StormriderStudios

Budget (including currency): Unsure, GBP Country: UK Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Manjaro, EVE Online, Web server, Machine Learning/AI Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): I'm looking to build a threadripper-based system in a 4u rack-mount chassis using thunderbolt to run from the rack to the desk (yes, like Linus' rig). Server rack will be in the loft, directly above my office. First question would be, TRX40 with thunderbolt? I know the Gigabyte designare supports it but is it as simple as adding in a thunderbolt card? Since the gigabyte doesn't do 10Gb networking I'd be adding in an expansion card anyway and a motherboard that already does 10Gb may be a better choice? On the note of thunderbolt - can you use it to remotely turn on/off and restart the machine, since it will be in the loft this could be a ball-ache. With Zen3 on the horizon what are the expectations for the new Ryzen cpus vs current Threadrippers? Price wise would I be better off aiming for Ryzen? I should also add that I intend to run Manjaro on the setup. I may dual-boot win10 but primarily it will be Linux-based. Beyond that I'm looking for suggestions of chassis, cooling and how to actually run the remote peripherals. This is very much a forward planning exercise - likely to be a present to myself for completing my MSc before I start a PhD so in about a year. This may mean looking at upcoming products or planning for the best available now anticipating the prices to drop. I'm well aware that this machine will be overkill for what I need, it's very much a pet project but I'm also chasing bang-for-buck rather than just the best out there. I'll update the post with new info/choices/ideas as things go and hopefully build up a plan for when I graduate! Cheers!

LOL I mean I make money IN GAME. It's EVE Online, a space MMORPG. Costs £15/month per account but you can buy game time with ingame money too so I farm money ingame to fund all the accounts and make a little for myself to buy ships and go blow them up fighting for fun. I'll certainly look at the servers, as long as the board has the PCI-E lanes to support high end GPUs and the power supply can support it that's all I should worry about right?

By client I mean literal instances of the game, so not VMs but programs. I could be wrong but my understanding is that more threads will help with this, even though processes go through a thread pool. As for why I'm running lots of clients, that's just the nature of the game. The more clients you can run at a given time, the more money you can make (so long as you can still control them all - input broadcasting to multiple clients is bannable). I've seen people running upwards of 30 clients which is very unwieldy but if you're only carrying out simple actions in game then it's still worth it. I'm aiming for ~10 clients as a sweet spot and I'd like to be able to have youtube/netflix running on the other screen (right now with 6 clients I can't watch youtube, it lags chronically, but 4 clients is fine).

Hi peeps, I'm currently running a 6700k and I'm looking at my next upgrade (and handing my current machine down to my son for gaming). My needs however are not quite typical. I tend to play games that support multi-boxing (running multiple copies of the client at the same time) and I'm also getting further and further into AI and Machine Learning (currently studying my MSc planning to go for a PHD). I run Manjaro Linux if that makes any difference and will be looking at nvidia GPUs (for the ML work) - currently have a 1060 6Gb but will upgrade that also and look at multiple cards if it helps my research. Gaming wise the games I play aren't GPU intensive and I'm looking at supporting more clients rather than upping the graphics settings. Currently I can run 6 clients (at 1080p windowed on a 4k monitor) with the cpu maxing out - I'd love to be able to up those rookie numbers! So all that taken into account, what should I be focusing on for CPU/chipset features? I'm assuming more cores/threads. What would be the pros and cons on going from Ryzen to Threadripper to Epyc and should I be considering Xeons instead? I'm open to using server components too, obviously the step from a 6700k to threadripper is a big price step up and I'm a poor student - but looking for the best bang for buck (or pound, I'm from the UK!) Not in a hurry to upgrade but probably some point this year rather than later - any advice hugely appreciated!