Dynamic Subspace

Category: Artificial Intelligence

  • 15 Liter Energy-Efficient AI Workstation with Ryzen 9, 128GB DDR5 RAM, and an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell GPU

    I recently built this new, energy-efficient AI workstation to replace the much more power hungry workstation that I built a year ago. While my old workstation had substantially more VRAM and compute than my new workstation, it was as loud as a jet engine and used a considerable amount of electricity each month. The new one handles my workloads adequately, runs whisper quiet, and sips electricity by comparison.

    Below, you can see some pictures of assembling the workstation and advice based on my experience building this system.

    When I began researching this build, the price of RAM and video cards began to rocket into the stratosphere. I considered keeping the old workstation’s motherboard and CPU and swapping out the 64GB of RAM for a matched pair totaling 128GB DDR5 RAM, but the price of desktop DDR5 RAM was incredibly expensive (adding 2 sticks of 32GB RAM would reduce the memory bandwidth, which I didn’t want to do). I also weighed waiting for Minisforum’s upcoming AMD Strix Halo mini-itx motherboard with a x16 PCIe slot for a discrete GPU and its 8-channel RAM, but its release date was uncertain and the rising price of RAM might price me out of purchasing it. These two alternatives led me to another motherboard made by Minisforum–a mini-itx motherboard paired with a laptop processor, laptop SO-DIMM DDR5 RAM slots, and an x16 PCIe slot, which together provided me enough memory bandwidth for my needs and the ability to add a discrete Nvidia video card. So, I decided to part out and sell off the entire old workstation and build the new one from scratch with these components:

    The total for all the parts was $3,355.59.

    I began by setting up the Minisforum BD895i SE motherboard.

    I installed the nvme drives in the two slots at the top edge of the motherboard. The plastic retainer pins are difficult to open with my hands. I used a Gerber multitool’s plyers to grab the wings at the top of the pin and pulled straight up while holding down the board with my other hand. Reinstalling each pin is very easy–just line it up with the hole and press down firmly on the pin until it makes a click sound.

    Then, I installed the two sticks of DDR5 memory that I had read others had used with this motherboard. It pays to read the experience of others through Google, Reddit and Amazon reviews to find the optimal parts for your build so that you don’t have to worry about making returns for incompatibility issues.

    Installing the RAM is easy. The white clips on each slot need to be opened first. Then, check the orientation of each RAM stick’s notch with the slot (the notch is in a different place for DDR4 and DDR5 RAM making them mechanically incompatible to enforce the electrical incompatibility). Finally, line up the RAM stick with the slot and push down firmly until the arms on either side click into place and hold the RAM stick in place.

    I missed taking a photo of installing the fan brackets on to the CPU’s heatsink. There were no instructions in the box showing how to do this, but it is easy to see how the two metal brackets included align with the six holes–three on each side of the top of the heatsink–and finding which bag has six screws of the appropriate size. Once the brackets are installed, the 120 mm fan’s mounting holes line up with screw holes on the brackets. The motherboard box has a selection of screws of different lengths to accommodate popular heights of fans. Find the one for your fan and install the four screws. The motherboard is ready for mounting.

    The TGDGAMER 15 liter Micro-ATX case can accommodate mATX and Mini-ITX motherboards. Like old school towers, the PSU is mounted at the top of the case above the motherboard. In this orientation, the PSU draws air from inside the case and pushes it out the back of its housing at the rear of the case.

    It included all the hardware needed to install the motherboard and tie straps for cable management.

    Before installing the motherboard, there is a metal L-shaped plate that needs to be removed from the opening where the motherboard’s ports are exposed at the rear of the case. Bending this piece back and forth a few times makes it snap off. It’s purpose is to secure the expansion cards, but despite bending it and the case, I couldn’t get it to line up correctly without putting too much stress on the installed video card, so I left it off.

    The Corsair RM1000x (2024 version) is an updated PSU that adds a 12V-2×6 connector for modern video cards so that you don’t need an adapter–fewer cables and fewer obstructions to air flow.

    Before installing the PSU, I added one 120 mm Arctic fan to the inside-front of the case in the upper position (there’s room for two 120 mm fans, but my video card is too long to accommodate the second fan).

    I connected the power cords to the PSU that I would need–two for the CPU and one for the video card.

    With the motherboard still outside the case, I connected the sound, USB, and front panel power and reset buttons and power and HDD LEDs.

    I maneuvered the motherboard into place and installed it with the case’s included mounting screws.Then, I connected the two power cables for the motherboard.

    The last part to install was the PNY Nvidia RTX 4000 Pro Blackwell video card.

    It comes with a 2 x PCIe power to 12v 2 x 6 connector adapter, which I didn’t need to use thanks to the new Corsair PSU.

    After some experimenting with installing the video card, I wanted a little bit of extra room for the 12v 2×6 cable that plugs into the front of the video card. It fit, but I would sleep easier knowing that those cables weren’t pressed hard up against the metal front of the case. My solution was to take out the video card and using the handle of a large screwdriver, I pressed on the front of the case from inside to create a bump of about 1/4″ in height to give that cable a little extra breathing room in front of the video card.

    Before positioning the 9.5″ long video card into the 9 27/23″ space, I connected the power cable to the card and went through contortions to line it up with the PCIe slot and pushed it in until it clicked into place and then screwed it into the case.

    While installing the motherboard, I realized that it wouldn’t fit into place with an 80 mm fan installed inside the case, so I removed the 80 mm exhaust fan that the case came with, bent the exhaust fan cover of the case so that it wouldn’t obstruct installing the 80 mm on the outside of the case pulling air from inside the case and pushing it out. I ran the power cable for the fan through the hole above the expansion card slots.

    With the workstation assembled, it was time to power it up.

    The BIOS isn’t as robust as some other manufacturers’, but I was able to quickly find where to change boot options so that I could boot from a USB drive.

    The first order of business was verifying the system’s 128GB DDR5 RAM with memtest86+. Thankfully, it passed!

    Feeling confident about the system, I began installing Debian 13 Trixie. Unfortunately, after spending about 8 hours, I couldn’t get Debian to play well with using the AMD integrated graphics for video out and using the Nvidia RTX 4000 Pro only for compute.

    I figured that I would give my former favorite distribution Linux Mint a try with their latest 22.3 version with Xfce. I wish that I had installed it to begin with. It was a turn key experience! I installed the 590 Nvidia drivers without any trouble and Linux Mint maintained video out with the AMD integrated graphics while using the Nvidia GPU for AI tasks.

    I’m sure that a solutions exists for Debian 13, but I don’t know enough and couldn’t find relevant advice for this particular setup. After waiting some time for software updates and more sharing of troubleshooting advice, I might try installing Debian on this machine again. For the time being, I’m happy with Linux Mint with Xfce, which I’ve configured to look like BeOS.

    After installing text-generation-webui (for llama.cpp) and ComfyUI, they have worked flawlessly on the new workstation. For text generation, I am able to run models in the 103 to 120B parameter range at 4 bit quantization, or 70B models at 8 bit quantization. For ComfyUI workflows, I purge the GPU’s VRAM to make the most out of its 24 GB GDDR7 memory without having to offload to the CPU/RAM.

  • LEGO Technics Laptop Stand for 16″ Lenovo Thinkpad P1 Gen4

    open laptop raised on a stand sitting on a white desk

    I’ve been using my Lenovo Thinkpad P1 Gen4 laptop as a desktop replacement system lately, so I wanted to raise its screen higher to avoid slouching and subsequent neck and shoulder pain. While there are lots of solutions to buy, I opted to use the LEGO Technics that I had on hand to build a stand. My goals for the project were facilitating maximum air flow and reliably holding a 4 lb. 5 oz. laptop.

    I started by disassembling the folding stand that I had built in 2024, but I noted how I sandwiched a Technic beam between two Technic bricks. The beam’s lower dimension provided a smooth shelf for the laptop’s feet to rest on and the studs on the bricks kept the laptop from sliding off the beam toward the front or rear. I planned to replicate this design in the new laptop stand.

    Another important element of the design was an open space beneath the laptop for maximum air flow (this laptop has an NVIDIA RTX A5000 16GB video card that I use for AI workflows). I figured that a rectangular holder for the laptop would work best and allow me to use the black Technic bricks that I had on hand in limited numbers (I have far more light and dark gray elements thanks to all of the Star Wars sets I’ve built over the years).

    To strengthen the rectangular frame, there are four layers: top-most brick structure, plates, substructure bricks, and plates. All joints are overlapped, which further strengthens the design.

    To support the rectangular laptop frame, I used one L-shaped beam to hold the frame at the bottom and a long Technic brick at 90 degrees to raise the back. As an added support to the back Technic brick, I put a L-shaped beam to apply pressure to the rectangular frame when under the weight of the laptop.

    The base of the stand is U-shaped to hold either side’s base in place to prevent any lateral movement, which could cause one of the supports to unhinge.

    As a safety measure, I added two Technic L-shaped beams to the bottom center of the laptop frame if not to hold the laptop in place should it slip off then to slow it down as it crashes forward on my desk. I’ve also found this useful for holding paper, such as printed articles, which makes it easy to read and type by looking down-and-up instead of to the left or right.

    The stand raises the back of the laptop up 7″, which makes the top of the monitor about even with my eye line. I’ve only been using it a couple of days, but it seems to fit the bill perfectly for my needs.

  • My Interview with Emily Hockaday, Senior Managing Editor of Asimov’s, Published in New American Notes Online

    screen shot of a printer color offset of the definition of an "interview" as the title image for Issue 17: The Interview in New American Notes Online website

    Issue 17 of New American Notes Online (NANO) on “The Interview” was recently published.

    My interview with Emily Hockaday, senior managing editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, and science fiction publishing is a part of the issue.

    Click through here to see the other interviewees and topics covered in this special issue.

    Editor Sean Scanlan sent out this press release for the issue:

    A new issue of NANO: New American Notes Online has been published

    Special Issue 17: The Interview

    Publication date: June 2025

    ISSN: 2160-0104 (Online)

    NANO is an indexed, Open Access, and Open Source humanities journal. NANO never charges to submit or to read content. NANO is published by City Tech, part of the City University of New York.

    NANO announces its new issue, an exploration of the ways that interviews connect people.

    The interview is woven into our hyper-connected world through podcasts, Zooms, magazines, newspapers, social media, and they still occur in private settings. Interviews are ubiquitous. They can be formal and informal, closed or open-ended; they can yield quantitative and qualitative results; they can invoke power and symbolic capital. But, the interview can also be less about gate-keeping and more about the tension inherent in knowledge production and sharing. The eight interviews in this special issue of NANO create spaces of exchange, where the goal is not interrogation but collaboration, curiosity, and mutual understanding.

    Two interviews focus on teaching. A multimedia project by Shauna Chung, Naila Butt, Sandy Fougeres, and Khemraj Persaud describe ways that interviews fuse writing and workplace readiness while the scholar Laura Westengard reveals the communal spaces where gothic and queer reinforce each other.

    Two interviews focus on visual art. Jennifer Lockard Connerley discusses ways that academia and spirituality enhance portraiture while Bill Saylor reveals how his environmental and natural abstractions arise.

    Two interviews focus on translation. Dana Crăciun acknowledges the difficulty of translation while Johannes Göransson eyes translation’s inherent creativity.

    Two interviews focus on creativity and theory. The writer and editor Emily Hockaday discusses the challenges of running a science fiction magazine in the age of AI while Marcus Boon reflects on his interdisciplinary practices.

    Editor’s Introduction for NANO Special Issue 17: The Interview

    by Sean Scanlan

    https://nanocrit.com/index.php/issues/issue17/Editors-Introduction-for-NANO-Special-Issue-17-The-Interview-Issue-by-Sean-Scanlan

    How the Interview Can Become a College Writing Tool for Workplace Readiness

    by Shauna Chung, Naila Butt, Sandy Fougeres, Khemraj Persaud

    https://nanocrit.com/index.php/issues/issue17/How-the-Interview-Can-become-a-College-Writing-Tool-for-Workplace-Readiness-by-Shauna-Chung-Naila-Butt-Sandy-Fougeres-Khemraj-Pe

    An Interview with Marcus Boon, Author of In Praise of Copying 

    by David Banash

    https://nanocrit.com/index.php/issues/issue17/An-Interview-with-Marcus-Boon-Author-of-In-Praise-of-Copying-by-David-Banash

    An Interview with Jennifer Lockard Connerley: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Academic

    by Tara Robbins Fee

    https://nanocrit.com/index.php/issues/issue17/An-Interview-with-Jennifer-Lockard-Connerley-by-Tara-Robbins-Fee

    An Interview with Emily Hockaday, Senior Managing Editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

    by Jason Ellis

    https://nanocrit.com/index.php/issues/issue17/An-Interview-with-Emily-Hockaday-Senior-Managing-Editor-of-Asimov-s-Science-Fiction-Magazine-by-Jason-Ellis

    An Interview with Dana Crăciun, the translator of Salman Rushdie’s works into Romanian 

    by Carmen Neamțu

    https://nanocrit.com/index.php/issues/issue17/An-Interview-with-Dana-Cr%C4%83ciun-the-translator-of-Salman-Rushdie-s-works-into-Romanian-by-Carmen-Neam%C8%9Bu

    An Interview with Laura Westengard, Author of Gothic Queer Culture

    by Leigh Dara Gold

    https://nanocrit.com/index.php/issues/issue17/An-Interview-with-Laura-Westengard-Author-of-Gothic-Queer-Culture-by-Leigh-Dara-Gold

    An Interview with Johannes Göransson

    by Matt Miller

    https://nanocrit.com/index.php/issues/issue17/An-Interview-with-Johannes-Goransson-by-Matt-Miller

    An Interview with Bill Saylor

    by Sean Scanlan

    https://nanocrit.com/index.php/issues/issue17/An-Interview-with-Bill-Saylor-by-Sean-Scanlan

  • Generative AI for College Students Series: Risk of Losing One’s Voice

    an anthropomorphic cat as a professor wearing a suit and standing in front of a chalkboard
    Image created with Stable Diffusion.

    Please keep in mind that new technology like Generative AI (Gen AI) shouldn’t simply make your thinking or work easier, much less take the place of the uniquely singular abilities of human beings to grow cognitively, think creatively, or evaluate critically. If you use Gen AI to simply avoid work, you are doing it wrong. Instead, using Gen AI in the spirit of Douglas Engelbart’s “augmenting human intelligence” and Donna Haraway’s configuration of the cyborg point the way to beneficial heightening of human possibility instead of harmful erasure of the cognitive distinctions of humanity. If you use Gen AI, use it wisely and use it well. This post is the twelfth in this series.

    In the science fiction novel Neuromancer, William Gibson explores the concept of cyborgs as beings who seamlessly integrate technology into their bodies and minds. Similarly, when students use generative AI tools to edit or paraphrase their writing, they risk integrating AI-generated changes that alter the meaning or tone of their work. This raises important questions about the role of AI in the writing process and the potential for losing one’s unique voice.

    AI tools are designed to analyze and modify text based on patterns in their training data. While this can be helpful for improving grammar or clarity, it can also lead to unintended changes in meaning or tone. For example, a student might ask an AI tool to paraphrase a complex sentence, only to find that the tool has altered the nuance or emphasis of the original text. This can result in a piece of writing that no longer accurately reflects the student’s intentions or ideas.

    This issue is reminiscent of the theme of identity in science fiction, where characters often grapple with the implications of merging human and machine. In works like Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, the line between human consciousness and technological enhancement is increasingly blurred. Similarly, when students rely on AI tools to edit their writing, they risk blurring the line between their own voice and that of the machine.

    To address this problem, students should approach AI-generated edits with caution. They should carefully review any changes made by the AI, ensuring that the meaning and tone of their writing remain intact. Reading the writing of others and doing more writing of one’s own helps each student recognize and develop their own voice as a writer.

    In conclusion, while generative AI tools can be valuable editing assistants, they also pose a risk of altering the meaning or tone of a student’s writing. The cyborg student must approach these tools with discernment, ensuring that their unique voice is preserved in the process. By doing so, they can harness the benefits of AI while maintaining the integrity and authenticity of their own voice and ideas in their writing.

  • Generative AI for College Students Series: Privacy and Protecting Your Ideas

    an anthropomorphic cat as a professor dressed in a suit and standing in front of a chalkboard
    Image created with Stable Diffusion.

    Please keep in mind that new technology like Generative AI (Gen AI) shouldn’t simply make your thinking or work easier, much less take the place of the uniquely singular abilities of human beings to grow cognitively, think creatively, or evaluate critically. If you use Gen AI to simply avoid work, you are doing it wrong. Instead, using Gen AI in the spirit of Douglas Engelbart’s “augmenting human intelligence” and Donna Haraway’s configuration of the cyborg point the way to beneficial heightening of human possibility instead of harmful erasure of the cognitive distinctions of humanity. If you use Gen AI, use it wisely and use it well. This post is the eleventh in this series.

    In the science fiction film The Matrix, humans unknowingly live within a simulated reality created by machines. Similarly, when students input personal or private information into AI tools, they may be contributing to a vast, invisible dataset that could be used in unintended ways. This raises important questions about privacy and the responsible use of AI in academic writing.

    Generative AI tools require input to generate responses, and this input is often incorporated into their systems for future use. While this allows the tools to improve over time, it also means that any sensitive or personal information provided by users could be shared or misused. For example, a student working on a sensitive topic might input detailed personal reflections or original ideas into an AI tool, only to have that information become part of the tool’s training data. This creates a privacy paradox: the more students rely on AI tools, the more they may be compromising their own privacy.

    This issue is reminiscent of the theme of surveillance in science fiction, where individuals are constantly monitored and controlled by technological systems. In works like George Orwell’s 1984, the pervasive surveillance of the state undermines individual freedom and creativity. Similarly, the use of AI tools in academic writing could undermine students’ control over their own ideas and personal information.

    To address this problem, students must be mindful of what they input into AI tools. They should avoid sharing sensitive or personal information and instead use the tools for general brainstorming or drafting. Using local Gen AI tools on one’s own computer or mobile device keeps your data safe on your own system instead of sending to a remote system.

    While generative AI tools offer powerful possibilities for academic writing, they also pose significant privacy risks. The cyborg student must approach these tools with caution, carefully considering what they share and how they protect their personal information. By doing so, they can use AI responsibly while safeguarding their privacy.