A cautionary comment:

We recently built a 2-GPU (GeForce RTX 2080) AMD-based processing system
using this motherboard:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/ROG-ZENITH-EXTREME/

with a AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX 32-Core Processor

The motherboard specifications indicated that it supports up to 128G of
memory which can be ECC:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/ROG-ZENITH-EXTREME/specifications/

In fact, I couldn't get the system to boot at all using any kind of ECC
memory (apparently it does not support ECC memory) and whenever I try to
populate the system board with more than 64G of RAM, the system won't
boot. We've tried this with at least 3 iterations of memory, and we can
use 4 x 16G DIMMS, a different set of 4 x 16G DIMMS and the system works
fine with either, but if I try to populate all 8 memory slots with these
DIMMs, it won't boot. I had an open support ticket with Asus about
this, but ran out of time and patience with dealing with this before it
got resolved, so we're just using the system with 64G of RAM.

That experience (all of it, including the horrible support) has soured
me on Asus motherbards, but I'm not aware of a superior alternative,
especially if you're trying to use 4 GPUs.

Speaking of using 4 GPUs, here's something which has been bothering me
for a while. A single Intel (say) i7-8700 only has 16 PCIe lines. Each
GPU optimally uses 8 PCIe lanes. This means you've already maxed out
your PCIe bandwidth with 2 GPUs, and there are typically other devices
using these lanes as well. I think this just means GPU processing isn't
terribly I/O bound? Has anyone else looked in to this?


On 9/30/19 11:46 PM, Dr. Clara Cai wrote:
> We'd caution against consumer grade motherboard. The Linux driver
> support can be spotty. But it is hard to find AMD server motherboards
> that support 4 GPU configurations.
> Another note is that some programs like cryoSPARC might be optimized for
> Intel CPUs.
>
> In our opinion, it will be more stable to go with server grade
> motherboard with Intel CPUs.
>
> As for blower type GPUs, our experience with ASUS Turbo series is quite
> good. Failure rate is ~1-2% in our turnkey machines with RTX2080Ti.
>
> Best regards,
>
> -Clara
> SingleParticle.com
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 10:49 AM Paul Emsley <[log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> On 30/09/2019 15:25, Mohamed A Sayed wrote:
> > I will be grateful if you would kindly provide information on
> specific parts to buy in order to avoid problems later:
> >
> > Which mother board and threadripper processor, ram and their
> size, SSD, power supply, hard drive?
> >
>
> OK, I'll go out on a limb then - I don't vouch for the pertinence of
> these suggestions beyond March 2020:
>
> If you want it now, you'll want the 2990WX - but as Yehuda says, you
> might want to wait for the next gen Threadripper (3).
>
> msi MEG x399 Creation or a Asus ROG X399 Zeneth Extreme (Alpha)
>
> Enermax Liqtech II TR4 280 (You'll need RGB, right? :-)) (liquid) or
> Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 (air)
>
> 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz(?) [not sure on which exact one - might be tricky] #
> should be enough for Coot unless you are doing unusual things with high
> resolution capsids
>
> 1 or more 1Tb M.2 NVME SSDs # put an 80Gb swap partition on it just in
> case :-) # long term storage goes elsewhere
>
> I think that an AX1600i power supply should be enough with 2 GPUs (RTX
> 2080 Super)
>
> As others said, nice big case with good cooling (Corsair Carbide Air
> 740, say).
>
> HTH,
>
> Paul.
>
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