Jump to content

Dirk

Member
  • Posts

    58
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation Activity

  1. Like
    Dirk got a reaction from GOTSpectrum in LTT Official Folding Month 2021!!!   
    I signed up without checking to see if Dirk was already taken or not. Turns out it was and I signed up again with Dirkadin. Is there anything I need to do to clean that up?
  2. Informative
    Dirk reacted to Emily Young in Linus builds Linus’ new PC!   
    time make -j 64 oldconfig bzImage modules was the command used. I don't recall now if we grabbed the same kernel revision as Fedora (5.6 IIRC) or the latest 5.7 branch.
  3. Like
    Dirk reacted to Windows7ge in Expand HP Gen8 Server   
    What you'd be looking for is a Disk Enclosure. I'll be finishing and posting a guide on how to do it yourself hopefully a little later today. May prove useful for you.
  4. Agree
    Dirk got a reaction from FakezZ in Front-end and Back-end Developers   
    I guess I'll put in my two cents.  I spent a year as an intern and been a full time employee for about 7 months now in the financial industry, so everything I say is from that point of view.  Java dominates backend development in the enterprise space and most newer projects will be using Spring and Spring Boot.  Some jobs maintain old code and some are making new code.  Having a strong object oriented programming (OOP) foundation in Java is going to be your most valuable skill.  The core fundamentals of OOP can be transferred around to other languages if an opportunity opens up that isn't Java.
     
    Now for your questions:
    Your gut feeling in your original post seems to be about right from my experience as far as technologies go.  The only change I would make is putting git first.  Not everyone likes it, but it's the industry standard.  If some company want's you to use something different, they will teach you.  If you have no programming experience go with Java first. Having frontend knowledge is good, but I doubt any would be expected from a junior backend developer.  It would be a nice bullet point on a resume though. In my experience, the most learning you will do is from senior developers on your team.  Take every opportunity you can to learn from them no matter what.  Pair programming, reviewing your pull requests, reading a book they suggest, or asking direct questions.  DO IT.  That's how you will learn.
     
    Since no one has suggested any books yet, I'll suggest a few that I read last two years that are better than any college/online course:
    Clean Code by Rob Martin (This is the book to live by) The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas (This is the mindset you need to have) Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck (This will make future you hate past you less) @FakezZ Is also giving some great advice.  There are many paths to get to where you want to be.  You just have to find your own.
  5. Informative
    Dirk got a reaction from Hi P in Front-end and Back-end Developers   
    I guess I'll put in my two cents.  I spent a year as an intern and been a full time employee for about 7 months now in the financial industry, so everything I say is from that point of view.  Java dominates backend development in the enterprise space and most newer projects will be using Spring and Spring Boot.  Some jobs maintain old code and some are making new code.  Having a strong object oriented programming (OOP) foundation in Java is going to be your most valuable skill.  The core fundamentals of OOP can be transferred around to other languages if an opportunity opens up that isn't Java.
     
    Now for your questions:
    Your gut feeling in your original post seems to be about right from my experience as far as technologies go.  The only change I would make is putting git first.  Not everyone likes it, but it's the industry standard.  If some company want's you to use something different, they will teach you.  If you have no programming experience go with Java first. Having frontend knowledge is good, but I doubt any would be expected from a junior backend developer.  It would be a nice bullet point on a resume though. In my experience, the most learning you will do is from senior developers on your team.  Take every opportunity you can to learn from them no matter what.  Pair programming, reviewing your pull requests, reading a book they suggest, or asking direct questions.  DO IT.  That's how you will learn.
     
    Since no one has suggested any books yet, I'll suggest a few that I read last two years that are better than any college/online course:
    Clean Code by Rob Martin (This is the book to live by) The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas (This is the mindset you need to have) Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck (This will make future you hate past you less) @FakezZ Is also giving some great advice.  There are many paths to get to where you want to be.  You just have to find your own.
  6. Agree
    Dirk reacted to RoseLuck462 in easiest crypto to mine?   
    DogeCoin!
     

  7. Agree
    Dirk got a reaction from suchamoneypit in Opteron based crypto-mining servers - A CPU based miner that competes with GPUs   
    To compare, a single Vega 56 gets ~1,696 H/s at ~284 watts.  While two of them would be around $220 more upfront, you get 1,242 H/s more for the same wattage. Thelz's comment about new coins being CPU mined is an interesting way to look at things.  The short term profits that you can get on some of the more promising new coins can be quite lucrative.  I managed to get into Ravencoin in the first few days with just my 5820k and I was able to mine ~700k coins.  Having a dedicated server for doing just that is very attractive.
  8. Informative
    Dirk reacted to suchamoneypit in Opteron based crypto-mining servers - A CPU based miner that competes with GPUs   
    So I've spent dozens and dozens of hours, and over $3000 of my money buying various hardware, CPUs and GPUs, testing crypto mining, specifically for mining CryptoNight currencies. This post is compressing all that info learned, free of charge to anyone. Maybe a poor financial decision on my part considering most people who spent a ton of money to learn something don't just give it away for free. Yes it's a very long post, but one does not simply compress 50-100 hours of experience into a paragraph or two.
     
    My Results:

    I have come to this conclusion having testing R9 390s, 390Xs, 5870s, r7 270, gtx 760s, gtx 750tis, gtx 1080, gtx 970s (various models with different memory configs). After learning what was good at Mining cryptonight currencies, such as Monero, I first learned that cards such as GTX750tis were AS efficient price to performance wise to mining as the higher ends cards like a GTX 1080. Example, you could buy 4 GTX 750tis and they would match a 1080's mining performance and wattage while costing half as much. 390Xs were pretty good too but had a mucher higher buy-in cost. My first setup was to experiment with GPU mining systems and I had a 5-8 GPU setup with various cards constantly swapping in and out for testing. After this I moved to testing CPUs, originally with a dual Xeon server. The CPUs efficiency peaked my interest, and I immediately began comparing CPUs to GPUs for mining the currency. After extensive testing, I found one extremely key fact: A efficient and well planned CPU based mining setup would mine as good as a comparable GPU setup dollar for dollar. It would however perform less favorably electricity efficiency wise, but this is offset by one massive factor: GPUs are price inflated, making investing in them very risky. The Opteron CPUs I settled on are not nearly as price inflated as GPUs, meaning if the currency were to suddenly tank you don't get destroyed by poor profitability; you're still left with very powerful servers you can resell. Another huge benefit is these Opteron servers are extremely modular compared to GPUs. My GPU setup had cards laying exposed everywhere and just a mess of cables and adapters that have no resale value at all. It was messy and unsightly. My Opteron server cluster, I literally just stack the thing, in a perfectly contained, perfectly stackable setup. Most intense GPU setups have an expensive metal rack to hold them. you can just stack these servers on the floor with no extra hardware costs and it'll run and look good.
     
    So key points to a CPU based mining system : On par with GPU performance with no risk of lost value to severely inflated GPU prices, and it has an extremely expandable and modular system setup. These traits make it a far less risky investment for you and just easier all around to setup. On top of this it doubles as a very powerful home server that any Techie can appreciate. And who doesn't like bragging about their core count?
     
    So that's the conclusion on the comparison and why its better in my opinion, now, here is for my test builds, comprising of 2 main Opteron based servers:
     
    Server 1 (high end)
    CPU: x4 Opteron 6380
    System core: Dell Poweredge R815
    RAM: 16x2GB DDR3 ECC 1333
    Hash Rate: ~2.15 KH/s
    Wattage: ~635 Watts
                                                              Cinebench R15 Score: 2723 (raw CPU performance relevant to a home server)
    Cost: ~$800
     
    Server 2 (budget)
    CPU: x4 Opteron 6212
    System core: Dell Poweredge R815
    RAM: 16x2GB DDR3 ECC 1333
    Hash Rate: ~1.11 KH/s
    Wattage: ~540 Watts
    Cinebench R15 Score: 1486
    Cost: ~$535
     
    I originally planned on 3 server builds but hardware issues on server #3 set me back too long 
     
    ADDITIONAL PARTS REQUIRED: Either run Linux off a USB with no drives, or buy a cheap 2.5" SAS HDD for $5 AND a H200 Perc RAID card(if you don't have one)to hook up a drive and get an operating system installed. I populated all the drive bays on my servers to use them as home servers as well as mining servers (another big perk). Running off USB reduces build cost but you can't use it as a home server. This cost  (HDDs) is assumed in my above build costs.
     
    I found the big factor in building these servers was the cost of the main system. The cost for RAM and for the motherboard/system is a fixed cost. I found a quad socket Dell Poweredge R815 was the key factor in bringing down your system costs enough to keep it a good purchase. Keep in mind with any GPU setups you also need many power supplies, motherboards with lots of PCI-E slots, lots of PCI-E risers, power cables, ect. When comparing the fixed costs of both systems the Opteron base server is only marginally more expensive unless you building a massive GPU setup, and as discussed before the benefits of resale value and expandability well outweigh a slightly higher fixed hardware cost. Notes for purchasing, buying in bulk can save a ton of money. Buy a single Opteron 6380, its $150. Make an offer to buy 4 at once? You get them for $400 all in. Build 3 servers at once? Cost gets even lower. If we don't include the fixed costs (which even GPU systems have too, which I completely ignore here!), these CPUs walk all over a GPU cluster in my opinion.
     
    Eye candy for those who don't like reading numbers:
    More is better (below)

    In the above graph we see the clear dominance of these servers in their mining power compared to how much money you spend. The decently efficient 6380 server is even more cost effective than a vega 64, the best mining gpu out there for Cryptonight at current GPU prices.
     
     
    Less is Better  (below)

    In the above graph we clearly see GPUs walk over the servers in efficiency, but that doesn't ignore the fact even the most inefficient server mines profitably (100-300% return), while doubling as a powerful home server which has many other practical uses. There is a clear tradeoff you take with CPU servers, you do lose efficiency, which is a Con, but there are many Pro's as discussed.
     
     
     
    Notes: Although you can get a lot of Opteron 6100 series cores, they do not support AES, which cripples their mining performance to the point where they are 99% less efficient regardless of their CPU cache or cores. Any 6200 and 6300 series CPUs are good. You're looking for high CPU Cache amount, and as high core clock as you can with your budget and availability of CPUs. I tested 3 different setups for comparison purposes. They have different core amounts and Cache. ALSO NOTE: most of these R815 systems come with old BIOS. You must buy a set of Opteron 6134s for example for $20 shipped in order to boot the system and update the BIOS to 3.2.2 if you want to use something like Opteron 6380s! Make sure you let the system fully reboot. I bricked one of my motherboards because I was rushing (-$130, oops), and you can't just clear the BIOS like a normal gaming motherboard!
     
    Comments on Investing in Crypto and mining: I do not discuss profits because of constant market changes. This setup currently mines a large amount of Monero, and Monero is worth pretty little right now (meaning it will likely improve significantly, especially with the recent fork on April 6th). If you were to mine with a single 6380 system you would make like $3-4 a day (profit) and $5-8 in revenue a day of  the coin, but if you did this for 3 months, held onto the coins you mined, and then the value spikes and you sell it, you stand to make a LOT more profit than before ($5-15 per day profit) . Part of this is not just the daily profit, but the potential  for long-term profit gain and investing. Its very important to keep this in mind. If I mined for 3 months with 3 servers, If the currency doubled in value back up to its previous $400 per Monero, then It would be as if I had made $20+ profit every single day for 3 months. Thats a lot of cash, especially considering if you then resold the servers you would make a pretty penny, maybe even significant profit on the machines themselves on top of the currency mined! EDIT: Just in the weeks i've been refining the post and typed the previous, monero has gone up in value 47% and steadily rising as I had predicted.
     
    Some background on me personally, I'm 18, just graduated High School, and looking to start college for computer networking extremely soon. I invested  more money than I probably should have researching this and comparing servers. I'm not made of money, and In giving this info for free, I personally incurred a lot of cost, nevermind typing all of this up. If you use this info to your advantage, or build some servers, maybe consider donating some Monero to me as a thanks. If you build servers, then maybe even just mine to my address at this pool for a bit or something instead as a thanks. And let me know if you do!
     
    Buying the discussed hardware:
     
    I didn't want to do this as I wrote the bulk of this post a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty burnt out working with my servers, and I'm actually selling my servers at very little to no profit on ebay to invest my money into other hobbies. If you'd like to help me do that, contact me on forum about my Opteron 6380 server [sold]or my Opteron 6212 server and I'll sell them to any forum member with an account at least two weeks old at no profit to myself. I believe in the investment and the massive profit potential in 1-2 years but at this time in my life I can't have this much money invested. 
     
    If you are looking to purchase the hardware discussed above from other sellers, I could point you in the direction of "IT Mart". They have an Ebay page here, and a website here. I have bought from many sellers of used server hardware on ebay, and gotten many bad parts before (which you are entitled to working replacements on ebay, but it costs you time, which is money in mining). Every Item I've purchased from this seller have been great parts with no issues, and they were always super friendly and willing to assist me. 
     
    Troubleshooting Issues and Questions
     
    Chances are if you have questions about any of this (hardware or mining crypto), I can answer it. Ask me, and if you're new to the forum, be a part of the community and join the discussion while you're here, it's always nice seeing other miners on the forum.  I'm happy to help anyone if I can.
  9. Funny
    Dirk reacted to Crunchy Dragon in Opteron based crypto-mining servers - A CPU based miner that competes with GPUs   
    Calling out @LinusTech are we?
  10. Agree
    Dirk got a reaction from DutchTexan in When will the GPU mining craze end   
    When will the craze be over? Who knows, there are plenty of other coins that make a profit right now besides Ethereum.  Now as @Princess Cadence mentioned, the market will probably take some time to even out.  The biggest worry you should have right now is if the mining cards aren't an incentive enough for miners to buy.  If their price point ins't low enough, miners will just keep buying gaming cards to keep a high resell value if they ever decide to sell.
  11. Like
    Dirk reacted to Pugs501 in Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand   
    That's all you can write?
    /s
  12. Like
    Dirk got a reaction from elfensky in The new (and improved?) Linus Tech Tips intro   
    The music seems a little off to me, but nothing to have a temper tantrum over.
  13. Like
    Dirk got a reaction from werethless12 in The new (and improved?) Linus Tech Tips intro   
    The music seems a little off to me, but nothing to have a temper tantrum over.
  14. Like
    Dirk got a reaction from MrTichoify in The new (and improved?) Linus Tech Tips intro   
    The music seems a little off to me, but nothing to have a temper tantrum over.
  15. Like
    Dirk got a reaction from STRMfrmXMN in Two H80i in a 450d?   
    Thanks for the reply.  Just making sure I wasn't missing anything obvious. 
  16. Like
    Dirk reacted to Heisenbleurgh in Assassin's Creed dev thinks industry is dropping 60 fps standard   
    I wish saying something was "too hard" was a legitimate excuse in my job too.
×