux kernels:
>   https://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/OS/C621.cfm?page=2
>
>
> > DDR4 32GB PC21300 2666MHz RDIMM ECC REG Samsung 1,2V 6,00
>
> One never can have too much RAM.
>
>
> > Supermicro CSE-732i-R500 [...] 500W
>
> If already your CPUs are specified to have a TDP of 150 W each then a 500 W
> power supply appears dangerously close to the minimum requirements:
>   https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x11dpi-n-e-atx-motherboard-review/
>   "We find an idle power draw of 132 watts and Peak of 394 watts to be
>    quite common"
> That was with 130 W Xeons.
>
>
> >  my past experience that my SSD was invisible during installation.
>
> One would probably need to know what went wrong with which Debian release
> in order to make a qualified guess for the current Debian release.
>
>
> > The purpose of this workstation is for parallel computation purposes.
>
> I would call such a thing a server. :))
>
>
> Have a nice day :)
>
> Thomas
>

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#224844

Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> lina wrote:
> 
> > Supermicro CSE-732i-R500 [...] 500W
> 
> If already your CPUs are specified to have a TDP of 150 W each then a 500 W
> power supply appears dangerously close to the minimum requirements:
>   https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x11dpi-n-e-atx-motherboard-review/
>   "We find an idle power draw of 132 watts and Peak of 394 watts to be
>    quite common"
> That was with 130 W Xeons.

True.

But did you notice that the Supermicro comes with a redudant power supply?

I wouldn't care about your concerns "close to the minimum requirements" here.

As long as the machine didn't need an extra graphic card or any other "power
hungry" devices, everything seems to be fine to me.

Experience with SuperMicro:

The customer of the company I'm working for, is sharing a test rack with
us. There is a SuperMicro rackmount WIO model built-in, running an
outdated Linux system. It's running flawless since years now.

Except the fact that the fans are a bit noisy, we are deeply contented
with this machine.

Best regards,
	Klaus.
-- 
Klaus Singvogel
GnuPG-Key-ID: 1024R/5068792D  1994-06-27

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#224847

Klaus Singvogel wrote: 
> Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> > power supply appears dangerously close to the minimum requirements:
> >   https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x11dpi-n-e-atx-motherboard-review/
> >   "We find an idle power draw of 132 watts and Peak of 394 watts to be
> >    quite common"
> > That was with 130 W Xeons.
> 
> True.
> 
> But did you notice that the Supermicro comes with a redudant power supply?

The redundant power supply is to guard against the first one
dying, not to provide extra power.

> I wouldn't care about your concerns "close to the minimum requirements" here.

I would. Supermicro offers a range of single and redundant power
supplies; 500W is on the low end for them.

-dsr-

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#224849

Hi,

lina wrote:
> Can you help me with a rational configuration for a decent computer
> run solely for the computational purpose.

Well, i am a software developer. My experience is restricted to choosing
the parts for a new desktop computer every 5 years.
But out of curiosity i already discussed your configuration with a friend
who is more into hardware purchase and assembly.

We wondered what kind of work can keep 104 CPU threads busy but needs
neither GPU power nor a high amount of disk space. Our bet was CAE until
we discovered that your graphics output needs are covered by "1 VGA port".

He joined my opinion about the 500 W power supply. We would install
at least twice as much as is expectable under full workload.

He also pointed out that the components are probably quite noisy.
After all there is a lot of heat to be shovelled out of the box.
So i would look for a big tower which gives more room and can house
more fans at lower speed.

Another aspect is that he deems an AMD Ryzen Threadripper with 32 cores
better than a Xeon with 26 cores ... theoretically. Prices would be similar.
But we did not look for mainboards with two 32 core CPUs or a single
64 core CPU.


Klaus Singvogel wrote:
> did you notice that the Supermicro comes with a redudant power supply?

No.
Google ... does that mean that 500 W "redundant" is as powerful as 1000 W
"normal" as long as the power supply works flawlessly ?
(Here we can see how much i know about real server hardware.)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

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#224841

lina wrote: 
> Hi,
> 
> I am trying to get a workstation with the following configurations:
> 
> Moderkort S3647 Supermicro X11DPi-N 16DDR4 2GLAN 2NVMe 10SATA3 4+2PCIE IPMI EATX
> CPU S3647 Intel Xeon Gold 6230R 2,1-4,0GHz 36MB 26-core 52-thread 150W 2,00
> Kylning CPU S3647 Supermicro narrow aktiv 4U 3800rpm 38dB max 205W 2,00
> Minne DDR4 32GB PC21300 2666MHz RDIMM ECC REG Samsung 1,2V 6,00
> Hard disk M.2 NVMe 1,9TB SSD Samsung PM983 3000/1400 server
> 1,3DWPD/3years 22110 1,00
> Supermicro CSE-732i-R500 EATX 2USB3, 2USB2 4*3,5 2*5,25 500W RPS tyst 21dB 1,00
> 
> motherboard are highly appreciated. The purpose of this workstation is
> for parallel computation purposes.

This will work. You will want a larger power supply.

For best price/performance for large parallel workloads, you may
be better off with an AMD ThreadRipper or EPYC system. 

The Intel CPU has a list price of $1800 US.

An AMD TR4 2990WX is 32 cores / 64 threads at 3 GHz, and has a
list price of $1200 US. It performs better and costs
significantly less.

An AMD TR4 3970X is 32c / 64 t at 3.7 GHz,  matches the list
price of the Intel and will perform much, much better.

Either of them will need a TR4 motherboard, and Supermicro
currently doesn't offer those. All of them should work well with
Debian.

-dsr-

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#224843

Hi Dan,

ThinkStation P620 Tower Workstation is the one you mentioned?

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/think-workstations/thinkstation-p-series/ThinkStation-P620/p/33TS3TPP620

Thanks, lina

On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 2:48 PM Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:
>
> lina wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am trying to get a workstation with the following configurations:
> >
> > Moderkort S3647 Supermicro X11DPi-N 16DDR4 2GLAN 2NVMe 10SATA3 4+2PCIE IPMI EATX
> > CPU S3647 Intel Xeon Gold 6230R 2,1-4,0GHz 36MB 26-core 52-thread 150W 2,00
> > Kylning CPU S3647 Supermicro narrow aktiv 4U 3800rpm 38dB max 205W 2,00
> > Minne DDR4 32GB PC21300 2666MHz RDIMM ECC REG Samsung 1,2V 6,00
> > Hard disk M.2 NVMe 1,9TB SSD Samsung PM983 3000/1400 server
> > 1,3DWPD/3years 22110 1,00
> > Supermicro CSE-732i-R500 EATX 2USB3, 2USB2 4*3,5 2*5,25 500W RPS tyst 21dB 1,00
> >
> > motherboard are highly appreciated. The purpose of this workstation is
> > for parallel computation purposes.
>
> This will work. You will want a larger power supply.
>
> For best price/performance for large parallel workloads, you may
> be better off with an AMD ThreadRipper or EPYC system.
>
> The Intel CPU has a list price of $1800 US.
>
> An AMD TR4 2990WX is 32 cores / 64 threads at 3 GHz, and has a
> list price of $1200 US. It performs better and costs
> significantly less.
>
> An AMD TR4 3970X is 32c / 64 t at 3.7 GHz,  matches the list
> price of the Intel and will perform much, much better.
>
> Either of them will need a TR4 motherboard, and Supermicro
> currently doesn't offer those. All of them should work well with
> Debian.
>
> -dsr-

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#224848

lina wrote: 
> Hi Dan,
> 
> ThinkStation P620 Tower Workstation is the one you mentioned?
> 
> https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/think-workstations/thinkstation-p-series/ThinkStation-P620/p/33TS3TPP620
> 

I didn't mention it in particular, but yes, this would certainly
work well.

Note that this is their new high-end product; if you don't need
the maximum performance of this system, you can probably get
last year's high-end cheaper.

-dsr-

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#224846

+1 for AMD

Nothing new below this line.

On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 08:48:41 AM Dan Ritter wrote:
> For best price/performance for large parallel workloads, you may
> be better off with an AMD ThreadRipper or EPYC system.
> 
> The Intel CPU has a list price of $1800 US.
> 
> An AMD TR4 2990WX is 32 cores / 64 threads at 3 GHz, and has a
> list price of $1200 US. It performs better and costs
> significantly less.
> 
> An AMD TR4 3970X is 32c / 64 t at 3.7 GHz,  matches the list
> price of the Intel and will perform much, much better.
> 
> Either of them will need a TR4 motherboard, and Supermicro
> currently doesn't offer those. All of them should work well with
> Debian.

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#224853

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Hash: SHA256



‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 4:10 AM, lina <lina.lastname@gmail.com> wrote:

> That would be great to get your guys' advice as I worried I may not be
> able to install Debian on it due to my past experience that my SSD was
> invisible during installation.

I'm sitting at a SuperMicro box running Buster. I just stick a Debian netInstall CD into it and go -- been doing that since Jessie. In the advanced/expert (can't remember just what it's called) ncurses semiGUI install.

This one is a few years old, with an 8 core Xeon, a 2.4G clock, and about 12G of RAM. It's been solid as a rock. I created one install prob when I put an nvme in it at Buster. Nvme came along after this machine was built, and the BIOS didn't know anything about it. So I told the installer to put the nvme at /, with a USB stick at /boot. Things are intelligent enough to work just fine with that mild kludge.

SSD: Mine sees any disk with a SATA interface, and every SSD I've had any dealings with did SATA.

Lovely machine. Less than optimal tech support from SuperMicro, though (I wanted to upgrade the BIOS so it could deal with nvme, and never heard from them). And the dox keep talking about something called 'Windows.'

--
Glenn English


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