What kind of hardware do you guys like to use for programming purposes?

Hyperthreading or whatever… is not the same as real cores.

Hmm… I guess I didn’t realize that each core has just 1 thread, so from what I read Hyperthreading is doubling that to a second thread… Interesting…

I just figured it was set up however with 2 threads per core, but I see this i5 quad core only has 4 threads…

Thanks for the information.

Yeah, I thought it was common knowledge that spreading it will cause bubbles. I never spread it. I can’t even conceive of how a blob would create bubbles since it’s the CPU and heat sink spreading it out… and they are both flat. But if you spread it yourself it’s very hard to make it perfectly smooth and even a slight groove or divot is effectively a void once you set a perfectly flat surface on it. That air has no place to go.

Yeah, I thought it was common knowledge that spreading it will cause bubbles.

There are many techniques it seems, I learned to do the line method, but the “pea” method seems to be the best one.

The video mentioned that spreading it would get rid of bubbles that could have formed, but it’s a paste, so it shouldn’t really have any bubbles in it to begin with. If you spread it good enough, it could work though.

I can’t even conceive of how a blob would create bubbles since it’s the CPU and heat sink spreading it out… and they are both flat.

Yeah Idk, magic voodooo :smile:

. But if you spread it yourself it’s very hard to make it perfectly smooth and even a slight groove or divot is effectively a void once you set a perfectly flat surface on it. That air has no place to go.

Yeah then you screw yourself because you did what you were trying to avoid :slight_smile: .

This first video has a lot of good explanation, but spreads it out.

This is the second video that talks about each method

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hNgFNH7zhQ

Then this link explains where the CPU is, and about the area where the heat actually comes from, as it seems only part of the cpu cover gets hot…

Uh… yeah… touch one some time when it’s running hot.

Maybe I’m too old school and it was only the old dark gray wafers that spread the heat. I haven’t touched a new CPU to test it as I didn’t appreciate the blisters when I did it before… so I avoid.

I can agree that there are factors to each CPU, but it seems that CPUs have come down in TDP a lot over the years. I cannot say if chip sizes have gone down, but the chip in the picture is only so big, so I would assume that in fact the chips also are getting smaller with each iteration.

I would check out the article posted which explains a lot of interesting info.

Also, it being hot (while running) has factors, because it’s supposed to be connected to either a liquid cooling setup of some sort, or a beasty heat sink with a fan, that’s dissipating the shizz out of that CPU. I heard that you can burn a cpu rather quickly if it’s not cooled.

So I would not want to “Test” a CPU by touching it… Is that how people did it back in the day? :stuck_out_tongue:

If your fan is going wonky and you are trying to swap it out for a new one then you are going to have to handle the CPU to clean it. I recommend waiting for it to cool as in my experience even the edges are hot.

Yeah deff wait >(

While ecc might be usefull, an occasional crash is not worth much for me. (Btw. memory erros do occur way more often than most think) http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf

About a third of machines and over 8% of DIMMs in
our fleet saw at least one correctable error per year. O

That being said, one crash more per year is not gonna cost me enough to warrant this. Also since my code is saved in a version system, smaller errors would not mean a bit loss there as well.

I would invest the saved money on ecc ram in a quality power supply (rule of thumb (10€ per 100Watt) as a cheap ps has the nasty habbit of kliing other components (either very fast, or in the long term by reducing their lifetime significantly)

As for fans, I currently like Noctua like the nh-d15 while severally oversized it will allow the fan to always run on minimum speed even with 40° outside temperature. So if transportability is not the main goal, they are great.

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Also, for the case, having more fans blowing in than blowing out (positive pressure) will greatly reduce the amount of dust that collects in your system.

Your favorite hardware guy is here. The cpu IHS and your heat sink are actually not flat they just look it. Look up cpu lapping.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2300800

one of the cpus shows a 9.3c decrease in heat just from making the heatsink and cpu ihs flat. cpu lapping voids warranty

edit: i cant get my image to show. Its the fourth image in the post. Its a flatness check.

For the lazy ones

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Even better reason not to spread. Pre-spread, any of those concave ones are going to end up with voids almost surely.

Thanks ep! So you’re saying if there is an error on the ram, it could affect saved work, not just compilation!?

I’m looking at an EVGA SuperNova G2, which is a top tier PSU with high ratings from what I see, any comments on it?

My last PSU was a bad one, and I think it’s the reason my computer ultimately crashed when it did.

I was looking at the C14s Noctua for my CPU cooler, because the other ones are SUPER big… I figured the C14S would work well, but I also heard that the sideways fans flow with the air in the computer, while downwards fans will disrupt the airflow in the case? I also want some noctua case fans :smile:

i’m going to look at the normal un-clocked ram, make sure the CPU is’t overclocked (was looking at the FX9590 AMD, but heard it’s an overclocked 8350 or something), and make sure the GPU isnt’ overclocked either >(…

You think 16 gb is good enough or should I get more? Seems to be mixed comments on this./

Yeah, thanks for the tip! Also looking to get some dust filters, but hear they reduce flow a lot, unless oyu get really strong fans like I’m looking at…:slight_smile:

My favorite <3

Well think about it, everything ona computer is finally in ram.

What will happen if one bit titls in a video file? In a word file? in your master thesis ? In any driver part of your os hanndling. ect. (Hint everything is possible, really everything)

For sure, but the file is still stored on the HD ultimately, so at what point would the ram just overwrite the data? Also… what about a RAID setup? Does that not matter because the ram is being evil?

What if I put in one ecc ram stick for good measure :stuck_out_tongue: (joke).

So is there any safe way to protect ourselves in case this happens? Seems like a dumb rare thing though, that could happen at any point… :smile:

Also, from what you said at first, is that I should wait for the new “Zen” Am4 architecture if I wanted to go AMD.

I also realized your comment was against others saying that more cores wont matter, unless I use them (while pspeed says that the cores will be used by other things on the system). So I’m curious your thoughts on it all. You said for JME you still go AMD, but what would you choose Intel for, if anything?

I know someone on here mentioned Xeon, but it doesn’t seem lke anyone would even recommend a regular Intel setup here, which is surprising… If I’m going to go AMD, then I’m going to wait until nextyear…

Buti at the same time, I wanted to build this computer as a first step, and then eventually turn this computer into an HTPC/Media Computer.

Maybe I should just invest in something cheaper now, that works, and then worry about a big update later on?

Granted I want everything to work well, but I don’t know about this waiting game…

I think I might put something together on the Intel side, wait for the new AMD stuff to roll out, a well as the Pascal GPUs from Nvidia, and build something nice.

I’m thinking about an R9 380/390. According to the amazing @pspeed graph, the 380 fits on the 200$ curve, but the 390 is 300#, granted the 390 seems much better, but Idfk if it even uses all 8 gigs of Vram or w/e.

Thoughts?

Thanks a lot for your help, and everyone else’s! :slight_smile:

You confuse me, I say go intel currently. AMD is only cheaper if you get power for free in my opinion. Aynway having a quad core is more than enough, after all at the time my computer was bought, I had the choice between a i5-2500 or the then new bulldozer cpu (8core).
At least at that time the intel cpu ultimativly was faster in total, even when running stuff that uses all 8 core, as one of the intel cors was more than 2X the speed.

I don’t know how the actual values are however. But with an i5 you cannot do much wrong. (i7 is to expensive in my opinion, same curve argument pspeed used above for the gpu)

I currently have I think 2 gb vram, and have no real issues so far, my setup can still run fallout4 on ultra (a bit to my own surprise, further pointing that a smaller cpu is good enough)

…if im working on something which is not just hobby, i always use hardware which is considered low end, so there is no unexpected surprises when deployment happen…certain tests should be performed on high end, but majority of time, should be around lowest denominator…

Thanks, but development and deployment, imo, are 2 different things. I want to develop on the fastest machine I can, but I have this old laptop to test on, plus I have a bunch of older stuff if need be :slight_smile: .