Current dream PC:
Dual EPYC at 128 core/256 thread or higher
1TB of RAM or more
Dual AMD GPUs
Massive RAID 10 array of 7200RPM HDDs, something like 24TB or better
A few standalone SSDs, to taste (at least one of a sizeable capacity, like 1TB?)
Total cost, like $30k or so?

I'd prioritise SSDs instead. HDDs are cheap.

Or even nvmes, otherwise you'll only use maybe 10% of the lanes available on that setup.

@RememberMe HDDs for a massive RAID, exactly due to them being cheap. I don't need SSD performance on a massive RAID 10 array, it'd mainly be used for low-performance long-term storage on a larger scale.

@SortOfTested NVMe is more useful on server-class stuff, yes, but i'd probably be saturating whatever busses I had already with RAID, so it'd be dependent on bus load averages and price.

@Parzi
Not even close unfortunately, you'll have 256 pci-e lanes. At 7200rpms, even SAS occupying all slots with 50 raid 10 groups would only eat 110ish 4.0 lanes. It's actually probably close to impossible to saturated an epyc dual setup with any existing motherboard.

@SortOfTested TWO HUN-- jesus fuck. Yeah, I see your point.

If we're blue-sky dreaming, then why put longterm storage in the dream machine at all? Why not just keep your longterm storage in a purpose-made machine, or even better, an easily accessible NAS? That's my setup, and I have high-performance nvme for my OS, and a larger common SSD for games. Longterm storage is just NFS over the local network.

@bahua It'd be long-term storage I read from really often and add to somewhat frequently, but doesn't need to be available 24/7. Plus, extra power to run 2 massive machines.

@frogstair actually, i'd prefer it to be something I save up for. If I won the lottery, that money'd go into bonds and stocks in a heartbeat. I want something big like this to be something I work for rather than handed to me. It'll make it that much sweeter to have, and it's a goal to work toward.

On a more affordable level, I'm eyeing the new 4700G desktop APU that AMD is about to release. Given that the corresponding 4xxx mobile APUs have already been around for a while, the 4700G should even work under Linux.

@Fast-Nop mobile Ryzens are one step behind desktop ones
So mobile Ryzen 4* is actually desktop Ryzen 3
So you'd be buying an untested chip. Fast-Nop running edgy new hardware and kernel? :o

@RememberMe striving for the fastest nop...

@RememberMe Actually, it's the other way around for APUs. The current desktop 3xxx APUs are still on Zen+ with 12nm while the mobile 4xxx have already Zen2 with 7nm.

Also, the 4xxx is not related to a certain Ryzen line, and the Ryzen lines themselves are not about technology, but mostly about how many cores there are.

Specifically, the current desktop APU flagship 3400G is a Ryzen 5 with 4 cores while the upcoming 4700G is a Ryzen 7 with 8 cores, which means that thanks to 7nm, desktop APUs will now get enough cores to even have a Ryzen 7 APU. 4400G will be Ryzen 5 with 6 cores, and 4200G Ryzen 3 with 4 cores.

That's why I think that the kernel should already support that stuff from the mobile APUs. Though of course, I will wait a bit more for the Mint 20.1 update. ^^

@Fast-Nop I completely glossed over the "G" in the model number there, whoops.

Or you could try day one support via Arch :p

Ryzen APU Linux support is great. I have a 2400G desktop back at home, works like a charm and I ran Manjaro on it pretty much right after it was released.

@RememberMe And, why an APU at all? Because there are no up to date AMD graphics cards with passive cooling, only Nvidia ones, which always mean some hassle with Linux.

The next best thing is an APU with Scythe Mugen monster cooler, that's also very quiet. Especially with 65W TDP for the APU while the cooler can easily take twice of that.

Now of course I hate Linux, but I hate Win10 even more. And nah, Arch... I have already cool sunglasses so that I won't need Arch. ^^

@Fast-Nop oh *god*

you're one of THEM

@Fast-Nop I feel you on the no low power passive AMD GPU bit - I've been looking for one too for a low profile second hand optiplex I got off ebay for peanuts, settled for a low profile GTX 1650 instead which honestly has been pretty great - nvidia driver install under Fedora 32 went without a hitch. Pretty competent desktop and light gaming rig.

Would've much preferred an AMD GPU, but sadly they just can't compete there in discrete graphics. APUs are great for that yeah.

Oh God imagine the heat

@pepega part of the offset for power running this shit is not having as high of a heating bill lmao

@RememberMe Nvidia has just thrown out driver support for really old GPUs in the Linux driver. That sucks because with their closed source shit and unstable kernel driver ABIs, you need Nvidia to care.

My current PC is 10 years old, that's how long I use my hardware, and I don't trust Nvidia to support stuff that long.

My current HD6850 has passive cooling, though I've sewn (!) a small fan under it and connected it to 12V and 5V, effectively running as throttled at 7V. Not audible and prevents heat locks.

Usually when you will actually be able to save 30k you won’t like to buy this PC
I realized things are only interesting to us until we can’t have them

@hardfault Possibly. None of it's set in stone.

My dream pc:
Ryzen5 something
Rx580
16gig ram
Idk some ssd
Rgb buttplug

@yellow-dog rgb buttplug ? Someone call rutee

@dder @rutee07

@rutee07 honestly, I’d like to see it. Have had a small LED projector back in the day, but the quality was shit.

So what’s the resolution of yours ?

You forgot something important: a good network card and network connection

@DannySu Network card? It's 2020. A PC with "network card" is like a thai masseuse explicitely offering happy ends.

@Fast-Nop most motherboard only come with ethernet connection. In case he may want optical connection. My point is, internet connection is important

@DannySu I've never seen an optical connection. *ba dum tss*

And why do you dream about it? What would improve in your life if you had it?

@kurast Nothing. It's mainly a goal to work towards and a PC that'd be up there in spec for a while. I may never even buy it.

@Fast-Nop @DannySu actually onboard ethernet tends to suck cock speed-wise and Linux-wise anyways so i'd probably add a card, yeah.

@Parzi I doubt that unless you have a mainboard several decades old that doesn't support gigabit ethernet. Do you have benchmarks? Also, Linux support isn't a problem even with onboard.

@Fast-Nop I help other people with their setups all the time and Linux doesn't like some of the Intel chipset onboard ethernet stuff for sure. As for speed, not really, just some personal experience.

@Parzi Btw, one sleazy trick of some ethernet cards is violating the ethernet protocol, especially the back-off algorithm with collisions, to gain performance over competing cards.

@Parzi @Fast-Nop but do you get mainboards with 1 0 g i g a b i t? Or infiniband/etc?

My dream setup would definitely involve a crapton of networking as well. There's just something about computers connected over a high speed link that's awesome.

@Fast-Nop
Not common, thankfully, but I've seen cases of "onboard Ethernet" pushing work to the CPU rather than embedding an actual processor for it (fuck you, HP). The low end i5 CPUs one cheap dick client had ended up using 8% CPU just for networking. There's some real garbage out there.

@RememberMe Well, no, because that's probably backbone stuff. I havn't seen 10gig ethernet being used anywhere in the wild so far.

@SortOfTested Sure, there's no limit to how bad people can make drivers.

@Fast-Nop he meant it's like a WinModem: less hardware, more CPU usage. There's no supporting chipset.

@Parzi With proper drivers, you don't have noticeable CPU usage. With bad drivers, there's no limit of course.

@Fast-Nop a ssd storage cluster over 10 gig mounted as a network file system is pretty great. Apart from the trip latency, it's excellently usable and means you can get away with a small, focused main desktop. I'd want to build such a setup at home too.

I currently use a 1gig to access my game storage over AFS, with caching it's great. Barely notice that it's running over a network.

@RememberMe Good point with the NAS! 10G would allow up to about 1 GB per second.

Though the machine setup in the OP would be hard to label as small, focused desktop. ;-)

@Fast-Nop
I use 10gbe for my local backbone :D

It runs the transit conduit from upstairs to down and breaks out to managed switches and access points for both levels. Husband and I went a little overboard.

@SortOfTested specs of your equipment? I'm sure it'll be beyond my budget, but I'm just curious.

I can add 10G to my desktops via cards for like $100 each I believe, that's fairly okay, but I don't know about 10G switches, never used one (got out of networking pretty early on).

@RememberMe
I'll need to dig it out (pull the rack), we set it up a few years back.

@RememberMe
Main switches are unifi 16xg, one up, one down. That hooks to the Ethernet breakouts in the up and downstairs closets, feeds the 4 APs on the mesh.

Upstairs used to use an ax11000 with two ap nodes, but we've since moved over to the aforementioned unifi mesh.

The network itself is run by a pfsense box which handles ingress and routing, firewall, vpn.

With U$A 30k I can live 5 years without working in a nice rented apartment. You give me that and I'll be your remote slave for half that time.

@OneOfSimpleMind where the hell do you *live*

@Parzi Argentina

@SortOfTested thanks!