10 Year Old ASUS P9X79

[tomdean]

I have a 10 year-old ASUS P9X79, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3930K CPU, 16G RAM DDR3 1333 MHz, ATI Radeon HD 6870, Crucial CT500MX500SSD1 disk + several mechanical disks, Corsair H80i cooling, Antec CP-850 850W Power Supply, Antec P183 case, lots of air flow.

I run this 24x7 at 4.2GHz, 0.8406v. It runs at 33-37C, < 70C at full load. Unless I am doing some heavy number-crunching, I see some cores 45-50C.
The system fits my needs, just old (like me).

I am worried the motherboard is on its last legs. Caps drying out, etc.

I am planning a replacement motherboard, CPU, memory and cooling. I asked ASUS, but, they did not answer.
I am not into games, so the video is OK, just old.

Looking at CPU's, I am confused. I am happy with the i7-3930K, but, at 10 years, it needs upgrading.


The same with motherboards. Too many choices. I have a lot of code that is intel specific, so I need to stay with intel CPU's.

I am looking for some help in narrowing the motherboard/CPU/Video choices.

 

[Nebulous]

What's your budget? Also after 10 years, your PSU and cooling will need replacing as well.

 

[tomdean]

What's your budget? Also after 10 years, your PSU and cooling will need replacing as well.

I have not spent much on computing in the past few years. $3-4k+. With covid, my expenses are way down...

I will replace everything but the case and the Crucial SSD (new). I plan to choose a MB and CPU then add other things.

 

[tomdean]

I have not spent much on computing in the past few years. $3-4k+. With covid, my expenses are way down...

I will replace everything but the case and the Crucial SSD (new). I plan to choose a MB and CPU then add other things.

I was thinking of MB only. $3-4k for MB, $1.5k for CPU, $2k for RAM, $1k for PSU, etc. Maybe $10-12k?

 

[MaddMutt]

You didn’t mention if it needs to be a workstation mb.. There are many x299’s to chose from that are not OC oriented.. You also didn’t state how many cores/threads you need. A i9-7900x or 7920x are only $300 or less + you have a large (8 dimms) memory support.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

I was thinking of MB only. $3-4k for MB, $1.5k for CPU, $2k for RAM, $1k for PSU, etc. Maybe $10-12k?

I think you have been out of the loop for a long time Prices for PC parts are not that high for what you want to do. I'll post later with an example list and cost then you can go from there.

 

[EarthDog]

Wonder if dude will ever come back. He hasn't logged in for 2 weeks.

 

[tomdean]

Back and RSA results

I am back. Been busy doing some research and playing... I did some RSA factoring to get a measure of this system for fuiture compare. I am still looking for a workstation. The Lenovo P620 looks good. Octave code:
A = [
100, 14 + 12.480/60, 16 + 16.528/60, 0 + 54.288/60;
110, 30 + 31.743/60, 36 + 9.906/60, 1 + 53.172/60;
120, 122 + 15.643/60, 150 + 14.458/60, 12 + 12.173/60;
130, 524 + 44.362/60, 1012 + 2.621/60, 20 + 1.734/60;
140, 1281 + 12.654/60 1259 + 43.005/60, 57 + 59.721/60 ]

 

[EarthDog]

I'll bite, Tom. What is this...?

 

[tomdean]

Factoring RSA-100, etc.

I'll bite, Tom. What is this...?

I am sorry I was not clear.

I am interested in integer math. One of the areas is factoring large numbers. There was a 'challenge' to factor numbers that were labeled RSA-nnn, like RSA-100, RSA-110.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_numbers#RSA-100
The graph is a measure of time required to factor RSA-nnn, for nnn=100,110,...,140, on my present system.
The 'challenge' went up to RSA-2048, something that is not likely to be done until there is a major breaktrough in computers and algorithms.
I will use this as a means of testing any new system.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

I have a 10 year-old ASUS P9X79, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3930K CPU, 16G RAM DDR3 1333 MHz, ATI Radeon HD 6870, Crucial CT500MX500SSD1 disk + several mechanical disks, Corsair H80i cooling, Antec CP-850 850W Power Supply, Antec P183 case, lots of air flow.

I run this 24x7 at 4.2GHz, 0.8406v. It runs at 33-37C, < 70C at full load. Unless I am doing some heavy number-crunching, I see some cores 45-50C.
The system fits my needs, just old (like me).

I am worried the motherboard is on its last legs. Caps drying out, etc.

I am planning a replacement motherboard, CPU, memory and cooling. I asked ASUS, but, they did not answer.
I am not into games, so the video is OK, just old.

Looking at CPU's, I am confused. I am happy with the i7-3930K, but, at 10 years, it needs upgrading.


The same with motherboards. Too many choices. I have a lot of code that is intel specific, so I need to stay with intel CPU's.

I am looking for some help in narrowing the motherboard/CPU/Video choices.

@tomdean, you mentioned being worried about caps drying out, is your Asus X79 board behaving oddly at all? Solid state capacitors should be good-to-go for a long time.

My Asrock X79 is still chugging away with no real motherboard issues, had some RAM go bad, PSU needed replaced, but MB still kicking.

 

[tomdean]

The only MB problem I have is the core temps seem to be creeping up. Now, with 4 cores at 100% and 2 with a lesser load, the loaded cores are at 71C and the others are at 66C. I think the high temps were like 66C. Idle is 34C. That may be up some...
It may be time to re-paste? It has been a couple years.
I replaced cooling about two years ago.
I have a task running that will finish early Sunday AM (0200?). I plan to shutdown and clean out the dust. Check fans, etc. If the temps are still high, repaste?

I am somewhat slow in deciding new hardware. I want to get it decided before this one fails. But, I am in no hurry.

Maybe I am looking at this backwards. Decide the CPU then the MB? I think my next system will have the AMD threadripper CPU. I looked at a compare of the AMD 3360X and the 3945wx. Seems like the 3360 is somewhat better, more cores?
https://hwbench.com/cpus/amd-ryzen-threadripper-pro-3945wx-vs-amd-ryzen-threadripper-3960x.

 

[EarthDog]

It could be anything... warmer ambient temps...etc. you can repaste, but I don't imagine a significant improvement.

Are you sure this software you run can scale with that many cores and threads? You currently have 4 and you say they aren't loaded at 100%. You're all about Threadripper but I'd confirm this software scales before dropping so much coin into a cpu.

3960 (you say 3360, but linked 3960...I assume meant that one) has a shed load more cores and threads, yes. IF, your software scales that hjgh, it would be faster, yes.

So... what software is this? Can I download it in windows 10 amd run the same thing you do to see if it scales with cores and threads? I've got an 18c/36t cpu I can test quickly.

 

[tomdean]

The factoring software is cado-nfs. It has to be built from source. "Windows used to be partly supported, but this has been abandoned for some time."
From the cado-nfs web site, "With CADO-NFS 1.1 using cadofactor.pl, the timing runs used 16 processes of 1 thread each for polynomial selection and 8 processes of 2 threads each for sieving;"
So, yes, it does scale.

 

[EarthDog]

So it uses 3 threads (a process is not a thread)? I don't see how that alludes to scaling.

I have windows so, I can't help out to test.

Perhaps you should reach out to whoever owns/supports that factoring software and ask the actual question. It would be a shame to drop the knot on a TR CPU when it barely get used.

 

[tomdean]

Looks like a part of cado-nfs is using all of 6 cores. From top, I see
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU P %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1082921 tomdean 20 0 467796 261516 9604 S 195.0 7 1.6 10:34.88 las
1082893 tomdean 20 0 446176 263776 9408 S 194.0 11 1.6 10:42.22 las
1082025 tomdean 20 0 468052 264952 9376 S 193.0 11 1.6 18:07.24 las
1082310 tomdean 20 0 446320 263512 9544 S 192.0 8 1.6 15:42.18 las
1081471 tomdean 20 0 467164 264776 9508 S 187.0 0 1.6 22:40.61 las
1083210 tomdean 20 0 466780 260876 9628 S 187.0 2 1.6 8:11.05 las

 

[EarthDog]

Tom, I have no idea how this software works. My underlying point is to confirm with the devs or maybe the community that it can utilize more and scale to however many cores/threads you want to get. Some research you need to do on your own... this is it . Report back!

 

[tomdean]

cado-nfs does scale. I ran on the Purdue Condor system, using 10k threads.

BTW. I vaccumed out my system and dropped the temps by 3C.