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Old 03-23-2022, 02:47 PM   #21
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I've always built my own desktop PCs. I have a triple 2K monitor set-up in my office. So a laptop is not really an option. But my latest desktop is a refurb. It's a 3 year-old Dell Optiplex 5050 Tower, with a 14nm i7-7700 running at 3.6Ghz (up to 4.2). It shipped with 16GB RAM, which I might expand to 32GB at some point.

It's got integrated graphics, but it's the Intel HD 630, which supports 3 monitors at 4K UHD. So I can upgrade my monitors at some point when 4Ks come down a bit in price. There's space for a separate graphics card, but it would require a bigger power supply, which might be hard to fit in this case. Unless you're a serious gamer, I think the 630 graphics are more than adequate.

It shipped with a SATA 512GB SSD, which I kept for backup storage. But I added a 1TB M.2 SSD, which is roughly 5X faster than the SATA SSD. I also added an older 2TB HDD from my prior desktop. So tons of storage.

Another fun fact, this is the first PC that gets a full Gigabit up and down on our FiOS Gigabit service. Prior desktop got ~400/600. So that's been a nice upgrade as well.

The PC was $529 on Newegg and the M.2 SSD was $99 on Amazon. So, all-in cost was $630 for a pretty powerful machine IMHO.
Nicely done.
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Old 03-23-2022, 03:21 PM   #22
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Well, running Task Manager I see my CPU pegged at 100% when I run sims. Typically it idles at 30 - 50%.
My Memory mostly utilized.
Whether old PC, new workstation, or build, you should identify the specific software you're using.

I don't know what SIMS is, but it could be online software for federal contractors, for example. In that case you could be using an enterprise backend. All of the money thrown at a PC won't make it faster. The actual server could be over-loaded, etc. In the office, on the LAN, everything is tolerable. If you're remote, though, there are more layers of connection.

OTH it could be a locally-installed environment, and if the software can take advantage of local resources, then it may be recommended to use even more than what you have available.

There could also be required configuration of the program to optimize everything.

The ideal situation is to have such software run in the fastest, first-available RAM. That's your memory sticks. Other cache memory on the board can also come into play. Then you have the impact of graphics processor(s) making calculations to display results.

Of course only by using such software in time does one come to realize how different hardware and OS can be.

Or you could just buy something and see it it performs better.
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Old 03-23-2022, 06:11 PM   #23
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This is a good idea. However, while most brokerage houses offer solo traditional 401k plans not all allow solo Roth 401k's.
The solo 401K is a great idea except we are using my contract income to cover some big expenses which have come up. Better than dipping into my nest egg.
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Old 03-23-2022, 06:16 PM   #24
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By sims I mean simulation runs. I am using LTSpice, and other circuit simulation SW to simulate circuity designs. Some circuits are fairly large, with high node counts, and my laptop bogs down.
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Old 03-23-2022, 06:18 PM   #25
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I've always built my own desktop PCs. I have a triple 2K monitor set-up in my office. So a laptop is not really an option. But my latest desktop is a refurb. It's a 3 year-old Dell Optiplex 5050 Tower, with a 14nm i7-7700 running at 3.6Ghz (up to 4.2). It shipped with 16GB RAM, which I might expand to 32GB at some point.

It's got integrated graphics, but it's the Intel HD 630, which supports 3 monitors at 4K UHD. So I can upgrade my monitors at some point when 4Ks come down a bit in price. There's space for a separate graphics card, but it would require a bigger power supply, which might be hard to fit in this case. Unless you're a serious gamer, I think the 630 graphics are more than adequate.

It shipped with a SATA 512GB SSD, which I kept for backup storage. But I added a 1TB M.2 SSD, which is roughly 5X faster than the SATA SSD. I also added an older 2TB HDD from my prior desktop. So tons of storage.

Another fun fact, this is the first PC that gets a full Gigabit up and down on our FiOS Gigabit service. Prior desktop got ~400/600. So that's been a nice upgrade as well.

The PC was $529 on Newegg and the M.2 SSD was $99 on Amazon. So, all-in cost was $630 for a pretty powerful machine IMHO.
Wow. That is a great solution. Congrats.
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Old 03-23-2022, 11:18 PM   #26
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This is a good idea. However, while most brokerage houses offer solo traditional 401k plans not all allow solo Roth 401k's.

Might have to phone around, I know Vanguard offered it as I got mine there.
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Old 03-24-2022, 03:53 AM   #27
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By sims I mean simulation runs. I am using LTSpice, and other circuit simulation SW to simulate circuity designs. Some circuits are fairly large, with high node counts, and my laptop bogs down.
This is your support page:
https://www.analog.com/en/design-cen...simulator.html

You may want to check that the installed version is correct for your processor and up-to-date.

Here is a short article by the author with information to speed up the process.
https://www.analog.com/en/technical-...mulations.html

Here is a group that supports the software.
https://groups.io/g/LTspice/topic/lt...on/79130527?p=
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Old 03-24-2022, 07:05 AM   #28
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Might have to phone around, I know Vanguard offered it as I got mine there.
Yes, Vanguard i401(k) includes a Roth option.
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Old 03-24-2022, 09:16 AM   #29
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Might have to phone around, I know Vanguard offered it as I got mine there.
The bulk of my investments are at Fidelity. They do not have a Roth 401k option. I also have an account at TD Ameritrade. They do offer a Roth 401k plan so I started one with them.
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Old 03-26-2022, 06:45 AM   #30
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I have optimized my simulation runs and it helps. Still, I want a beefier machine with more than 12GB RAM. With multiple apps open, and multiple windows, my laptop does bog down.
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Old 03-26-2022, 07:19 AM   #31
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Ah, this thread reminded me of the time I did consulting work at home and was able to write off the PCs I bought to do the work. Since then, I hardly used the desktop PCs anymore, and they are now way obsolete.

For his design work, the OP needs lots of CPU power and mucho RAM. Fancy graphics cards for game animation do nothing for him. A laptop is usually limited in the RAM size, though there are some with 32GB.

Modern CPUs are so fast, it's crazy. I just bought a small 14" laptop for portability. It comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600U 6-core CPU clocking at 15385 on CPU Mark V10.

The OP's laptop comes with an i7-1065G7, I think. It clocks at 8840 on CPU Mark V10.

Here are some more numbers.

i7-7700: 8910

Ryzen 9 5900x: 39475
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Old 03-26-2022, 08:31 AM   #32
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It's not just CPUs that are fast (I have a Ryzen 9 5900X on a HP Omen 30L series) but also modern GPUs are amazing. I have a NVIDIA RTX 3070 TI with great hardware video encoding and decoding speed. My desktop boots up Windows in under 5 seconds. Also the cooling systems for CPUs and GPUs have become significantly better.
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Old 03-26-2022, 04:02 PM   #33
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Pretty sure GPUs play a significant part of the computing, not just the display. For example, GPUs are found in mining rigs.
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Old 03-26-2022, 04:13 PM   #34
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Ah, this thread reminded me of the time I did consulting work at home and was able to write off the PCs I bought to do the work. Since then, I hardly used the desktop PCs anymore, and they are now way obsolete.

For his design work, the OP needs lots of CPU power and mucho RAM. Fancy graphics cards for game animation do nothing for him. A laptop is usually limited in the RAM size, though there are some with 32GB.

Modern CPUs are so fast, it's crazy. I just bought a small 14" laptop for portability. It comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600U 6-core CPU clocking at 15385 on CPU Mark V10.

The OP's laptop comes with an i7-1065G7, I think. It clocks at 8840 on CPU Mark V10.

..

+1


Ram is cheap these days, I'd be looking at a desktop starting with 32 Gig of ram and up-gradable to at least 64 Gig. Make sure the 32 Gig does not fill all the slots, so there is no waste if step up to 64 Gig.



And pick a fast SSD, etc..
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Old 03-26-2022, 06:44 PM   #35
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I think most of these things are overkill. You might shave a second off a file load or something. Not that having a state of the art system isn't nice, but the cost / reward ratio is hard to justify unless you have a specific use case that really requires it.
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Old 03-26-2022, 08:39 PM   #36
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Pretty sure GPUs play a significant part of the computing, not just the display. For example, GPUs are found in mining rigs.
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I think most of these things are overkill. You might shave a second off a file load or something. Not that having a state of the art system isn't nice, but the cost / reward ratio is hard to justify unless you have a specific use case that really requires it.

The OP was talking about running SPICE, an electronic circuit analysis and simulation.

SPICE is a program developed at UC Berkeley in 1973. When I was studying EE then, it was run on a Univac 1100 mainframe.

It's purely number crunching. All CPU and RAM. The program is still in use today, and that tells of its usefulness.

GPUs are used in mining rigs, because they can do repetitive calculation of the SHA-256 cryptography algorithm very fast. I wonder if anyone has adapted a GPU to help with SPICE calculations, or if it even makes sense or is possible, even though there are now GPUs with floating-point capability.


PS. Back in 2000, I wrote a program to crunch through a large database of 100 GB, and that consisted of ZIP'ed files. It took more than 1 week running nonstop to finish with a 600-MHz Intel CPU then. The CPU speed was the bottleneck.
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Old 03-26-2022, 09:00 PM   #37
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OK, people have thought of using GPUs to aid with SPICE calculations. This requires rewriting the software, and the structure of the problem of circuit simulation does not readily lend itself to being solved with a GPU.

See this: https://www.eetimes.eu/gpu-powered-spice-simulator/.
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Old 03-27-2022, 06:18 AM   #38
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I think most of these things are overkill. You might shave a second off a file load or something. Not that having a state of the art system isn't nice, but the cost / reward ratio is hard to justify unless you have a specific use case that really requires it.
It's more than that. Some sims have run minutes and the machine operation is tied up during that time ... using other windows is choppy and also lags.

File loading is not an issue.
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Old 03-27-2022, 03:00 PM   #39
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If you have a fast CPU like the Ryzen 9 5000 series, a slow GPU becomes a system bottleneck and defeats the purpose of having a fast CPU. High performance GPUs are needed for content creation such as 4K and 8K video editing with special effects. Modern video editors take advantage of the hardware encoders and decoders as well as video effects using the GPU and it dramatically offloads the CPU during rendering as well as editing. For still photography, many functions in Photoshop will not even work without GPU acceleration.
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Old 03-27-2022, 03:05 PM   #40
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Buy a second, large, monitor if you are using a laptop.
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