Newbie Ampere build questions: Gigabyte's Dual Ampere with Noctua's NH-U14S AMP-4926

[alfiedotwtf]

Hi folks,

I’ve fallen into a deep deep rabbit hole this weekend reading up on high multi-core systems (128-core mostly). For a home PC a Threadripper or EPYC looks sweet but the price tag is literally more than double my car! So looking at alternatives with comparative benchmarks, I’ve settled on the Ampere 128-core and subsequently found this forum

… and I have a few questions

So I was wondering - how is the Ampere Altra as a daily driver? I read elsewhere Debian boot time was slow (something like over a minute and a half). Is this because single threaded the Ampere Altra is slow (although systemd is parallel so it shouldn’t be the case) or is there another reason I can’t think of? Because currently my Intel 14700KF running Arch goes from boot to ssh in only a few seconds.

I’ve also seen compatibility issues with Radeon video cards on this forum. I prefer Nvidia and was hoping to put my existing Gforce 4060 RTX. Will this be an issue or does Nvidia work straight out of the box? I won’t be too upset if this is the case as my monitor is connected to my MacBook and I’ll either ssh in or use VS Code remotely, but I’ll at least need video to install Arch in textmode - I see both the Gigabyte MP72-HB0 and ALTRAD8UD-1L2T have in-built VGA so I’m assuming this will just work (and are not just management video for BIOS and built-in diagnostics only)?

Last question - as a stretch goal, the Gigabyte MP72-HB0 looks very enticing because it’s DUAL socket! The last dual socket system I had was a BP6 running dual Celeron 366 . It’s such a shame dual socket hasn’t been on the desktop scene for ~20 years but here’s another chance

So with dual socket I wanted to go with the quietest coolers given that there’s two of them! So I found that Noctua have a very nice 140mm fanned NH-U14S AMP-4926. But looking at the Gigabyte and the fan arrangement of the Noctual, I noticed a problem - the exhaust of one CPU will flow straight into the inflow of the second CPU

If anyone has a Gigabyte’s Dual Ampere with Noctua’s NH-U14S AMP-4926 setup, please tell me there’s enough room between the two fans so that it’s actually not cooling one CPU while cooking the other

One last concern about CPU fan - I also read somewhere here that their motherboard’s CPU fan control is either “idle speed” when below a threshold and “takeoff” when above a threshold. I can’t remember which board it was, but I’m assuming it’s the ASRock. Has this been fixed yet in firmware, or will I have write a script to monitor via sensors CPU temperature to set the fan speed myself?

And finally - I’ve read a few times that CPU fans aren’t needed at all and a passive heatsink will be enough. Is this true??? Like for real? Because the last time people said you didn’t need a CPU fan on the heatsink was for the Cyrix 6x86 - but when you played Doom it actually started to smell like magic smoke!!

Edit: I’m assuming the ASRock fits standard ATX cases? I currently have a NZXT H9 and I would like to reuse it. Sadly, I’m also assuming there’s no chance I’ll squeeze the Gigabyte in there

[bexcran]

Welcome!
I’ve been using my Altra-based system as a daily driver (running openSUSE) for many months now, and it’s been great. Yes, the boot is slow, but given I only reboot about once a week it’s not been a big problem for me.

The reason for the slow boot is that the firmware was designed with servers in mind where boot times aren’t generally a priority - my EPYC-based Dell server takes a good couple of minutes doing lots of enterprise stuff with inventory data. So whereas the PC world has had tons of optimizations around things like memory initialization, that wasn’t applied for Altra.

NVIDIA cards are preferred, and do work straight out of the box. The only catch is that they only have an x86 option rom so you’ll need to use the VGA port to see the BIOS splash screen and settings. The VGA port can be used in the OS too, but of course being VGA the video quality won’t be very good so I think people prefer to install a graphics card, even if it’s something like the low-end NVIDIA T400.

I haven’t noticed a problem with the fan control on my ASRock board except for the fact that the FAN_FAIL LEDs blink in a funky pattern, presumably because of the quiet fans I’m using. If you do run into a problem, you can tweak the settings by ssh’ing into the BMC and editing the json config file in /usr/share/swampd - that contains all the fan response curve settings.

Technically yes, you can use a passive heatsink with the Altra - just like many rack-mount Intel servers have a passive heatsink. The problem is they rely on there being a very high airflow from other fans around the case!

In terms of the case needed, the ASRock board uses a ‘deep micro-ATX’ 9.6" x 10.5" which is technically wider than ATX allows for. You’ll want to verify with any case you choose, but I think it should still fit in most ATX cases.

[alfiedotwtf]

Hey @bexcran!

Thanks for the detailed response. Good news to my ears

Ok, the fact that you can edit fan curves makes me happy.

Using your info, and another post about building a machine I found here, I think I’m good to go. To be honest, I’m pleasantly surprised how easy it all sounds and why waves of others haven’t made the switch yet!

As for the fans, now that you mention it I guess it does makes total sense - in a 1/2U rack you’ve already got fast and constant cold flow across the fins. Too bad for home use they’re way too loud. I think best to play it safe and go Noctua.

… a really big shame for the dual Gigabyte + Noctua situation though. Dual socket would have lasted me a few years

To be honest, my only REAL concern now is that there are no white boards to match my all white NZXT case and parts

[quocbao]

I think slow boot" is not a problem. Many x86 servers from Dell or HP take several minutes to come up.

About fans, I guess they are designed to be used inside a data center where CPU sockets are equipped with passive coolers. You can see my post here ASRock Rack Ampere home builds - #40 by quocbao

[alfiedotwtf]

Yeah, I’m not too fussed about the bootup times. I just wondered if it was slow to boot because it was possible that their single core was not up to the task. But looking up specs, I’m happy to see it punches upwards!