Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(07-17-2023, 11:26 PM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]Well that's easy. Just get a platform that uses DDR5 - all DDR5 ram sticks are at least UDIMM ECC.

I was more looking into getting used parts so probably DDR4. I would consider a modern platform, but I can't find any workstation boards that I would consider a reasonable price. I'm starting to think my best bet would be a last gen Ryzen (they support ECC, but not sure how official that is)?

First of all, thank you so much MayImilae for your detailed reply!!

Quote:I highly recommend using a NAS for storage as part of a proper 3-2-1 backup solution. That way you can have a (relatively) cheap system that exclusively holds data that any other system on the network can access, it can have proper redundancy built right in (which you should have for anything you care about) and it can be super lean and optimized for the role. We have a lower end zen 2 EPYC (like 8 cores) running TruNAS and a frick ton of hard drives plus an SSD cache, and it is AWESOME. Highly highly recommend!

But baring that, if you need PCIe connectivity, HEDT has it! Just watch out for the prices, to the moon do they go.

I actually thought about building a separate system just for my storage needs, but I'd rather have everything "locally", if that makes sense. I am not really a fan of running everything through a network. Plus I have no knowledge about building a NAS.

I am actually moving away from HDD's since SSD's have become a lot more affordable recently (and - according to analysts - prices will go down further this year). And also because I am so disappointed by my 10TB Seagate hard drive. It died after only six years in use. I can be happy that I was able to copy/paste the files onto the SSD just in time. The number of "bad sectors" skyrocketed. I did a "slow format" on Windows and the device would disconnect itself from the PC because of the high amount of bad sectors. It is now totally unreliable and unusable. I will get a backup hard drive for the files on my SSD's later this year so I can rest easy. I am definitely not going with Seagate again though. Looks like Western Digital is the only other way...

Quote:Skylake at 4.2ghz versus Zen 3 at 4.2ghz will be a massive uplift! The 6700k gets a single thread cinebench r23 score of around 1125, while the 5955WX will get ~1508. That's a bunch! However, for context, current gen desktop parts get 2000 or more single-thread score in the same test, thanks to way higher clockspeeds. And because Threadripper Pro is "Pro", you can't crank a core or anything to make up any of that gap.

Honestly, HEDT Zen is kind of in the worst place it has ever been atm. It's not terrible by any means, but it's definitely not as good as it once was, and there are compromises and concerns when going Threadripper right now. Chief among them being that there is no Threadripper, only Threadripper Pro. So weigh your options and choose carefully. IMO, if you can do something like a NAS for storage and a fast desktop for games, DO IT. If not, you may want to try to wait for Zen 4 Threadripper in the hopes that they won't @#*^ it up again, though I wouldn't hold my breath.

Or you could roll the dice on a certain totally new and wacky platform that almost no one has and there is little information about online. But only a crazy person would do that. ᕕ( ՞ ᗜ ՞ )ᕗ

Hm, I see... I know that you probably can't look into the future, but... do you have an estimate of when a Zen 4 Threadripper might come out? I have not considered Threadripper systems in the past so I don't know in what interval AMD releases their new products.

Quote:I have not used that motherboard. From a quick glance at the specs, it seems fine. The only thing I would be concerned about would be the VRMs on it - 8 phases is a bit low for this platform. Don't put a 5995WX in it. But for a 5955? Should be fine. You may still want to stick some heatsinks on that VRM though, and keep it in a well ventilated case.

My only personal experience with Gigabyte is that we have used a gigabyte threadripper board in the past for a Zen+ machine. While it had Gigabyte quirks, it was fine. You get used to the wacky world of gigabyte BIOS settings pretty quick, just, google things and you'll adapt.

As for more general advice, do your homework! Find reviews and study them thoroughly! Try to find someone who has done what you want to do with it and see what happened. Learn as much as you can before you buy! And hope you don't get screwed over by flakey hardware. That usually doesn't happen. ( 눈 ‸ 눈 )

I take cooling my hardware very seriously and have read a lot about it over the past couple of years (such on places like this where I have received good advice). I might even let someone create a custom case for me that is perfectly suited for air cooling.

Quote:I would be extremely surprised if a threadripper pro board shipped without PCIe bifurcation support. Check with the motherboard manual and specifications and find out before you buy.

EDIT: It does. Page 43 of the user manual shows the bifurcation modes it supports.

Thank you again for taking your time to research this! I actually searched for it myself, but couldn't really find it on the Gigabyte page Probably because the phrase "bifurcation" wasn't mentioned, instead it's just "change the PCIe lanes".

Quote:Threadripper Pro's boot time is glacial. It will vary from system to system and board to board but my system had a boot time of over 2 minutes to get to Windows, and that's of course after memory training and ignoring all that Windows or whatever will do once it loads. Fast Boot will cut that roughly in half, though that's still not amazing honestly.

Use S3 (if you can), just keep it on, or turn it on and get a drink or a snack or something then come back. Fortunately you can use the IPMI to turn it on remotely, that's nice.

Hm, that's pretty slow, but also what I expected from what I read on other websites. I'm already a bit miffed that my ASUS motherboard takes like 30-45 seconds to boot, lol. The PC that I built for my parents has an ASRock motherboard and it boots in like 7 seconds right to the desktop. I am really impressed with that! If I want to use the PC for everyday tasks, do I need this "memory training"? I have never used that feature in any PC before. I do not know what "S3" is.

After a quick search, S3 is apparently a sleeping state? I actually turn everything off when I don't need it. I even disconnect the power plug as to not waste any electricity. So that would probably not be for me...

Quote:BTW, if you want to change your username, just let forum staff know and we'll take care of it for you.

Thank you, will do!

Waluigifan Wrote:I actually thought about building a separate system just for my storage needs, but I'd rather have everything "locally", if that makes sense. I am not really a fan of running everything through a network.

So you did not state what your aversion to a NAS is, so I'll state a few things that may help with whatever that is.

First, accessing files on a NAS is basically the same as accessing a local drive. You just go to Network rather than This PC, open the NAS, and there are your files. But unlike an external harddrive, you're not actually accessing a drive itself, but the volumes within the storage pool of the NAS. This allows for all kinds of optimizations such as stripping across a raid array, SSD caches, RAM caches, etc etc that can make your access WAY faster than what just accessing a hard drive would be. Files living on a NAS can be as fast as files living on a SSD attached to your computer (though that depends on how good your network and your NAS are). Plus the NAS just handles it for you. You don't need to worry about elevating something that you use everyday to a faster drive or whatever, the act of you using it repeatedly lets the NAS know that it should live in faster caches, and it just does it for you. And if you stop using it automatically, it will demote it over time back to the slower storage drives.

And of course, the NAS automates all of the maintenance too, so redundancy is covered, disk defragmentation / TRIM are all handled, backing up to the cloud is automated, etc etc without you having to think about it, helping to maximize speed, stability, and longevity. And if a drive fails, it will tell you and allow you to rebuild and get your files back, and then you just replace the drive and it reshuffles everything on its own. NASes are great!

If you are concerned about how to step into the NAS world, I did it with a Synology NAS. They have a lot of cute little NAS boxes that can do all of this for you with a really easy to use interface. We outgrew Synology fairly quickly, largely because Sonicadvance is using it for work and keeping all the work things safe, but for a lot of people a small NAS box like that is all they need.

And of course, if you get a NAS, your need of HEDT connectivity for storage evaporates. And since you don't need HEDT core counts, you could just get a faster (at 16 cores anyway) and cheaper desktop class platform. Assuming you don't have other reasons for wanting to go HEDT that is.

Waluigifan Wrote:do you have an estimate of when a Zen 4 Threadripper might come out? Big Grin I have not considered Threadripper systems in the past so I don't know in what interval AMD releases their new products.

Whenever they bloody feel like it. ( 눈 ‸ 눈 ) Seriously Zen 4 Ryzen came out BEFORE Zen 3 Threadripper Pro was available for purchase by consumers. If you want to wait for Zen 4 Threadripper, there's no telling when that's going to come out, if at all.


If you don't want to wait on that uncertainty and have to go HEDT, it's Zen 3 Threadripper Pro... or the weird alternative. Keep watching this thread I guess.

Waluigifan Wrote:The PC that I built for my parents has an ASRock motherboard and it boots in like 7 seconds right to the desktop. I am really impressed with that!

THAT is too fast, so that was probably Window's "Fast Startup". Basically, Windows decided in ~Windows 8 or whatever that "Shutdown" didn't actually need to shut the computer down. Instead, by default, if you press Shutdown in Windows, it hibernates instead. Yea. I prefer separate hibernate and shutdown controls, because when i need to turn my computer off, I need to turn it bloody off thank you, so I always disable "Fast Startup".

I don't know if you care about that or not, but



EDIT: One reason I cared is that the WRX80 Creator does not support hibernation (S4 sleep) -at all-. So before turning off Fast Startup, trying to "Shutdown" the Threadripper Pro system would just fail, and the computer would just sit there, running but unresponsive, until I flipped off the power switch on the PSU. It would come back after the power cycle, but it would do memory training because something happened gotta check I guess, it was a full cold reboot, and then Windows would be hella mad afterwards.

Threadripper Pro can support S4. I just checked the Asus WRX80 SAGE and it supports S3 and S4. Just yet another way the Asrock WRX80 Creator was garbage. ┐(´-｀)┌

EDIT 2: Out of curiosity, I checked the manual for the Gigabyte board you mentioned. It talks about S3, but not S4, so it likely doesn't support Hibernation either. Fast Startup would probably behave the same on that motherboard. Well, keep that in mind.

Waluigifan Wrote:If I want to use the PC for everyday tasks, do I need this "memory training"? I have never used that feature in any PC before.

It's not something you do, it's something your motherboard does automatically. So, the first time you boot up a computer, it needs to initialize its memory. It will run some tests, establish the pool, etc etc, getting it ready for use. That's memory training. It's not a new thing, but on modern systems with modern memory sizes it is now apparent when it happens, as the very first boot after assembling the system will be much longer than subsequent boots. But once it's done, it's done, and you don't need to worry about it. At least until something changes in the system that requires it to retrain, anyway.

I was helping a coworker friend build a new PC recently for the first time in a couple of years and forgot about memory training. We were trying to set XMP profiles and it had to retrain each time. This was on an MSI Z690-A DDR5 board, so it was also my first time dealing with Gear 1/Gear 2 differences (Gear 2 DDR5 5600). Took forever to get it setup because I was being stupid and trying different XMP profiles. We were both really confused why it wasn't turning on or displaying anything and we thought that it was failing to POST

Speaking of Dell, I went ahead and bought a Dell Precession 7820. I'll be using it to host a bunch of VMs, storage, and networking stuff. Nothing too crazy, so I think it should be more than enough.

(07-19-2023, 07:44 PM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]THAT is too fast, so that was probably Window's "Fast Startup". Basically, Windows decided in ~Windows 8 or whatever that "Shutdown" didn't actually need to shut the computer down. Instead, by default, if you press Shutdown in Windows, it hibernates instead. Yea. I prefer separate hibernate and shutdown controls, because when i need to turn my computer off, I need to turn it bloody off thank you, so I always disable "Fast Startup".

Fast startup was added on Windows 8, and the boot speed increase the next time you turn the machine on is simply too much to not have it enabled, IMO. By the way, you can still do a normal shutdown when fast startup is enabled if you hold Shift before clicking Shutdown. Windows won't show anything different to acknowledge that (like it does if you hold Shift before clicking Restart, where the text changes to "Please wait..."), but it'll do a normal shutdown in that case. You can also get the regular Hibernate option back in the power menu by enabling it from the Power Settings in the old Control Panel (yep, still no signs of it in the new Settings app), the option just doesn't come enabled by default anymore since Windows 10 (I think?)...

Well here's a reason for it to not be enabled by default.

MayImilae Wrote:EDIT: One reason I cared is that the WRX80 Creator does not support hibernation (S4 sleep) -at all-. So before turning off Fast Startup, trying to "Shutdown" the Threadripper Pro system would just fail, and the computer would just sit there, running but unresponsive, until I flipped off the power switch on the PSU. It would come back after the power cycle, but it would do memory training because something happened gotta check I guess, it was a full cold reboot, and then Windows would be hella mad afterwards.

Threadripper Pro can support S4. I just checked the Asus WRX80 SAGE and it supports S3 and S4. Just yet another way the Asrock WRX80 Creator was garbage. ┐(´-｀)┌

EDIT 2: Out of curiosity, I checked the manual for the Gigabyte board you mentioned. It talks about S3, but not S4, so it likely doesn't support Hibernation either. Fast Startup would probably behave the same on that motherboard. Well, keep that in mind.

But yea, I understand that most people don't care, and are totally fine with that behavior. I didn't tell Waluigifan or turn it off or anything. But when you get to the fringes of weirdo hardware, the OS not doing what you tell it to do leads to -problems-. Plus I just find the behavior annoying.

I always disable fast boot startup as long as I have an SSD as the boot drive, it's fast enough anyways at that point.

Most of the problems with fastboot are because when it was new, grumpy people on the internet complained about it, and convinced enough software engineers to disable it on their own machine that when they get an issue report for something fastboot-related, they think it's okay to tell people disabling the option is a fix rather than a workaround, and then never actually fix their software to make it fastboot-tolerant. If ASRock behaved like adults, they'd see it as a pretty big deal that their motherboard didn't support S4 sleep, and ensure it was resolved before the product launched.

Btw, to be clear, the Windows feature is called "Fast Startup". Many HEDT, Server, and even just ordinary desktops have a "Fast Boot" BIOS option that skips some checks and things and makes a cold boot faster on the motherboard side. Whereas "Fast Startup" speeds up the process by not turning the computer off in the first place.

Please try to keep the two separate if you can. They are already really close and it's confusing, I know.

AnyOldName3 Wrote:If ASRock behaved like adults, they'd see it as a pretty big deal that their motherboard didn't support S4 sleep, and ensure it was resolved before the product launched.

Admittedly we're talking about a pretty terrible motherboard, but considering all of what happened with Threadripper, it is my theory that Threadripper Pro's switch to the only Threadripper was last minute, and suddenly AMD tasked motherboard manufacturers to bring tons of additional features to a very workstation / server platform. From what I've learned, it did not go well. Zen 3 Threadripper Pro has some quirks. But yea I don't know for sure, it's just based on what I have heard and seen. Like how Zen 3 Threadripper non-pro was well into validation before it was canned, and how a few totally working samples made it out to a few people and those sampled worked great.