It's amazing how power efficient new systems are compared to (much) older ones

Father-in-law, I think, was originally having some kind of problem with his old, old computer, and as a result, I ended up giving him my old Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 system to him.

Recently, said Q9550 system started to have some issues, so I gave him my Intel NUC NUC7i3BNH (Intel Core i3-7100U (2-core, HTT enabled), originally 4 GB of RAM, but I upgraded that to 8 GB (2x 4 GB), and it also originally came with a 16 GB Intel Optane module and a 1 TB HGST 2.5" 7200 rpm HDD, but I swapped that out I think for an Intel 520 Series SSD). Anyways, but I digress.

I don't know if I ever took power measurements for the NUC (probably not), but let's instead, compare it for example to the Beelink GTR5 5900HX system, which, at idle, could be sipping somewhere between 9-maybe 16 W of power.

Compare and contrast that to the old Q9550 system which has 4x 2 GB G.Skill DDR2-800 RAM, and a Nvidia GTX 260 in it, with a 610 W PSU, and a single I think it's an Intel 525s Series 240 GB SSD in it. At idle, it sucking back somewhere between 120-160 W.

That's CRAZY!!!

I thought that I was going to re-purpose that system to be a server of some kind. But now, I'm not so sure.

Granted, the Q9550 system does have a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard in it, and as such, sports 8 SATA 3 Gbps ports. And the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 dose support Intel VT-x and Intel VT-d, which means that, again, in theory, I can run a few virtual machines on it and throw TrueNAS onto that system and make it into a storage server.

I don't know if I'm going to that for sure yet, but it is a potential option. 

But man, that idle power is really making me re-think that plan. (Sadly, I'm not sure if newer servers would really be that much more efficient. Desktop systems and/or mini-PCs, yeah, but towers and/or servers - I don't know about that.)

The BitComet client has gone to shit.

 ​https://www.cometforums.com/topic/12802501-bitcomet-causing-excessive-ping-times/page/2/

  

"If you are so unhappy using BitComet as your client (you have previously stated that you are using it at the same time as two other clients), I suggest that, at least, you show that you do possess some amount of common courtesy."

Read my initial posts.

 

I was merely and simply stating "hey, I think there's a problem here".

Rhubarb repeatedly denied that the problem even exists, let alone offer anything that resembles help and/or assistance.

 

Rhubarb's response is akin to how companies blame independent media outlets when said independent media outlets find issues with said company's products. (Which Steve from GamersNexus makes references to here:

 

The fact that I cited the old forum posts where Rhubarb even SPECIFICALLY and EXPLICITLY asks for ping time data whilst on here, argues that it's not about ping times is laughable at the very least.

 

Interesting how you make no mention of this fact in your reply.

 

If Rhubard is going to be belligerent, then you can't be surprised when said belligerence is going to be met with belligerence.

 

If Rhubard doesn't know how to help and/or doesn't want to help, then he could've just plainly and pointedly stated that.

 

But that wasn't the case here.

"I have been a resident of BitComet Forums, assuredly, a lot longer than yourself, and I am always amazed at how imperious some users like to sound and, rather than thanking those who donate their free time to attempt to aid others (not being remunerated, by the way), feel it is their God-given right to insult and try to belittle them, just because they do not see eye-to-eye with what is suggested. Thank Goodness that this is not the case of the vast majority of the more than 100,000 worldwide users of this free application!! "

Once again, if you have actually READ my posts and Rhubarb's responses, it LITERALLY reads:

Me: "Hey, I think there's a problem with the program."

Rhubarb: "No, there isn't."

Me: "Yes, there is. And here is the data to prove it."

Rhubarb: "No, there isn't."

Me: "Well, I googled it and this is how I found this forum because other people reported about the same thing."

Rhubarb: "If this was a problem, there'd be all sorts of 'me too' posts."

Me: "But there are 'me too' posts."

Rhubarb: "No, there isn't."

Me: "Yes, there are. Here are the quotations from those threads, and here are the links to those posts."

Rhubarb: "No, there isn't."

(see a pattern here?)

So, why would I thank someone who is in denial about a problem???

That makes no sense.

Would you ever thank an alcoholic that beats their wife and kids "thank you for beating me?" (because you're an alcoholic) That's absolutely ridiculous.

You can literally conduct your internal review of how Rhubarb could've handled this better cuz right now, he's at the same level as the Enermax issue.

"Would that decrease your infinite rage and please your Magnanimous self? "
Why would I need to do that?

Again, the other thread tells you that it's a problem with how the client tries to establish a connection to the DHT network.

It's a very simple question: on startup, what does the client attempt to do as it is trying to establish a connection to the DHT network?

It would appear that no one here has ever bothered to ask this very simple, basic question as it pertains to this issue which might be the responsible party for both, this thread, and the previous thread that was filed a year and 8 months ago.

"Thank them profusely for fixing my car and go on my merry way. There is a Spanish proverb that says that 'to be thankful is a sign of being well-bred' ("Ser agradecido es de ser bien nacido"). "
And that's the difference between your mechanic and Rhubarb.

Rhubarb never made it to trying to profusely fix the client.

That's the difference between your scenario and this one.

​---

 

The response from their forum is an example of how not to handle a problem when users/clients are reporting a problem.

 

You can read the rest of the thread to see what I'm talking about there.

 

BitComet sucks.

 

Use something else instead. 

*edit 2022-09-01*

BWAHAHAHAHA.....

The mods at the BitComet forum has now banned me from said forum because I reported an issue, and they refused to fix it.

LOL...LMAO....

Fuck BitComet. It's LITERAL trash.

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.

Moral of the story: Do NOT buy from Asus. Intel is willing to offer a refund. Asus is not.

 As a follow-up to my previous blog post about the data corruption issue that I was experiencing with the Intel Core i9-12900K processor that was running on the Asus Z690 Prime-P D4 motherboard, Intel has offered a full refund on the defective unit whilst Asus has not.

So, moral of the story:

Don't buy from Asus.

I mean, clearly, if the interaction between the Intel Core i9-12900K and the Asus Z690 Prime-P D4 motherboard is causing the system to spontaneously reset itself when I attempted to run memtest86 a second time, using the memory that was from my AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (which was also using an Asus motherboard), which PASSED memtest86 on said Ryzen platform, and by putting those four DIMMs into the Asus Z690 Prime-P D4 motherboard, it results in the system spontaneously resetting itself; that's NOT a good sign of a reliable motherboard.

Asus was ONLY willing offer a RMA repair, and I told them that the CPU is in the process of being sent back, so even if they attempted to repair it, I would have no way of verifying whether the issue is still there or not because the CPU would've already been sent back and I'm not buying another Alder Lake CPU from Intel only to give it the chance for this problem to repeat itself.

So, moral of the story:

Don't buy from Asus.

Data corruption and system stability issues with Intel Core i9-12900K and Asus Z690 Prime-P D4 motherboard

 Welp, this happened:

https://youtu.be/VF19o2OMzbU

The data corruption issue with the Intel Core i9-12900K and the Asus Z690 Prime-P D4 saga continues.

memtest86 self-aborted "due to too many errors" -- My Intel Core i9-12900K on an Asus Z690 Prime-P D4 motherboard regularly corrupting data

 So this happened:

I am currently using an Intel Core i9-12900K processor (purchased November 10th, 2021) on an Asus Z690 Prime-P D4 motherboard (purchased November 18th, 2021) and the system was finally assembled around Christmas time, 2021. So the system has only been running for about 3 months and within that 3 months of normal, un-overclocked usage, this happens.

(I don't even use XMP.)

(I am using Crucial 32 GB DDR4-3200 unbuffered, non-ECC memory (Crucial part number: CT2K32G4DFD832A) - four sticks in total, for a total of 128 GB).)

(Memtest) has aborted "due to too many errors".

Wow.

I've NEVER seen that message before.

"Too many errors."

10035 errors to be precise (before the test self-aborted).

Think about how bad the problem must be for the CPU and/or the motherboard to cause memtest86 to self-abort the test on account of "due to too many errors".

I am in the process of trying to see if I can get a refund from Intel via a RMA because the processor has to be so royally screwed up to be able to produce 10035 errors in memtest86 before memtest86 self-aborted and also a refund on the motherboard from Asus (also under a RMA as well).

(Sidenote: I tested the same four sticks of memory in my AMD Ryzen 9 5950X system with an Asus TUF X570 Gaming Pro WiFi motherboard and it passed memtest86 with zero (0) cumulative errors, which is how I know that the problem is NOT with the memory.)

Asus so far, has issued a RMA number for a board repair, but the problem is that if I send the CPU back to Intel and Intel issues the refund, then I won't have a CPU to be able to test the Asus motherboard once it comes back to see whether the issue has been resolved or not.

And I don't want to play the game where I am just making the parcel delivery companies rich by constantly sending stuff back and forth in order to try and get this taken care of.

Stay tuned for this saga.

Minisforum HX90 Conclusion

In order to conclude the saga that was the Minisforum HX90, I ended up trying out Pop! OS 21.04 from System76. At first, the results looked promising because I was able to install Steam, VirtualBox, and import all of my VMs, and got them up and running. Never got around to testing the games in Steam though.

Unfortunately though, what appeared, initially to be a success eventually still ended up in a failure.

The system did freeze, eventually, at least once; at which point, it was clear and obvious that there is something either wrong with the system, the hardware, the engineering, compatibility issues, and/or a problem with software running on it.

I don't have the tools to be able to diagnose the root cause of the issue, even when I had Pop! OS installed on the NVMe SSD. Therefore; as such, I have sent the SODIMM RAM back for a RMA already, and I am currently in the process of trying to do the same with the HX90 itself as well.

This is a bummer/shame because I was really hoping that said HX90 would have been able to take the place of my former Intel NUC, be more performant, and not have the same kind of thermal throttling issues that's wayyy too common in my Intel NUCs.

Sadly, that just didn't turn out to be the case.

So now I have my old Intel Core i7-6700K taking on the duties that were originally designated for the HX90 and I have bought two sets of 2x 16 GB DDR4-3200 Kingston HyperX Fury RAM modules (4 DIMMs total, 64 GB total), in the hopes that I would be able to upgrade the RAM in the 6700K system, and make that take on those duties instead.

We shall see how that goes.

Still working on the Minisforum HX90

 About two weeks ago, my Minisforum HX90 finally arrived and I was able to get the system up and going.

So far, it's been a bit of a mixed bag.

The system is actually VERY performant and I don't have any really complaints in regards to that However, the way that I had it set up where the system was hosting 9 VMs, it started freezing daily; which necessitated a hard power cycle before it would freeze again the next day, and the next, etc.

So between last night and this morning, I was trying to alternative operating systems to see if I would be able to get said Minisforum HX90 to be stable.

Proxmox VE 7.1.2 would install and it would pick up on the onboard Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE NIC, but then after the system has rebooted, post-install; said NIC WASN'T available and I couldn't quickly discern why nor the root cause of that issue. Tried installing it again. Same problem.

So Proxmox was a bust.

Next I tried Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It installed, but then I wasn't able to install Oracle VirtualBox 5.2 in a way where said Oracle VirtualBox 5.2 was working the way that it is supposed to, so that failed.

Then I tried downgrading to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS figure "okay, at least I should be able to get Oracle VirtualBox 5.2 installed." Well, that part was true, except that Ubuntu 18.04 was too old and didn't recognise the integrated Radeon GPU that is on the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX processor that is in the HX90. The maximum resolution that it would display was 800x600. So, then after getting Oracle VirtualBox 5.2 installed, I figured "okay, maybe I can upgrade the system from here and that should give my the proper resolution back".

Nope.

I updated and upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 from 18.04 and not only did I NOT get the proper screen resolution back, I also lost connectivity to the 2.5 GbE NIC which was, ironically, working in 18.04 before.

So, let's say just say - trying to get and make the system stable has been a complete and utter nightmare.

I've got a fresh install of Windows 10 21H2 now (well...I think that the installer was actually 20H2, but then I was able to run Windows update to update it to 21H2), so hopefully, that will be able to help stabilise the system, but we shall see. I'm in the middle of re-installing all of my Windows applications along with re-importing the Oracle VirtualBox VMs back into VirtualBox.

And if that doesn't work, it would be such a pity because the system has a LOT of potential, but if it doesn't work, I'll likely end up RMAing the system back to Minisforum, and then just buying 4x 16 GB of DDR4-whatever RAM (whatever is the most cost efficient, which, perhaps ironically, might be DDR4-3200), install that back into my Intel Core i7-6700K system, and use that system to host all of the VMs once again instead.

It won't be as fast as the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, but hopefully, at least it'll work and it won't freeze on my daily.

Hopefully.