Hardware recommendations for enthusiast triple-boot desktop?

[Michael Harding]

I've been running a Dell XPS 8930 for 5+ years and it's been OK, it has
- an i7-8700
- nvidia 1050ti
- 32 GB
I triple boot and have freebsd running on ZFS on a 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO.
Everything has worked except suspend/delete and the wifi chip (which is a non-issue as I connect to an EERO).

The XPS has some cooling issues, and I run my own poudriere builds, and this can take a while with the amount of RAM I have.

I've been running FreeBSD since the early 90's (!).

With the 'GPU thaw' I'm interested in something maybe
- 16 cores
- 64/128 GB
- nvidia GPU (I'm interested in CUDA or other GPU based computing, via Linux)

Triple booting FreeBSD, Windows, Linux

built myself, probably, due to the economics of larger RAM, the large RAM helps with the poudriere builds (more RAM disk) and running VMs (I do devops stuff professionally).

Any 'nudge' on the CPU, AMD vs. Intel? The AMD 7950X3D seems interesting as the TDP is lower than the 7950X
Any motherboard recommendations?

I can be a bit bleeding age for a bit, and run FreeBSD virtually while waiting for the hardware to catch up. Specifically, I know the graphic card
might take a bit to catch up (FreeBSD 14 or whatever). I have installed the module directly from nvidia in the past...

Of particular interest is suspend/resume. That used to work perfectly years ago...

 

[SirDice]

Specifically, I know the graphic card might take a bit to catch up (FreeBSD 14 or whatever).

Not if you stick with an NVidia card. The latest cards should all work fine with the x11/nvidia-driver on any supported FreeBSD version. You might be thinking of the DRM driver, but that's only for AMD and Intel graphics. The Nvidia driver doesn't use or need it.

I have installed the module directly from nvidia in the past...

Just use the port/package. Maintainer does a good job keeping it up to date with the latest NVidia releases.

 

[GlitchyDot]

Have you ever tried dual cpu setup ? like dual xeons with WS motherboards ? 6-7 PCIE slots, plenty space for RAM and SSD + raid cards. ? If u not gaming, u can run 2 gpus 1 for passtrough for cuda ( running linux/windows for cuda), another for screen/screens , multiple VM`s plus new Intel Xeons comming with 5GHz speeds so its kinda nice.
Yes, new CPU`s expensive, but if you ok with older gen... u can get mb for around 500+ 2 cpu`s deppends on gen, ram etc so i think u can build one for around 3k and it would be monster.
Just my 2 cents.

 

[cracauer@]

Yeah, you are entering territory where old dual Xeons make sense. Boardwell ("v4") with Supermicro X10 boards takes registered DDR4, which can be had dirt cheap in 32 GB DIMMs. Boards are around $250, CPUs next to nothing. Lots of PCIe slots and lanes, ECC memory, probably IPMI. Solid workhorse computers.

 

[_al]

For example, I have one (although it is not Supermicro, and a bit old, 2021).

It has BMC.
It also has TPM2 (I did not use it on FreeBSD).

More details - https://bsd-hardware.info/?probe=47d985333c
All of this - in Cooler Master Cosmos II case.
Multi-boot (via grub): Windows 11, Debian 12, Debian 11, FreeBSD 13.2 (two systems). On Linux I use VMware - I run up to 6 virtual machines simultaneously, each with 16 GB of RAM, 2 processors x 2 cores x 2 threads.
On FreeBSD I use bhyve - run two machines simultaneously (the limitation is due to the fact that I need USB ports for my work, and in bhyve I need to pass-through the entire controller, and I only have two (xhci/pci Renesas Technology Corp uPD720201 USB 3.0 Host Controller)