AMD Ryzen 9 5950X may NOT be as fast for CFD as I otherwise thought/hoped

So this test is based on the same testcase, but just testing it with two different CFD applications.

Both are steady-state solutions (which is normally used to initialise the flow field for the transient solution, which I am not testing at the moment).

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X cluster is two nodes, where each node has an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16-cores, SMT disabled), 128 GB of DDR4-3200 unbuffered, non-ECC RAM, and a Mellanox ConnectX-4 MCX456A-ECAT 100 Gbps Infiniband network card whilst the Xeon cluster is two nodes, each with dual Intel Xeon E5-2690 (V1, 8-cores each, HTT disabled for both processors), 128 GB of DDR3-1866 2Rx4 Registered ECC RAM running at DDR3-1600 speeds.

In one of the applications, the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X finishes the solution in 23342.021 seconds whilst the Xeon pair of nodes finishes the same steady state solution in 15834.675 seconds (or about a 32.16% reduction in wall clock time), which is rather significant. This run has about 13.4 million cells and it takes this long because it is running for 1000 iterations.

And then in another, different CFD application, but also running the steady-state solution run for 48 iterations, and finishes the solution on the AMD system in 292.665 seconds whilst on the Xeon system, it finishes this solution in 264.48 seconds or about 9.63% faster.

That's really interesting that the AMD Ryzen 9 system, despite it being 8 and a half years newer, still isn't able to be as fast as an older Xeon-based cluster.

The only real upside to using the Ryzen-based system over the Xeon based system -- well, two things actually are:

1) The Ryzen based system uses quite a lot less power compared to the Xeon cluster. It isn't surprising that I can see power consumptions, under load, of upwards or around 1 kW for just running two nodes (and running all four nodes pushes that total up to somewhere between 1.6-1.9 kW) whereas the Ryzen based systems combined, is using probably only about maybe 400 W total.

2) The Ryzen based system is a LOT quieter than the Xeon Supermicro Twin Pro^2 server (6027TR-HTRF). 

 

So, if you're running it in a home lab environment where you don't live by yourself, then despite it being slower, it might still be a better alternative for these two reasons.

And the Ryzen based solution is certainly cheaper than the Threadripper, Threadripper Pro, and/or AMD EPYC solution platforms, where you might be able to get some of that performance back, but I can't say for certain without actually testing it myself because I thought that having the 16 faster clock speed cores on the Ryzen 9 5950X would be faster than the Xeon E5-2690 platform. Based on the data and the results, I stand corrected.

I did not expect that.

Engineering data consolidation efforts

Since I built my Ryzen 5950X system, and the 12900K system, and then had to completely disassemble the 12900K system, and then built another Ryzen 5950X system whilst arguing with Asus, I was in the middle of a data consolidation effort for all of my engineering data from the various projects that I've worked on over the years.

Today marks the day where the first pass of this data consolidation effort has completed and I ended up saving almost 14 TB of storage space.

It feels nice, and I get a sense of accomplishment as the data is being written to tape right now.

I can't believe that it's taken me like about 6 months to finish this data consolidation effort.

At some points during the process of unpacking, packing, and then re-packing the data, both Ryzen 5950Xs and also the Intel Core i7-4930K that's in the headnode was oversubscribed 3:1 when it was processing the data. That just seems pretty crazy to me because that's also a little bit of an indication as to how much work the CPUs had to do to process and re-process the data.

Not to mention, my poor, poor hard drives, that have been working so hard throughout all of this.

Welp....this is a problem.

Let me begin with the problem statement:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    Send BW Test

 Dual-port       : OFF        Device         : mlx5_0

 Number of qps   : 1        Transport type : IB

 Connection type : RC        Using SRQ      : OFF

 TX depth        : 128

 CQ Moderation   : 100

 Mtu             : 4096[B]

 Link type       : IB

 Max inline data : 0[B]

 rdma_cm QPs     : OFF

 Data ex. method : Ethernet

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 local address: LID 0x0c QPN 0x008d PSN 0x277b7c

 remote address: LID 0x05 QPN 0x010f PSN 0xda4554

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 #bytes     #iterations    BW peak[Gb/sec]    BW average[Gb/sec]   MsgRate[Mpps]

 2          100000           0.000000            0.064007            4.000452

 4          100000           0.00               0.11              3.516592

 8          100000           0.00               0.26              4.078050

 16         100000           0.00               0.52              4.069701

 32         100000           0.00               1.05              4.086223

 64         100000           0.00               2.09              4.074705

 128        100000           0.00               4.27              4.167070

 256        100000           0.00               9.31              4.547246

 512        100000           0.00               12.20             2.978638

 1024       100000           0.00               13.17             1.607263

 2048       100000           0.00               13.64             0.832231

 4096       100000           0.00               13.82             0.421746

 8192       100000           0.00               13.96             0.212971

 16384      100000           0.00               14.08             0.107404

 32768      100000           0.00               14.12             0.053869

 65536      100000           0.00               14.17             0.027029

 131072     100000           0.00               14.19             0.013528

 262144     100000           0.00               14.17             0.006759

 524288     100000           0.00               14.15             0.003375

 1048576    100000           0.00               14.16             0.001688

 2097152    100000           0.00               14.14             0.000843

 4194304    100000           0.00               14.13             0.000421

 8388608    100000           0.00               14.12             0.000210

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What you see above is the results from the 100 Gbps Infiniband network bandwidth test that are between my two AMD Ryzen 5950X systems. Both of them has a discrete GPU in the primary PCIe slot, and then the Mellanox ConnectX-4 dual port, 100 Gbps Infiniband NIC is in the next available PCIe slot.

I can't really tell from the motherboard manual for the Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming WiFi II motherboard what speed the second PCIe slot is supposed to be when there is a discrete GPU plugged into the primary PCIe slot.

The Mellanox ConnectX-4 card is a PCIe 3.0 x16 card, which means that the slot itself is supposed to support upto 128 Gbps (and the ports themselves is supposed to go up to a maximum of 100 Gbps out of the 128 Gbps that's theorectically available). If the slots were running as PCIe 3.0 x4, it should be capable of 32 Gbps.

As the results show, clearly, that is not the case.

I'll have to see if I can run both of those systems without the discrete GPU, so that I can plug the Mellanox cards into the primary PCIe slot.


*Update 2022-06-14*:

So I took out the discrete GPUs from both systems and put the Mellanox card into the primary PCIe slot and this is what I get from the bandwidth test results:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                    Send BW Test
 Dual-port       : OFF        Device         : mlx5_0
 Number of qps   : 1        Transport type : IB
 Connection type : RC        Using SRQ      : OFF
 TX depth        : 128
 CQ Moderation   : 100
 Mtu             : 4096[B]
 Link type       : IB
 Max inline data : 0[B]
 rdma_cm QPs     : OFF
 Data ex. method : Ethernet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 local address: LID 0x0c QPN 0x008c PSN 0x5ccdd5
 remote address: LID 0x05 QPN 0x010a PSN 0x178491
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 #bytes     #iterations    BW peak[Gb/sec]    BW average[Gb/sec]   MsgRate[Mpps]
 2          100000           0.000000            0.066552            4.159479
 4          100000           0.00               0.11              3.529205
 8          100000           0.00               0.27              4.225857
 16         100000           0.00               0.54              4.254547
 32         100000           0.00               1.09              4.254549
 64         100000           0.00               2.19              4.276291
 128        100000           0.00               4.51              4.408332
 256        100000           0.00               9.21              4.498839
 512        100000           0.00               18.60             4.540925
 1024       100000           0.00               36.74             4.485289
 2048       100000           0.00               75.76             4.623960
 4096       100000           0.00               96.55             2.946372
 8192       100000           0.00               96.57             1.473530
 16384      100000           0.00               96.58             0.736823
 32768      100000           0.00               96.58             0.368421
 65536      100000           0.00               96.58             0.184218
 131072     100000           0.00               96.58             0.092109
 262144     100000           0.00               96.58             0.046055
 524288     100000           0.00               96.58             0.023027
 1048576    100000           0.00               96.58             0.011514
 2097152    100000           0.00               96.58             0.005757
 4194304    100000           0.00               96.58             0.002878
 8388608    100000           0.00               96.58             0.001439
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Ahhhh.....much better. That's more like it.

Vastly differing results in WSL2 between 5950X and 12900K in Windows 10 21H2

A little while ago, I came across this video which was talking about how you can run Linux graphical applications natively in Windows (more specifically, in Windows 11).

However, when at the time when I watched said original video, I didn't have any hardware that could actually really run that probably. My "newest" system that I had was an Intel Core i7-6700K and as far as I know, it didn't have the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) anywhere (whether it is as an external add-on dongle) or integrated into the motherboard firmware/BIOS.

So, I didn't really make much of it back then.

But since then, I've built both my AMD Ryzen 9 5950X system and also my Intel Core i9-12900K system and I figured that with some of the work that I needed the systems to be doing over with, I had a little bit of time with the system to do some more testing with it.

So I grabbed two extra HGST 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm HDDs (one per system), threw Windows 10 21H2 on it, and proceeded with the instructions on how to install and configure Windows Subsytem for Linux 2 (WSL2). I installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (which really, turned out to be 20.04.4 LTS), and proceeded to try and install the graphical layer/elements to it.

So that's all fine and dandy. (Well, not really because in both instances, neither of the systems was able to start the display and I can't tell if it is because I have older video cards in the system (Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 and a GTX 660 respectively - because as a CentOS 7.7.1908 system, it didn't really matter what I had in there since I was going to remote in over VNC anyways).)

But, since I had it installed, AND by some miracle, Windows 10 picked up on the Mellanox ConnectX-4 dual port VPI 100 Gbps Infiniband cards automatically, I just had to manually give each card in each system an IPv4 address so that it can talk to my cluster headnode (which was still running CentOS along with the OpenSM), and connect up to the network shares that I had set up. (SELinux is a PITA. But I got Samba going on said CentOS system so that on the Linux side, it can connect up to the RAID arrays using NFS-over-RDMA whilst in Windows, it's just through "normal" Samba (i.e. NOT SMB Direct).)

So, I might as well benchmark the systems to see how fast it would be able to write and read a 1024*1024*10240 byte file.

And for fun, I also installed Cygwin on both of the systems as well, so that I can compare the two together.

Being that both systems was able to pick up the Mellanox ConnectX-4 card right away (I didn't have to do anything special, install the Mellanox drivers, etc.), I was able to connect up to my cluster headnode and the Samba shares were visible immediately. As a result of that, I was able to right-click on both of those shared folders and map it to a network drive directly and automatically.

Now, in WSL2, I had to mount the mapped network drive using the command:

$ sudo mount -t drvfs V: /mnt/V

(Source: https://superuser.com/questions/1128634/how-to-access-mounted-network-drive-on-windows-linux-subsystem)

And then once that was done, I was able to run the follow commands in both Ubuntu on WSL2 and also in Cygwin:

Write test:
$ time -p dd if=/dev/zero of=10Gfile bs=1024k count=10240

Read test:
$ time -p dd if=10Gfile of=/dev/null bs=1024k

Here are the results:

Huh. Interrresting.

I have absolutely NO clue why WSL2 on the 5950X is so much slower compared to WSL2 on the 12900K.

But what is interesting though is that the speeds are close, with the 5950X being a little bit faster under Cygwin than the 12900K, also under Cygwin.

I decided to blog about this because there is a potential possibility that for those that might be working with WSL2, the hardware that you pick MAY have an adverse performance impact.

I'm not sure who, if anybody, has done a cross-platform comparison like this before but to be honest, I haven't really bothered to look for it either because you might have reasonably expected that this significant performance difference wouldn't/doesn't exist, but the results clearly show that there's a difference. And a rather significant difference in performance at that.

Please be aware and you should do your own testing for your workload/case/circumstance if you get a chance to be able to do so.

Getting the latest and greatest hardware running in Linux is sometimes, a bit of a nightmare

Just prior to the holidays, I decided to upgrade one of three of my systems and consolidate it down to two. My old Supermicro Big Twin^2 Pro micro cluster server and two HP Z420 workstations (that I was using in lieu of the Supermicro because the Supermicro was "too loud") were getting replaced by an AMD system, built on the Ryzen 9 5950X CPU and an Intel system, built on the latest and greatest that Intel had to offer - the Core i9-12900K.

So, I speced out all of the rest of the hardware, which really, consisted of the motherboard, RAM, and the CPU heatsink and fan assembly whilst I was able to reuse some of my older, existing components as well. (I did have to buy an extra power supply though because I had originally miscalculated how many power supplies that I would need.)

So that's all fine and dandy. All of the hardware arrived just before the start of the Christmas break for me, so I started to set up the AMD system. Install the CPU, the RAM, the CPU HSF, plug everything in, check and double check all of the connections - everything is good to go. I used Rufus USB to write the CentOS 7.7.1908 installed onto a USB drive, plug in the keyboard, mouse, and flip the switch on the power supply and off I go right?

[buzzer]

Nope!

Near instant kernel panic. Nice.

 

As you can see from the picture above, less than 3 seconds into the boot sequence from the USB drive - Linux has a kernel panic.

Great.

So now I get the "fun" [/sarcasm] job of trying to sort this kernel panic out. Try it a few more times, the same thing happens.

So, ok. Now I'm thinking that the hardware is too new for this older Linux distro and version (and kernel). So, I take out my Intel Core i7-3930K system (one of them that I use to run my tape backup system), and I plug the hard drive into that system, along with the video card back in, and run through the boot and installation process (which worked without any issues of course), power down the 3930K, take the hard drive back out, and plug it into the 5950X system. Power it on. (I set the BIOS to power on after AC loss so that I can turn on the system even when it isn't inside a case and I don't have a power button connected to it.)

The official CentOS forums state that they only support CentOS 7.9.2009, so I try that as well, still to no avail.

Eventually, I end up using a spare Intel 545 series 512 GB SATA 6 Gbps SSD that I had laying around so that I could try installing and re-installing, trying different drivers, kernel modules, kernels, etc. a LOT faster than I was able to with a 7,200 rpm HDD.

End net result: I filed a bug report with kernel.org because the mainline kernel 5.15.11 kept producing kernel panics with the Mellanox 100 Gbps Infiniband network card installed. And it didn't matter whether I tried to use the "inbox" CentOS Infiniband drivers or the "official" Mellanox OFED Infiniband drivers.

Yet another Linux kernel panic.

Interestingly enough, the mainline kernel 5.14.15 works with the Infiniband NIC just fine. So that's what I landed on/with. 

The other major problem that I ran into was that the Asus X570 TUF Gaming Pro (WiFi) used the Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE NIC. Unbeknownst to me when I originally purchased the motherboard, I didn't realise that Intel does NOT have a Linux driver (even on Intel's website) for said Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE NIC. And what was weird was that when I migrating the SSD over during the testing and trying to find/figure out a configuration that worked, said Intel onboard 2.5 GbE NIC would work initially, but then it would eventually and periodically drop out and so that was quite the puzzle because if there wasn't a driver for it, then how was it that it was able to work when I moved the drive over?

As a result of that, that took up a couple of days where I would be trying to clone the disk image over from the Intel SSD over onto the HGST HDD using dd and in the end, that didn't work either.

So, what did I end up with?

This is the hardware specs that I ended up with on the AMD system:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16-core, 3.4 GHz stock base clock, 4.9 GHz max boost clock, SMT enabled)

Motherboard: Asus X570 TUF Gaming Pro (WiFi)

RAM: 4x Crucial 32 GB DDR4-3200 unbuffered, non-ECC RAM CL22 (128 GB total)

CPU HSF: Noctua NH-D15 with one stock 140 mm fan, and one NF-A14 industrialPPC 3000 PWM fan

Video card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980

Hard drive: 1x HGST 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm HDD

NIC: Mellanox ConnectX-4 dual port 100 Gbps 4x EDR Infiniband (MCX456A-ECAT)

NIC: Intel Gigabit CT Desktop 1 GbE NIC (Intel 82574L chipset)

Power Supply: Corsair CX750M

OS: CentOS 7.7.1908 kernel 5.14.15-1-el7.elrepo.x86_64

 

I ended up adding the Intel Gigabit CT Desktop NIC because a) it was an extra Intel GbE NIC AIC that I had also laying around, and b) it proved to be able to provide a vastly more reliable connection than the onboard Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE due to the driver issue.

Now that I have the system set up and running, there is a  higher probabilty that the igc kernel module probably works more reliably now than it did when I was originally setting up the system, but being that it was not reliable when I was doing the initial setup and testing, I am less likely to use said onboard NIC, which is a pity. Brand spankin' new motherboard and I can't even use nor trust the reliability of the onboard NIC. And I can't even blame Asus for it because it is an Intel NIC. (Sidebar: Ironically, the Asus Z690 Prime-P D4 motherboard that I also purchased uses a Realtek RTL8125 2.5 GbE NIC, which I WAS able to find a driver for that and it has been working flawlessly with it.)

That took probably on the order of around 10 days, from beginning to end, to get the AMD system up and running.

The Intel system was a little bit easier to set up.

The kernel panic issue with the mainline 5.15.11 kernel and Infiniband was also present on the Intel platform as well.

Interestingly and ironically enough, the newer kernel kept crashing or had severe stability issues. It turns out that I did NOT install the RAM correctly (i.e. in the DIMM_A2 and DIMM_B2 slots), so since then, I've corrected that.

Keen readers might note that I have stated that I have 4 sticks of RAM, except that one of the sticks arrived DOA, and is currently being sent back to Crucial under RMA, so when it comes back, then I will be able to install the extra stick that is currently not installed and the stick that is due back from the RMA exchange.

I might try the newer kernels again later, but for now, at least the system is up and running so that I can start making it do the work that I need it to be doing.

The system stability issues due to the error that I made when installing (and uninstalling) the RAM (because I was testing the stick of RAM that wouldn't POST that ended up getting RMA'd back to Crucial), I ended up with a RAM installation configuration that wasn't correct and the resulting system stability issues ate up a few more days.

So, in the end, it took me almost the entire Christmas holiday to get both of these systems up and running.

(This is also a really good reason why traditionally, I have stuck with workstation and server hardware because on my old Supermicro micro cluster, I can deploy all four nodes in 2 hours or less. It's a pity that the system is too loud.)

This is the hardware that I ended up with on the Intel system:

CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K (16 cores (8P + 8E), 3.2 GHz/2.4 GHz base clock speed, 5.2 GHz/3.9 GHz max boost clock, HTT enabled)

Motherboard: Asus Z690 Prime-P D4

RAM: 4x Crucial 32 GB DDR4-3200 unbuffered, non-ECC RAM CL22 (128 GB total)

CPU HSF: Noctua NH-D15 with one stock 140 mm fan, and one NF-A14 industrialPPC 3000 PWM fan

Video card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660

Hard drive: 1x HGST 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm HDD

NIC: Mellanox ConnectX-4 dual port 100 Gbps 4x EDR Infiniband (MCX456A-ECAT)

NIC: Intel Gigabit CT Desktop 1 GbE NIC (Intel 82574L chipset)

Power Supply: Corsair CX750M

OS: CentOS 7.7.1908 kernel 3.10.0-1127.el7.x86_64

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is faster than the Intel Core i9-12900K for mining Raptoreum

The results speak for themselves.

 

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is faster at mining Raptoreum than Intel's latest and greatest 12th gen Core i9-12900K.

 

System/hardware specs:

AMD:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16-core, 3.4 GHz stock base clock, 4.9 GHz max boost clock, SMT enabled)

Motherboard: Asus X570 TUF Gaming Pro (WiFi)

RAM: 4x Crucial 32 GB DDR4-3200 unbuffered, non-ECC RAM CL22 (128 GB total)

CPU HSF: Noctua NH-D15 with one stock 140 mm fan, and one NF-A14 industrialPPC 3000 PWM fan

Video card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980

Hard drive: 1x HGST 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm HDD

NIC: Mellanox ConnectX-4 dual port 100 Gbps 4x EDR Infiniband (MCX456A-ECAT)

NIC: Intel Gigabit CT Desktop 1 GbE NIC (Intel 82574L chipset)

Power Supply: Corsair CX750M

OS: CentOS 7.7.1908 kernel 5.14.15-1-el7.elrepo.x86_64

Intel:

CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K (16 cores (8P + 8E), 3.2 GHz/2.4 GHz base clock speed, 5.2 GHz/3.9 GHz max boost clock, HTT enabled)

Motherboard: Asus Z690 Prime-P D4

RAM: 4x Crucial 32 GB DDR4-3200 unbuffered, non-ECC RAM CL22 (128 GB total)

CPU HSF: Noctua NH-D15 with one stock 140 mm fan, and one NF-A14 industrialPPC 3000 PWM fan

Video card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660

Hard drive: 1x HGST 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm HDD

NIC: Mellanox ConnectX-4 dual port 100 Gbps 4x EDR Infiniband (MCX456A-ECAT)

NIC: Intel Gigabit CT Desktop 1 GbE NIC (Intel 82574L chipset)

Power Supply: Corsair CX750M

OS: CentOS 7.7.1908 kernel 3.10.0-1127.el7.x86_64

Configuration notes:

I had about two weeks over the Christmas break 2021 to receive all of the hardware, assemble the systems, and get the systems set up and up and running. And that was quite the endeavour because with the latest and greatest hardware, the older versions of CentOS (7.7.1908) and the older kernel didn't work with all of the features and functions with this level of hardware.

As a result, I had to "jumpstart" both systems by first installing the OS using my Intel Core i7-3930K system (Asus X79 Sabertooth motherboard, 4x Crucial 8 GB DDR3-1600 unbuffered, non-ECC RAM, Mellanox MCX456A-ECAT, GTX 660) first, and then update the systems (at least in part) before I can transplant the hard drive with the OS install into their respective systems and finish setting the systems up. (I will write more about that "journey"/clusterf in another blog post here shortly because it was quite the journey to jumpstart both of these systems simultaneously, which took pretty much the full two weeks that I had.)

You will find out how and why I ended up with the respective hardware choices in that blog post.

I am using cpuminer-gr-1.2.4.1-x86_64_linux from here (https://github.com/WyvernTKC/cpuminer-gr-avx2/releases/tag/1.2.4.1).

For the Intel system, because of the existence of the combination of (P)erformance Cores and (E)fficiency Cores and HyperThreading, this resulted in more combinations that I had to test in order to find the setting that had the highest Raptoreum hash rate as reported from their benchmarking tool. Each time the CPU configuration changed, I ran a full tune again, which you might well imagine, took quite some time to do. In the cases where the efficient cores were disabled, I also tested and re-ran the full tune for both AVX2 and AVX512.

The AVX512 runs (both times I ran it, i.e. with and without HyperThreading), resulted in thermal throttling with about a 23-24 C ambient at the time.

For the AMD system, testing it was a lot simpler because it was either only SMT on or off.

Results:

The results speak for themselves.

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with SMT enabled produces the highest hash rate (3953.64 hashes/second). Compare that with the run where SMT was disabled, enabling SMT results in about a 10.3% increase in the hash rate performance result.

The Intel Core i9-12900K results are an interesting case. Despite the plethora of benchmarks talking about how great and how fast the latest and greatest from Intel is (and there ARE some things that said latest and greatest from Intel are great at), unfortunately, for Raptoreum mining, this is not one of them.

At best, the 5950X with SMT enabled compared to the 12900K with all 16 cores AND HyperThreading enabled puts the 5950X at about 80.9% faster in Raptoreum hash rate performance vs. the 12900K.

Comparing like-for-like thread count, whether it is 8P+8E without HyperThreading, the 16 core/16 thread of the 5950X is still approximately 64.2% faster than the 12900K. Without the efficiency cores, but turning HyperThreading back on (i.e. 8P+0E with HyperThreading), the 12900K again is bested by the 5950X by a 71.8% margin.

Unfortunately, running this in Linux meant that I didn't have or didn't know of a tool like Hardware Info 64 to be able to report power consumption figures/values. Maybe I might get around to re-running this test again in Windows, but for now, this might be helpful to those who might be interested in looking for guidance if mining Raptoreum is on your mind.