Best workstation options on a 'budget'

[Styp]

Hi,

I played with the idea last year to build a dedicated single or twin GPU rig for my ML experiments. I didn't build that one in the end because the GPU upgrade helped my trusty old machine a lot. But now its finally time to retire this thing, and without overbuilding it, I need a new 'daily driver'. Doing mostly software development related stuff, sometimes a VM to test things, NumPy, a little ML.

8 - 12 Cores
64 -128 GB Ram
1TB NVME
Nvidia GPU
AVX512 would be nice, but not 'must'.


Option 1:
Xeon Gold QS + C612
(2 AVX512 Pipelines)

Option 2:
9800X + X299

Option 2.1:
Xeon W2xxx + C422
(Xeon W is expensive, Ram is 'reasonable')

Option 3:
Ryzen 3900X + Z570

While doing the math, the three options are not too far apart from a money-wise.
The 9800X is 'cheap' in terms of Intel, the Gold QS can be assembled with 'used ECC memory'.

Any other options or ideas? At the moment, I think about Option 2...

Cheers!
Styp

 

[Wasmachineman_NL]

Wait for Zen 3 and forget about Intel. X299 is a dead end unless you've got extremely autistic specific needs like AVX512 or RDIMM support.

To actually your answer though: 3900X + X570 if you do not need ridiculous amounts of PCIe lanes, or that QS Xeon for the sweet RDIMM support. Or wait for the XT models if you require a bit more clock speed.

EDIT 2: lmao, just go with the 3900X. 100 MHz is going to do jackshit in actual performance and paying the launch MSRP for the 3900X is beyond retarded.