Workstation/Mining Rig CPU/GPUs Recommendation?

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IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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I've been planning a new main workstation build for some time now. This will be my main home workstation that I can game on maybe once or twice a month, but mainly use for work/administration. When I'm not using the workstation, I would like it to mine. The build will have dual 1080ti's but I still need to pick a CPU. What would be a good direction to go here? I'd prefer something as current generation as possible both for future proofing and/or for potentional resale. CPU's I've been considering are the Core i9 and AMD Threadripper but open to suggestions. This entire build will be EXTENSIVELY watercooled.

**Please note I'm not building this rig based on price/performance for ROI from mining. I'm just looking to build a kickass new home workstation that I can put to work when I'm off duty ;).
 
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iamtelephone

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I'm just looking to build a kickass new home workstation that I can put to work when I'm off duty ;).
You've just summarized the answer here. Pick what you think would be best for your home use. There's no reason to go out of your way if the rig will only mine part time.

Personally I'd pick an AMD CPU. Not for performance or cost, but due to Intel releasing "Coffee Lake" while knowing it was vulnerable to Meltdown and Spectre.
 

nitrobass24

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You've just summarized the answer here. Pick what you think would be best for your home use. There's no reason to go out of your way if the rig will only mine part time.

Personally, I'd pick an AMD CPU. Not for performance or cost, but due to Intel releasing "Coffee Lake" while knowing it was vulnerable to Meltdown and Spectre.
Then you shouldn't buy AMD or ARM CPUs because they knew as well.
 

iamtelephone

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Then you shouldn't buy AMD or ARM CPUs because they knew as well.
I stated that I would choose AMD personally. You can perceive it however you like. I'm not fanboy'ing, I simply think Intel handled Meltdown poorly, along with the fact that they're vulnerable against both attacks.

Now if the spectre patch/s incurs a performance penalty too, then that's a double whammy for Intel.
 
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IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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You've just summarized the answer here. Pick what you think would be best for your home use. There's no reason to go out of your way if the rig will only mine part time.

Personally I'd pick an AMD CPU. Not for performance or cost, but due to Intel releasing "Coffee Lake" while knowing it was vulnerable to Meltdown and Spectre.
While yes, I'm not picking a CPU based strictly on mining, it wouldn't hurt to pick one of the better mining CPUs as in almost any case it's going to be plenty powerful enough to support the rest of my everday activities.

So I guess I'm just wondering what are some of the better mining CPUs in the under $1,000 price range. Obviously it will have work with a motherboard that supports SLI.
 

Joel

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If you're going Threadripper, you might as well spring for EPYC. :)
 

Ol92

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If you're going Threadripper, you might as well spring for EPYC. :)
For normal workstation use + gaming, a threadripper 1950x will be better than epyc due to higher clocks which will give better performance for the various softs which can't take advantage of a high amount of cores (very few softs can benefit from more than 16 cores).
The threadripper is very good for aeon: near 4000H/s (near 3$/day) for aeon.
Alternatives in your price range is intel i9: 7900X /7920X: good for lyra2z or more exotic algo.
You may choose a used X99 board with a xeon 2696V3 if you find any at a good price on ebay : with the all core turbo hack, you will have 18 cores at around 3.2ghz/3.3 ghz, and 3.8-3.9 for 8 cores loaded with some overclocking on the bus.
I have bought one on March: I am mining aeon @ 3600 h/s, but used to mine lyra2z around 1900kh/s, lyra2z330 at 3300h/s.

The best bang of the buck future proof shopuld be probably the 1950x with a X399 board: there will be probable upgrades with 24 cores with higher turbo and hopefully lower latencies between ccx/mem
 
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Joel

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For normal workstation use + gaming, a threadripper 1950x will be better than epyc due to higher clocks which will give better performance for the various softs which can't take advantage of a high amount of cores (very few softs can benefit from more than 16 cores).
The threadripper is very good for aeon: near 4000H/s (near 3$/day) for aeon.
Alternatives in your price range is intel i9: 7900X /7920X: good for lyra2z or more exotic algo.
You may choose a used X99 board with a xeon 2696V3 if you find any at a good price on ebay : with the all core turbo hack, you will have 18 cores at around 3.2ghz/3.3 ghz, and 3.8-3.9 for 8 cores loaded with some overclocking on the bus.
I have bought one on March: I am mining aeon @ 3600 h/s, but used to mine lyra2z around 1900kh/s, lyra2z330 at 3300h/s.

The best bang of the buck future proof shopuld be probably the 1950x with a X399 board: there will be probable upgrades with 24 cores with higher turbo and hopefully lower latencies between ccx/mem
Good point. I guess the main question is if your goal is a workstation that happens to mine, or a miner that can also do work. 1x EPYC 7301 gets 13K about the same as TR on Aeon. There may be other apps that benefit from 64MB of cache too.

Meanwhile TR would probably destroy it for gaming/desktop use because it only turbos up to 2.7GHz.
 
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alex_stief

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While the Epyc processors (get a P version for single socket) provide a good value and are great for mining with a cryptonight algorithm, you have to be aware that the CPU architecture is pretty special with its 4 NUMA nodes per CPU.
Not all software is NUMA-aware and you might end up being limited to the performance of a 4-core Ryzen 5 processor with low clock speeds. Demanding games will definitely struggle.
Similar problem albeit less pronounced with the Threadripper CPUs.
 

IamSpartacus

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Ok I think I've settled on the 1950x for my CPU. Now onto GPU(s). I'm debating between getting a single 1080Ti (gaming about 5% of the time, mining the rest) or two 1070 Ti's where one is mining 24/7 and the other is mining part of the time.

*I can't swing more than the $1,100 it would cost for the dual 1070 Ti's so that's my max GPU budget.
 

StammesOpfer

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Mar 15, 2016
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Ok I think I've settled on the 1950x for my CPU. Now onto GPU(s). I'm debating between getting a single 1080Ti (gaming about 5% of the time, mining the rest) or two 1070 Ti's where one is mining 24/7 and the other is mining part of the time.

*I can't swing more than the $1,100 it would cost for the dual 1070 Ti's so that's my max GPU budget.
Personally I'd go with the 1080ti it will run games better and you wont have to upgrade as soon and then when the next gen whatever comes out you can decide if you want to move that 1080ti down to a second slot and mine with it and play on a new card. 1070ti is more power efficient but that isn't your goal here I don't think. 1080ti is still more profitable (per card) even at lower efficiency. Though 2x 1070ti will produce more hash than a single 1080ti....

So I guess that come down to your long term plan really. Is adding a second card down the road an option and/or keeping this long enough that games will require more horsepower than a single 1070ti will provide. If so 1080ti. If it is about maximizing mining profit now and good gaming performance now. Then 1070ti.

Or the real deciding factor may be what you can get your hands on at a reasonable price.
 

IamSpartacus

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If I'm being honest with myself I'm not going to want to add additional cards in the future because that will entail taking part my custom loop.

So when I think about this being a one time build for the next few years...maybe it does make sense to stretch the budget for two 1080 Ti's. But then the question is, what's better for me:

2x 1080 Ti's ($1800)
3x 1070 Ti's ($1728)

The cost is roughly the same when taking waterblock costs into account. A single 1070 Ti will probably suffice for my gaming needs.
 

StammesOpfer

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Hash rate would be very very similar at 2x 1080ti and 3x 1070ti. I would lean on the dual 1080ti in that case. Or crazy thought here but SLI is not best practice any more so matching cards may not be all that important. Why not one of each?
 

IamSpartacus

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Hash rate would be very very similar at 2x 1080ti and 3x 1070ti. I would lean on the dual 1080ti in that case. Or crazy thought here but SLI is not best practice any more so matching cards may not be all that important. Why not one of each?
Correct I have no intention of using SLI. Two different cards is not the worst idea :).
 

IamSpartacus

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The more I've been reading about how much more effective GPU's are than CPU's at mining, I'm wondering if I'd be better served getting a 3rd 1080Ti and a cheaper CPU (8600k/8700k) in place of a $1000 CPU.
 

StammesOpfer

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Well that depends on the reason you want a 1950x. Do your workstation needs take advantage of the 1950x? Would you notice a significant difference? From a mining perspective right now at least. Yes a 1080ti is blow a CPU out of the water on profitability right now. Like all things in the crypto world go that could change in the next 30 minutes.
 

Joel

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Well that depends on the reason you want a 1950x. Do your workstation needs take advantage of the 1950x? Would you notice a significant difference? From a mining perspective right now at least. Yes a 1080ti is blow a CPU out of the water on profitability right now. Like all things in the crypto world go that could change in the next 30 minutes.
Sure. Anyone who watches Whattomine for more than a few days knows that what's most profitable is whatever coin is the flavor of the minute.

OP, really it comes down to what your actual workloads are. If the biggest use aside from mining is gaming, I'd recommend what I own: 2x 2667v2s.
  • Lots of cores but it still turbos to 4GHz.
  • DDR3 memory so you can get to 128GB for less than 4 figures.
  • Can earn its keep mining ~700h/s per proc @ 300w on cryptonight.
  • More amazeballs stuff to make your mouth water. Just buy it already! :)
 

IamSpartacus

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If I'm being real honest with myself I don't have high CPU needs for this workstation. I'm building a serious overkill custom watercooled PC in a nice CaseLabs SMA8 case. This is half because I need a new PC and half for hobby/fun. Trying to recoup some of the cost over time from mining is really just secondary. I had wanted a nice CPU because I figured I could mine with it when I'm not using but also use the cores for VMs. But then again that's what my Xeon-D cluster is for.

I'm starting to think a more energy efficient gaming CPU is my better interest. One that I can have fun OCing as well.