Where LTT Went Wrong on Compensator III

[XXX_BillTube_XXX]

The Compensator III is a powerful machine; most people commenting on this thread could only dream of such a machine. However, it is not technically the most powerful machine possible.

Specifications of Compensator III (Jake's version):

• AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X

• 256 GB DDR4-3600 CL16 RAM

• 2 x Titan RTX

• 4 x 2 TB Sabrent PCIE 4.0 M.2 SSD

• 2 x 16 TB Segate IronWolf Pro RAID 1

Jake probably thought that these were the fastest parts available for PC building, but they are not; he could have done better.

CPU: Jake should have picked two AMD Epyc 7742 CPUs. They also have 64 cores and 128 threads, but they support two CPU sockets. Contrary to what people think, you can overclock AMD Epyc CPUs through P-state overclocking, which is an indirect way of increasing real world clock speeds. Two AMD Epyc 7742 CPUs would yield 128 cores and 256 threads.

RAM: Jake should have picked 16 DIMMs of 256 GB DDR4-2666 RAM. There are two CPUs dedicated to 8 channels each, so there will be 16 total channels of memory. This is a 16x of memory bandwidth. In total, 16 DIMMs of 256 GB DDR4-2666 RAM would yield 4 TB of RAM.

Motherboard: Jake should have picked a Supermicro H12DST-B. There are two PCIE 4.0 x16 slots for GPUs and one PCIE 4.0 x24 slot for storage. There is one M.2 slot for a PCIE 4.0 x4 NVME drive, and there are 6 SATA III slots for even more storage.

Graphics cards: With PCIE riser cards, you can split one PCIE 4.0 x16 slot into two PCIE 4.0 x8 slots, which has the same bandwidth as two PCIE 3.0 x16 slots. On one bifurcated slot, we will put two NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000s in NVLink, and on the other bifurcated slot, we will put two NVIDIA Quadro GV100s in NVLink. With driver trickery, you can overclock these cards, just like the Titan RTX.

Storage: The PCIE 4.0 x24 slot can be split into three PCIE 4.0 x8 slots. Each of those slots can be bifurcated into two PCIE 4.0 x4 slots, creating six PCIE 4.0 x4 slots. You can adapt each of these slots into an M.2 slot, so you can have 6 M.2 PCIE 4.0 SSDs on these slots alone. With the other M.2 slot, you can have 14 TB PCIE 4.0 x4 M.2 SSDs. The 16 TB HDDs can be reused; so there will be 14 TB of SSD storage, and 96 TB of HDD storage.

In the past, the writers could have been forgiven for not using Xeons; they are not overclockable beyond a few hundred megahertz. With AMD Epyc, there are overclockable server CPUs with higher core counts, more PCIE lanes, and more memory channels than their HEDT brethren.

[Tristerin]

I didn't watch anything with this Compensator build - could it be they used consumer level hardware for the fastest Consumer PC?

[Sauron]

17 minutes ago, XXX_BillTube_XXX said:

two AMD Epyc 7742 CPUs

Not actually any faster (and in fact slower) for a lot of tasks.

19 minutes ago, XXX_BillTube_XXX said:

RAM: Jake should have picked 16 DIMMs of 256 GB DDR4-2666 RAM. There are two CPUs dedicated to 8 channels each, so there will be 16 total channels of memory. This is a 16x of memory bandwidth. In total, 16 DIMMs of 256 GB DDR4-2666 RAM would yield 4 TB of RAM.

Again doesn't really affect performance outside of some really outlandish workloads.

20 minutes ago, XXX_BillTube_XXX said:

Graphics cards: With PCIE riser cards, you can split one PCIE 4.0 x16 slot into two PCIE 4.0 x8 slots, which has the same bandwidth as two PCIE 3.0 x16 slots. On one bifurcated slot, we will put two NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000s in NVLink, and on the other bifurcated slot, we will put two NVIDIA Quadro GV100s in NVLink. With driver trickery, you can overclock these cards, just like the Titan RTX.

Which is only useful for machine learning or folding and would probably reduce performance in, say, games.

21 minutes ago, XXX_BillTube_XXX said:

Storage: The PCIE 4.0 x24 slot can be split into three PCIE 4.0 x8 slots.

Irrelevant when considering speed and going for max storage opens a whole new can of worms that has nothing to do with the goals of the build.

 

There's no limit to how much pointless bling you can add to a build, that doesn't necessarily make it more entertaining.

[TempestCatto]

[XXX_BillTube_XXX]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Not actually any faster (and in fact slower) for a lot of tasks.

Clock-for-clock, because AMD Epyc and AMD Ryzen Threadripper use the same microarchitectures, they have the same performance. AMD Epyc CPUs are overclockable, so they had the "potential for greatness" as AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs. It requires P-state adjusting, but it is doable.

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Again doesn't really affect performance outside of some really outlandish workloads.

The whole point of the Compensator series of build logs is to build a computer that is as fast as possible. The benefit does not really matter. If it has a benefit, it is in a Compensator.

5 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Which is only useful for machine learning or folding and would probably reduce performance in, say, games.

The Quadro RTX 8000 uses a similar GPU to the Titan RTX, so they perform similarly to each other; so two Quadro RTX 8000s perform similarly to two Titan RTXs. Adding Quadro GV100s increases GPU horsepower, increasing frames per second.

8 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Irrelevant when considering speed and going for max storage opens a whole new can of worms that has nothing to do with the goals of the build.

The Compensator (III) is supposed to be a build without compromises. Uncompromising storage has to be in the Compensator, for it does not have compromises. The builders of the Compensator want everything to be as fast as possible, so storage has to be as fast as possible.

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, XXX_BillTube_XXX said:

AMD Epyc CPUs are overclockable, so they had the "potential for greatness" as AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs.

Only in theory. Realistically server motherboards aren't designed for overclocking, not to mention that as always there are no guarantees with overclocking whereas a faster base clock is guaranteed. Even if that weren't the case adding another CPU doesn't make a difference in any task LTT's audience may want to use it for, in fact the added complexity may lead to slightly lower performance even at the same clock speed (though as I said that would be an unrealistic scenario).

4 minutes ago, XXX_BillTube_XXX said:

The whole point of the Compensator series of build logs is to build a computer that is as fast as possible. The benefit does not really matter. If it has a benefit, it is in a Compensator.

As fast as possible for what? Because if you consider heavy AVX-512 tasks for example then AMD would be off the table. You can't have a build that is the absolute fastest in everything, it's just not possible. Also if you're going for non-consumer parts then why not have 4 CPUs? Why not have one of those insane mining motherboards with 18 PCIE slots and jam a quadro in all of them with riser cables? Why not build a cluster?

[GDRRiley]

PCEI gen 4 drives mostly suck.

epyc makes little sense here. it has been based on top workstation/HEDT parts not server.

 

Dual epyc would work for say a 16(24 or 32 would also be options) gamers 1 CPU or even 16 streamers 1 CPU.

[SansVarnic]

@XXX_BillTube_XXX do you have any thing to show and back up your argument? I'm just asking.

Debate rule off thumb, provide sources to back up your argument.

 

 

Disclaimer: I'm not defending Linus' video, I have not watched it.

[TempestCatto]

@XXX_BillTube_XXX if you don't have the money to buy and build one yourself, you have no room to speak. Are there more powerful parts? I mean, probably - sure. But the point of these videos is not to build the bestest machine, it's just supposed to be an overpriced, overpowered beast with rainbow barf sprinkled in between. It's for fun.

[Roswell]

2 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

@XXX_BillTube_XXX if you don't have the money to buy and build one yourself, you have no room to speak. Are there more powerful parts? I mean, probably - sure. But the point of these videos is not to build the bestest machine, it's just supposed to be an overpriced, overpowered beast with rainbow barf sprinkled in between. It's for fun.

They literally say in the title, and later in the video, that they're building the fastest, best machine. So... that is indeed the point of the video.

[dizmo]

Sounds like your method would require A LOT of fuckery, which likely isn't what they were going for.