Motherboard(s) For My Spotswood Benches

[BWG]

Hey guys, I'm at least looking for 1 motherboard to attach to my Spotswood Custom Bench and run f@h at full tilt on my GPU's. My plan is to liquidate the GPU's on the bench currently on eBay at the inflated prices to collect capital to help purchase the bajillion EVGA notifies I have coming up soon. I'm going to be utilizing my Best Buy Credit Card for 0% so I can keep my liquid funds available for the GPU purchases. If you see something else on Best Buy I should be considering, please let me know. It seems like I'd be saving some money by going with 11th Gen Intel. I haven't really had the time yet to research the variances between it and AMD as far as PCI-E lanes are concerned, but if you know this has limitations vs AMD current gen, please let me know. 

 

1) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-prime-z590-a-socket-lga-1200-usb-3-2-intel-motherboard/6452561.p?skuId=6452561 which has 3x x16, 3x m.2. $279.99

2) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/gigabyte-b550-aorus-pro-ac-am4-usb-3-1-amd-motherboard-with-wifi-black/6420397.p?skuId=6420397 which has 3x x16 and 2x m.2 $199.99

3) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/msi-mpg-z590-gaming-edge-wifi-socket-lga1200-intel-motherboard/6455359.p?skuId=6455359 which has 3x x16 and 3x m.2 $329.99

4) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/gigabyte-z590-ud-ac-socket-lga-1200-usb-3-2-intel-motherboard-with-rgb-lighting/6454643.p?skuId=6454643 which has 2x x16 and 3x m.2 $209.99

5) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/msi-z590-a-pro-socket-1200-usb-c-gen-2-intel-atx-motherboard-pcie-gen-2/6455363.p?skuId=6455363 which has 2x x16 and 3x m.2 $189.99

 

I don't need a big CPU, but I do want PCI-E 4.0, so I was looking at:

 

1) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/intel-core-i5-11400-11th-generation-6-core-12-thread-2-6-to-4-4-ghz-lga1200-locked-desktop-processor/6452218.p?skuId=6452218 $189.99

2) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/amd-ryzen-5-5600x-4th-gen-6-core-12-threads-unlocked-desktop-processor-with-wraith-stealth-cooler/6438943.p?skuId=6438943 $299.99

 

There are more boards, I just put these ones in my cart to review later, but losing SATA slots when PCI-E is in use is not a big deal at all to me. I've only read 2 of the motherboard manuals so far, but that was common on the z590 boards. What I have not tested is m.2 slots at x4 on 3.0. I have a feeling those would bottlekneck anything at or above a 3080? 

 

Should I really be looking at server boards instead? If everything's planning to be current gen GPU's, it seems like I should be, but the cost appears to go way up.

 

My Notifies:

Spoiler

 

[Avacado]

29 minutes ago, BWG said:

Hey guys, I'm at least looking for 1 motherboard to attach to my Spotswood Custom Bench and run f@h at full tilt on my GPU's. My plan is to liquidate the GPU's on the bench currently on eBay at the inflated prices to collect capital to help purchase the bajillion EVGA notifies I have coming up soon. I'm going to be utilizing my Best Buy Credit Card for 0% so I can keep my liquid funds available for the GPU purchases. If you see something else on Best Buy I should be considering, please let me know. It seems like I'd be saving some money by going with 11th Gen Intel. I haven't really had the time yet to research the variances between it and AMD as far as PCI-E lanes are concerned, but if you know this has limitations vs AMD current gen, please let me know. 

 

1) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-prime-z590-a-socket-lga-1200-usb-3-2-intel-motherboard/6452561.p?skuId=6452561 which has 3x x16, 3x m.2. $279.99

2) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/gigabyte-b550-aorus-pro-ac-am4-usb-3-1-amd-motherboard-with-wifi-black/6420397.p?skuId=6420397 which has 3x x16 and 2x m.2 $199.99

3) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/msi-mpg-z590-gaming-edge-wifi-socket-lga1200-intel-motherboard/6455359.p?skuId=6455359 which has 3x x16 and 3x m.2 $329.99

4) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/gigabyte-z590-ud-ac-socket-lga-1200-usb-3-2-intel-motherboard-with-rgb-lighting/6454643.p?skuId=6454643 which has 2x x16 and 3x m.2 $209.99

5) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/msi-z590-a-pro-socket-1200-usb-c-gen-2-intel-atx-motherboard-pcie-gen-2/6455363.p?skuId=6455363 which has 2x x16 and 3x m.2 $189.99

 

I don't need a big CPU, but I do want PCI-E 4.0, so I was looking at:

 

1) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/intel-core-i5-11400-11th-generation-6-core-12-thread-2-6-to-4-4-ghz-lga1200-locked-desktop-processor/6452218.p?skuId=6452218 $189.99

2) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/amd-ryzen-5-5600x-4th-gen-6-core-12-threads-unlocked-desktop-processor-with-wraith-stealth-cooler/6438943.p?skuId=6438943 $299.99

 

There are more boards, I just put these ones in my cart to review later, but losing SATA slots when PCI-E is in use is not a big deal at all to me. I've only read 2 of the motherboard manuals so far, but that was common on the z590 boards. What I have not tested is m.2 slots at x4 on 3.0. I have a feeling those would bottlekneck anything at or above a 3080? 

 

Should I really be looking at server boards instead? If everything's planning to be current gen GPU's, it seems like I should be, but the cost appears to go way up.

 

My Notifies:

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Quite frankly, the Ryzen 9 and Intel 11th gen both have 24/20 PCI-e lanes respectively. If the sole purpose of this build is folding and you want to maximize PPD returns, then you should only be looking at Threadripper or older Intel Xeon variants to maximize bandwidth per lane. All of this completely depends on just how many GPU's you plan to run on said board. If it's going to be 3, you'll be fine with the PCI-e 4.0, if you want to get crazy and go 6+ 

 

I have tested M.2 x4 on 3.0 but not with anything over a 2080Ti. Couldn't comment on bottleneck, maybe @Bastiaan_NL or @tictoc could help there. 

 

1900x (60 PCI-e lanes) @200$ https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007671 601350560 600213784

 

As for the board? Well, welcome to my dilemma. 

Edited June 16, 2021 by Avacado

[BWG]

23 minutes ago, Avacado said:

Quite frankly, the Ryzen 9 and Intel 11th gen both have 24/20 PCI-e lanes respectively. If the sole purpose of this build is folding and you want to maximize PPD returns, then you should only be looking at Threadripper or older Intel Xeon variants to maximize bandwidth per lane. All of this completely depends on just how many GPU's you plan to run on said board. If it's going to be 3, you'll be fine with the PCI-e 4.0, if you want to get crazy and go 6+ 

 

I have tested M.2 x4 on 3.0 but not with anything over a 2080Ti. Couldn't comment on bottleneck, maybe @Bastiaan_NL or @tictoc could help there. 

 

1900x (60 PCI-e lanes) @200$ https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007671 601350560 600213784

 

As for the board? Well, welcome to my dilemma. 

 

It's not really the sole purpose, but it's a top need because I've had all of the GPU's folding since yesterday night, and 3, maybe even 4 are choked on either 3.0 or 2.0 on my x370/1700x. They are the 1070's and 1080tis. Maybe the 3070 too. I tried moving my 3070 over to my x570/5800x PC in the x16 slot #3, but I could not get it to run with my 3080ti in slot 2 and 3080 in slot 1. Literally, if I had the 3070 plugged in, the 3080ti would not load. If I unplugged it, the 3080ti would load. The MSI Meg x570 Ace is an expensive board that the manual says nothing about this being a limitation. Slot 1 and 2 are CPU and slot 3 is x570. I have 1 m.2 in my CPU m.2 slot. the other 2 m.2's are empty and the x1 slots are as well. I did play with all of the PCI bios options trying to find a suitable combination to load all 3. Also, unplugged the psu as the manual stated for VGA swapping.

 

Edited June 16, 2021 by BWG

[tictoc]

I don't have an x570|Ryzen 5000 setup, but first thing I would try is swapping your NVMe drive into one of the chipset slots. If that doesn't work, then I would look at running a SATA SSD, which will be more than adequate for a folding machine.

 

I went round and round getting 3 GPUs running on my x370|1700 machine.  I was able to get it working, but that was on three 7970s that were not running anything that was constrained by the PCIe bandwidth.

 

 

[BWG]

Alright, I thought about trying that. I also purchased a cpu and board. It's a busy time of the year for me with the 4th: we host a party every year, 2 kid birthdays within 2 weeks of each other, a graduation party for my 2nd oldest Son, and our anniversary.

 

I'll get to it at some point. 

[Odyn]

So, forgive me for being ignorant on the topic, but why would PCI-E lanes hinder bandwidth? Isn't folding just using the calculation ability of the GPU (similar to mining)? 

[tictoc]

2 hours ago, Odyn said:

So, forgive me for being ignorant on the topic, but why would PCI-E lanes hinder bandwidth? Isn't folding just using the calculation ability of the GPU (similar to mining)? 

 

Unlike mining, there is quite a bit of communication between the CPU/Memory and the GPU while running a WU.  It is not an extremely bandwidth intensive GPU compute app, but once you go below PCIe 3.0 x8, with faster GPUs, the performance will drop.

Edited June 17, 2021 by tictoc