PC won't start

My informatics master thesis was about image processing, more specifically isolating intracellular structures in series of microscopy sections. I've always wanted to do some more with these things. I will use a library developed at the university of Oslo, running on Unix and Linux. So it does need to be fast.

pibbur

But these processes only use CPU power, don't they?

And RAM, depending on the type and number of images in a series.

pibbur

And GPU for those specilized code path. GPU have wicked processors.
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Anyway pibbur what do you intend to do with linux. I.e, how much processing power do you require? The reason I ask is that you can get pretty cheap pentinum boxes - in the price range of $200 for complete systems (well you can in USA; not sure about Norway). Also if you do build it yourself for this sort of box you might be able to scrounge cheap last generation parts off the used market. I've seen duo core systems with 4 GB (ddr2) and 250GB hard drives for $88 (these are new or refurbished - usually dells or hp). No they aren't super fast but if you just want to web browse or test linux then they could hold you over until you build your new system.

I decided to build my new Windows PC now.

That's what I wanted to do, and when, suddenly, my pusher had a decent AM4 MB on sale, I sort of couldn't afford not to (at least that's what I told me).

Here's what I ordered:

1. AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU
2. ASUS ROG STRIX X470-F GAMING MB
3. G.Skill Flare X DDR4 16GB KIT 3200Mhz

It's about the same as the Ryzen package I mentioned earlier, but I chose G-skill RAM because it's highly recommended for Ryzen on the internet.

Total cost: 7376 NOK (912 USD). Sounds expensive? It's not. Remember that Norway is a high cost/high wages country. BTW, The first i486 PC I saw, and Apricot, coast 140 000 NOK (17000 USD), back in the mid 80's.

pibbur who may regret this choice, but that's because he always regrets any choice he makes (except the choice of wife).

PS. Of course I wanted > 16 Gb RAM, but the internet (probably also the joxer, whose opinion I value) says that would be overkill. DS.

One question regarding disks. I have an Asustor NAS box, with 3 disk in a RAID, and one slot for disks I can swap whenever needed. I have 3 disks for use in that slot. That's more than I actually need. So I was considering using one of them as a normal HDD.

It's a NAS disk (3 TB WD Red). I wouldn't buy one of these as a regular HD, but since I already have it, are there any significant problems using it that way?

pibbur who already has all the SSD's he needs.

912 is EXPENSIVE. In the USA that would be approx $$500-600 (depending on mb deal - microcenter usually has nice 'make your own' bundle for $50 savings but i didn't check them)

btw my first 8088 machine was 4500 (usa) way back in 1982 or 1983.

you said:

912 is EXPENSIVE. In the USA that would be approx $$500-600 (depending on mb deal - microcenter usually has nice 'make your own' bundle for $50 savings but i didn't check them)

btw my first 8088 machine was 4500 (usa) way back in 1982 or 1983.

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I should have said it's not expensive in Norway. Or something like that. Yes, prices are high here, but to be honest, so are our wages. I wouldn't be surprised if 900 USD/(average yearly income in Norway) is less than 600 USD/(average yearly income some other places).

pibbur who may or may not be right.

pibbur who said:

One question regarding disks. I have an Asustor NAS box, with 3 disk in a RAID, and one slot for disks I can swap whenever needed. I have 3 disks for use in that slot. That's more than I actually need. So I was considering using one of them as a normal HDD.

It's a NAS disk (3 TB WD Red). I wouldn't buy one of these as a regular HD, but since I already have it, are there any significant problems using it that way?

pibbur who already has all the SSD's he needs.

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I wouldn't expect any problems with that. I've dismantled external drive enclosures, created a new partitioning scheme on the disk, and recycled it as an internal disk. There's no significant physical difference, AFAIK.

pibbur who said:

One question regarding disks. I have an Asustor NAS box, with 3 disk in a RAID, and one slot for disks I can swap whenever needed. I have 3 disks for use in that slot. That's more than I actually need. So I was considering using one of them as a normal HDD.

It's a NAS disk (3 TB WD Red). I wouldn't buy one of these as a regular HD, but since I already have it, are there any significant problems using it that way?

pibbur who already has all the SSD's he needs.

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Black, Red, Blue, Green, etc will all work fine.

Even better, if you have 2, set up software Raid 1 for your data drive.

pibbur who said:

I decided to build my new Windows PC now.

That's what I wanted to do, and when, suddenly, my pusher had a decent AM4 MB on sale, I sort of couldn't afford not to (at least that's what I told me).

Here's what I ordered:

1. AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU
2. ASUS ROG STRIX X470-F GAMING MB
3. G.Skill Flare X DDR4 16GB KIT 3200Mhz

It's about the same as the Ryzen package I mentioned earlier, but I chose G-skill RAM because it's highly recommended for Ryzen on the internet.

Total cost: 7376 NOK (912 USD). Sounds expensive? It's not. Remember that Norway is a high cost/high wages country. BTW, The first i486 PC I saw, and Apricot, coast 140 000 NOK (17000 USD), back in the mid 80's.

pibbur who may regret this choice, but that's because he always regrets any choice he makes (except the choice of wife).

PS. Of course I wanted > 16 Gb RAM, but the internet (probably also the joxer, whose opinion I value) says that would be overkill. DS.

Click to expand...

Looks like a fun system! And RAM will depend on what software you're using. I was using Adobe After Effects the other day and couldn't finish rendering the warp stabilizer on a large video because I "only" had 16gb of ram. Our marketing department here at work sometimes runs out when they have over 32gb.

Why is that better; after all the overhead cost is 100% instead of 33%. I would like to run 8+2 but instead run 4+2 (10 disk is a lot of disks - 6 is still a lot but not too bad with a consumer mb/case).

On linux I typically run 'software' raid via zfs. Also zfs and brts have checksum auto repair (i.e, each file has a strong checksum and if errors are detected at read time the file is rebuilt).

Caddy said:

Black, Red, Blue, Green, etc will all work fine.

Even better, if you have 2, set up software Raid 1 for your data drive.

Click to expand...

you said:

Why is that better; after all the overhead cost is 100% instead of 33%. I would like to run 8+2 but instead run 4+2 (10 disk is a lot of disks - 6 is still a lot but not too bad with a consumer mb/case).

On linux I typically run 'software' raid via zfs. Also zfs and brts have checksum auto repair (i.e, each file has a strong checksum and if errors are detected at read time the file is rebuilt).

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I'm just saying if you have a free drive not being used, it's always nice having some redundancy for user folders (assuming he's running SSD = boot partition HDD = data partition). If everything is going to the NAS though, it doesn't really matter.

btw one common reason for disk corruption is sector realloc.

Well, so I've got my new windows PC up and running. I was for a while tempted to replace the X470-F Gaming MB with the Crosshair VII Hero (which, since the X470-F was on sale would cost me twice as much). But I realized that there wasn't much beyond the nice-to-have factor for buying it. So I bought a 500GB SSD in stead.

Installing the equipment went mostly smoothly. Had a bit of problem mounting the fan, nothing that a good crowbar and a sledgehammer should be able to solve (I bet that wouldn't work an Intel platform).

But noiw I'm up and running. Looks nice so far,, but I'm still m ostly installing things. A bit more noise than with my previous system which had water cooling.

Unfortunately, I've run into problems installing Linux (Opensuse Leap 15) on the retired win-pc. System hangs on "starting udev…" . Seems like umpteen people have had problems with that, all back from ver 11. And there are umpteen suggestions for solving it as well, which is kind of impractical. I've tried a few of the suggestions, and I've also tried different versions of the installation packages, so far without any results (other than the system hanging, that is).

pibbur is a bit unhappy about this, but who will play LOTRO now.

Why don't you try ubuntu 18.04 it might have a few minor issues on the install (I ran into a partition issue) but if nothing else you can see if it boots from the usb ?

Up and running on opensuse. I removed the DVD player (installed from an USB).

pibbur

As someone who mostly knows prejudices about Linux it sounds like a case of "it's not a bug, it's a feature".

Regarding the noise: Did you change the fan profile, and set them to the according connection type? Especially PWM case fans connected on the board might be controlled via non-PWM as standard, which makes them quite loud. Might require an adjustment in the bios.

I suspect the DVD player was not entirely healthy. Had occasional problems with it under windows as well. Then again, I read that one victim of the "feature" said he solved it by moving the DVD SATA cable to another outlet. And I remember (vaguely) that some time ago, when doing some kind of upgrade which kept failing, I solved it by temporarily disconnecting the DVD player - I found that solution on the internet.

As for the noise: It's only a minor thing, I only noticed because I was looking (listening) for it. I usually wear headphones in front of the PC, so it's not a problem. Maybe I'll see what's can be done about it, maybe I won't bother.

pibbux

No it is a bug. If the drive was having errors they should have shown up. I suspect the drive has an id not recognize by the linux install and it incorrectly classified it but I'm not an expert here and i forget the details of udev.

It is also possible the drive did not respond correctly but I would have expected a timeout if one waited long enough - but if he was booting from the cdrom then i would go with the above comment.
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Hum a bit of 'googling' and I found this if you really want to find the root cause of the hang (not sure you are that curious):

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/55189/starting-udev-hangs-at-boot

Kordanor said:

As someone who mostly knows prejudices about Linux it sounds like a case of "it's not a bug, it's a feature".

Regarding the noise: Did you change the fan profile, and set them to the according connection type? Especially PWM case fans connected on the board might be controlled via non-PWM as standard, which makes them quite loud. Might require an adjustment in the bios.

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