Am Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 11:31:48AM +0000 schrieb Michael:
> On Thursday, 20 February 2025 19:18:52 Greenwich Mean Time 
> whiteman808@paraboletancza.org wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I want to build a PC with Gentoo and I need to know how much money
> > should I spend on it.
> 
> Only you can make this judgment.  There is usually a sweet spot between 
> performance and price.  They are both measurable, but the value/cost ratio any 
> level of performance represents is quite subjective.  Typically, a previous 
> generation of CPUs is more cost effective, while performance increases with 
> each generation.
> 
> 
> > To clarify, I'll tell more for what I'm going to use PC:
> > […]
> > * it's very probable I'll want to add one or more HDDs with capacity >=
> > 4 TB, connected by SATA,
> 
> Hmm ... AM4 socket CPUs could drive SATA x2 + PCIe x2 NVME M.2.  I've read 
> that with AM5 CPUs it's all PCIe.  You will have to hook any SATA drives on 
> the PCIe, or perhaps externally via USB.

Uhm, not quite. It is true that the I/O die inside the AM4 CPUs supports 
2×SATA, which the I/O die in AM5 does not do anymore. But that doesn’t mean 
that boards don’t provide SATA. In fact, of all 206 AM5 boards listed in my 
product comparison website, exactly one model does not have any SATA ports. 
And that’s because it’s a server board with a non-standard form factor and 
Oculink instead.

> > * motherboard should have many USB ports, even better if it would have
> > USB 3 and a few USB type C,
> > * I'm going to work on three monitors displaying tiling wm with my
> > workflow based on tmux+neovim+qutebrowser+neomutt etc.
> 
> The iGPU on AM5 can drive one dedicated display, while 3 more displays can be 
> hooked up to the USB-C ports as DP-alt mode.

What do you mean with one dedicated display?
According to https://www.anandtech.com/show/17585/amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x-and-ryzen-5-7600x-review-retaking-the-high-end/3
the AM4 iGPU supports three displays, AM5’s four. And it does not matter 
which connector you use, be it HDMI¹, DisplayPort, DVI or even VGA.

However, of the mentioned 206 AM5 boards, only 56 have three display 
connectors, just 4 boards have four. So if you want to use more displays 
than you have connectors, you need DisplayPort daisy-chaining.

> > Can you recommend an example PC configuration that will meet my
> > requirements? Will PC with AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and motherboard with
> > installed 64 GB RAM be fine? This cpu supports up to 128 GB RAM and has
> > integrated graphics and isn't too expensive for me.
> > 
> > Thank you,
> > whiteman808
> 
> The Ryzen 9 7950X is a beast in terms of CPU frequencies it can achieve and 
> will make compiling any of today's software a breeze.  Which brings me to ... 
> cooling.  :-)  Although it is more efficient power-wise than previous 
> generations of CPUs, its TDP at 170W is not to be sniffed at.  AMD recommends 
> water cooling which adds to the cost, especially if you intend to squeeze 
> higher boost frequencies through PBO2/CO tweaking.

If you disable the boost, the CPU will run much much more efficiently, in 
terms of compute power per consumed unit of energy. Example: I have an 8700G 
APU, it’s only a 65 W chip (65 × 1.4 = 91 W top consumption). But it sits in 
a cramped case with a not-so big air cooler. When I let it boost to 5.2 GHz, 
then just loading one or two cores makes the fan spin up loudly and the chip 
reaches 70 °C. If I disable boost, the processor goes only to 4.2 GHz, but 
even when loading 8 or more cores, the fan stays rather quiet and the temps 
well below 60 degrees.

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