Building a Machine learning/ Deep learning work stations. your suggestion are required

[ANNIHILATOR284]

Hi,

 

I've been been working in the field of Machine Learning for over 7 years now and have been recently handed over a significant chunk of funding to aid my adventures. I require a work horse machine capable of handling immense work loads with lots of computing. i value the suggestion of the LTT community and would like to put my plan forward for your review and criticism. 

 

my max budget is about 7K$ ( is flexible) and I've come up with a PC part picker list. i of course will have to find a source to buy/ ship it to India my base of operations. unfortunately it's coming 1k over budget and i would your suggestions in come cost cutting. 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xLLDPs here is the list. 

 

the mains here lots of RAM, beefy GPU and enough cores to last a long time with 24x7 operation handling hundreds of gigabytes of workload.  

[Froody129]

You don't really need that beefy of a PSU even with those components, so you can save some money there. Also wouldn't it be better to cut down your SSD storage to save some money? Not sure how important it is for machine learning though

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

that psu is way overkill,

 

u want ur load to be atleast 20% at idle and 50%-100% at load for better efficiency else the Titanium efficiency wont even take effect P:

 

 

[ANNIHILATOR284]

1 minute ago, Froody129 said:

You don't really need that beefy of a PSU even with those components, so you can save some money there. Also wouldn't it be better to cut down your SSD storage to save some money? Not sure how important it is for machine learning though

it's a good idea to cut down on the PSU. i would require all that SSD storage as i would be handling tera bytes of data require rapid access. in the end most is offloaded to a NAS for long term storage. 

[ANNIHILATOR284]

8 minutes ago, Valkyrie Lenneth said:

that psu is way overkill,

 

u want ur load to be atleast 20% at idle and 50%-100% at load for better efficiency else the Titanium efficiency wont even take effect P:

 

 

would a 1200W PSU do?

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

10 minutes ago, ANNIHILATOR284 said:

would a 1200W PSU do?

check a psu calculator tool and manually put all the devices u connect to see the watt usage / recommended watts

 

my guess is around 750-850watt psu but thats just a guess

 

80% load is the most efficient +- in most psu's

[ANNIHILATOR284]

Just now, Valkyrie Lenneth said:

check a psu calculator tool and manually put all the devices u connect to see the watt usage / recommended watts

it's coming upto 800W at stock usage. but i don't wanna risk it as i want room for upgrades too. it's a significant investment and i would like it to be future proof. would a thread ripper or a xeom be great?

[NumLock21]

Can those 1080Ti even do deep learning? Deep learning for Nvidia is on their Tesla P100 or the newer upcoming V100 based on the Volta architecture. The system cost around $150,000

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

if it calculates 800W id say get around a 1000watt psu that is around 80% load

[ANNIHILATOR284]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

Can those 1080Ti even do deep learning? Deep learning for Nvidia is on their Tesla P100 or the newer upcoming V100 based on the Volta architecture. The system cost around $150,000

lol unfortunately i don't have 150k. i've been using my 650ti for over 3 years and they've been performing great (obviously not amazingly great) with an i5 2600K. i make use of CUDA processing so that shouldn't be a problem. along with big data.

[brob]

1 hour ago, ANNIHILATOR284 said:

lol unfortunately i don't have 150k. i've been using my 650ti for over 3 years and they've been performing great (obviously not amazingly great) with an i5 2600K. i make use of CUDA processing so that shouldn't be a problem. along with big data.

If the plan is to add additional gpu, keep the 1600W psu. Otherwise something around 1200W should be enough.

 

Did you consider going with hybrid gpu. This would improve cooling so there would be less chance of throttling.

 

The motherboard has a single M.2 connector. What is the plan for the other two M.2 drives?

 

Instead of the 2TB M.2 drives, you might consider a single 4TB ssd. While the bandwidth is lower, unless the software is doing large writes, (as opposed to frequent small writes), the performance loss should be marginal. Samsung MZ-75E4T0B would cut costs significantly.

 

Enermax has two aio designed specifically for the larger Threadripper cpu, Enermax - LiqTech TR4 240 102.2 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (ELC-LTTR240-TBP) and Enermax - LiqTech TR4 360 102.2 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (ELC-LTTR360-TBP). If either is available to you, they would be better choices.

 

[ANNIHILATOR284]

6 hours ago, brob said:

If the plan is to add additional gpu, keep the 1600W psu. Otherwise something around 1200W should be enough.

 

Did you consider going with hybrid gpu. This would improve cooling so there would be less chance of throttling.

 

The motherboard has a single M.2 connector. What is the plan for the other two M.2 drives?

 

Instead of the 2TB M.2 drives, you might consider a single 4TB ssd. While the bandwidth is lower, unless the software is doing large writes, (as opposed to frequent small writes), the performance loss should be marginal. Samsung MZ-75E4T0B would cut costs significantly.

 

Enermax has two aio designed specifically for the larger Threadripper cpu, Enermax - LiqTech TR4 240 102.2 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (ELC-LTTR240-TBP) and Enermax - LiqTech TR4 360 102.2 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (ELC-LTTR360-TBP). If either is available to you, they would be better choices.

 

i've checked and the mother board supports 3 M.2 SSDs, 2+1 config. don't know why 2+1 and not 3 but yeah. 

 

 

check here https://www.asus.com/in/Motherboards/ROG-ZENITH-EXTREME/specifications/

[brob]

Just now, ANNIHILATOR284 said:

i've checked and the mother board supports 3 M.2 SSDs, 2+1 config. don't know why 2+1 and not 3 but yeah. 

 

 

check here https://www.asus.com/in/Motherboards/ROG-ZENITH-EXTREME/specifications/

Very strange, the web page I looked at showed just a single M.2. In fact https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/ROG-ZENITH-EXTREME/specifications/ is the page.

 

Examining the motherboard pictures makes things clear. The spec page I get is wrong. The motherboard supports two M.2 drives on a DIMM.2 card. The card plugs into a DIM slot in front of the memory. The card is included in the list of accessories on both web pages.

 

[ANNIHILATOR284]

2 minutes ago, brob said:

Very strange, the web page I looked at showed just a single M.2. In fact https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/ROG-ZENITH-EXTREME/specifications/ is the page.

 

Examining the motherboard pictures makes things clear. The spec page I get is wrong. The motherboard supports two M.2 drives on a DIMM.2 card. The card plugs into a DIM slot in front of the memory. The card is included in the list of accessories on both web pages.

 

there is a heat shield near the source bridge covering 2 M.2 slots ( seen it in some youtube video Jayztwocents or OC3D dont remember)

[brob]

14 minutes ago, ANNIHILATOR284 said:

there is a heat shield near the source bridge covering 2 M.2 slots ( seen it in some youtube video Jayztwocents or OC3D dont remember)

I know some Asus motherboards had dual M.2 under the heatsink. But according to pg 1-2 of the ROG Zenith Extreme motherboard user manual there is only 1 M.2 connector in that location. 

[ANNIHILATOR284]

1 minute ago, brob said:

I know some Asus motherboards had dual M.2 under the heatsink. But according to pg 1-2 of the ROG Zenith Extreme motherboard user manual there is only 1 M.2 connector in that location. 

damn i will have to cross check. this can become a serious issue later on. thanks anyway

[brob]

Just now, ANNIHILATOR284 said:

damn i will have to cross check. this can become a serious issue later on. thanks anyway

It shouldn't be a problem. If you check the user manual, section 1.1.2, (the motherboard diagram), #5, is labeled DDR4 DIMM.2_SLOT. The included DIMM.2 card has two M.2 connectors and plugs into this slot. See page 1-37 for details.