Getting an electricity refund

[D-Dan]

Finally got some relief at the community dental clinic. I’m advised the tooth may need to be removed, but its a lonely molar, and I’d rather it didn’t go the way of its neighbour. I’ll see how it goes on, and see if I can get back to at least some kind of upgrade before all my windfall goes on my nuggets (though I have to say, at £21.60 – it was cheaper than expected. Of course, a dental course could run to £100s).

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Good luck with the teeth D-Dan, I feel your pain.

If you still have some cash left after treatment I just put this together on the Palicomp custom system builder.

Case: Coloursit Knight 6×3.5 bays

CPU: Ryzen 7 2700

MOBO: ASUS Prime A320M

RAM: Corsair Vengence 16GB

Graphics: GTX 1070 8GB

Price: £869

Have a look at the Palicomp custom builder yourself as you know better than me your exact needs ?

This is NOT an ad for Palicomp but I have had 7 systems from them and they have been just as ordered, on time and backed by a years free tech support.

[D-Dan]

I may give them a look. I had a bit of luck yesterday when I walked into CeX, to find a GTX1060 6Gb on sale for £240, which shaves between £30 and £100 off the build price (depending on which you buy). THis is an EVGA dual fan model, and having put it in to the current rig, graphics tests put it a chunk ahead of the 680. CUDA tests are less impressive, but the extra 2Gb VRAM will definitely be useful.

Starting to think maybe just a MB, CPU and RAM bundle, and a new chassis. Should be able to do the 2700 with 16Gb for around £600. How do you find the 2700 for performance?

 

EDIT: The advantage with buying from CeX is that they offer a two year warranty, and once I know I’m happy with it and it isn’y going to die, I can potentially offload the 680 on them. I can definitely offload the AMD, though I’ll probably get peanuts for it now.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[D-Dan]

Just checked with Palicomp, and I can do the CPU, MB and RAM for £560 ish.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I haven’t actually had a Ryzen 7 to play with yet but I have read good things.

[D-Dan]

I’m waiting until pay day (next Friday), but I think I’m going for another self-build based on those specs. The advantage that way is I can either re-use my existing chassis, or wait, which will also save me £50 – £100.

Pretty much made my mind up that I’m retiring this one.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Just thought D-Dan

Was the price you quoted for the parts built into a case with PSU. If it was then i would go for it because they will test it as a system and give you a warranty before shipping it.

[D-Dan]

I have a damned good 850W Corsair hybrid PSU, and don’t see the point of buying one for the sake of it.

EDIT: My current system is very much “Trigger’s Broom”. I built it in 1992, and until 2006, it had the same floppy drive, and that’s about as much.

I can handle re-building it.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[D-Dan]

I have to be honest, my biggest worry is migrating from BIOS to UEFI, but I guess I’ll figure that out.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Richard]

It would worry me a bit having read so many tales of woe over the past few years. This old dog is not too well adjusted for learning new tricks, so good luck with that one.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

UEFI is pretty simple if you are using Windows because most versions know to look for the MS efi boot manager as well as the default efi one.

Using Linux can be a bit trickier if the installer doesn’t sort it for you but im sure its nothing you cant handle ?

[D-Dan]

I’m pretty sure it’s just a tweak of grub.cfg. Guess I’ll find out.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

The basic requirements are to have a FAT formatted “system” partition marked as type efi with the efi version of Grub in its root. Then you will have to run a config program to add this path to the system CMOS.

That is the basic idea but as im sure you know there can be much more to it if you are trying to migrate an existing installation.

Oh and its a FAT partition because thats all UEFI understands.

[D-Dan]

I guess I’m in luck that I have a separate /boot partition, and so converting to fat (I assume fat32) should be easy.

Of course, option 2 (the easier one) is to disable UEFI altogether and revert to BIOS behaviour.

Options seem to be summarised at https://superuser.com/questions/984294/converting-bios-mode-arch-linux-to-uefi

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I forgot to mention that the disk should be partitioned as GPT too.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I was going to send you that link !

[D-Dan]

It seems like most modern boards have a legacy mode, which should make life easier.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I would have to read up on modern boards because my BIOS is from 2011 and is of the type “Gigabyte Hybread UEFI”

My board will attempt a UEFI boot on the selected boot device if it finds an EFI partition but if not it falls back to MBR.  I don’t know if full UEFI systems still do that.

 

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

It may be an idea to see if you can download a copy of the motherboard manual first. Im going to have a look for that ASUS one ?

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Well that told me nothing of interest about UEFI but it looks like a nice micro ATX board.

[Author]

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