Dynamic Subspace

Tag: Computer

  • New AI Workstation Build Continues: Three NVIDIA A4000 Video Cards

    After receiving a new AMD Ryzen 7 7700 CPU earlier this week, I received the three NVIDIA RTX A4000 16GB VRAM video cards pictured above in antistatic bags today for my new AI workstation. Brand new, these cards run just over $1000, but I got these refurbished ones from an eBay seller for just under $600 each. These three video cards will work alongside my NVIDIA RTX 3090 Founders Edition 24GB VRAM video card for a total of 72GB VRAM, which will allow me to run low-or-no quantized large language models at a much faster output rate than I currently can using the 3090 with system RAM. The limited PCIe lanes on the Gigabyte motherboard that I ordered shouldn’t be too limiting as far as inference work is concerned.

  • New CPU, New Computer Build Begins

    boxed amd ryzen 7 7700 cpu on a desk, lego forestmen on either side, millennium falcon and mondrian painting in lego in background

    Knowing that tariffs, or a tax ultimately paid by those who buy those imported goods, are coming, I planned out a new workstation for doing LLM and Generative AI work. The first part arrived today: an AMD Ryzen 7 7700 CPU. While I would have certainly loved to build a system around an AMD Threadripper Pro with its 8-channel memory and numerous PCIe slots and plenty of lanes to support maximum throughput, I am just an English professor of simple means, so I opted to build around the least expensive options available to me and using a combination of new and used parts. Therefore, I am upgrading from my current AM4 socket system to an AM5 socket motherboard that supports DDR5 memory and this lower-wattage, non-overclocking CPU. I’m currently waiting on the arrival of a motherboard with 4 PCI slots (spaced to allow the four video cards that I plan to run), three NVIDIA RTX A4000 video cards with 16GB VRAM (used via eBay), 64GB (2 x 32GB) Corsair DDR5 RAM, and an ATX mid-tower case. I’ll use my current drives, 1000 watt power supply, and NVIDIA RTX 3090 Founders Edition video card in the new system. Most of my work focuses on inference, so the slower PCI slots in this build won’t hurt too bad–it should far exceed CPU inference even with faster RAM.

  • Intel NUC Compact Computer Picked Up Off the Sidewalk

    compact desktop computer about the size of a hardback book next to its box, which is 3 times as large as the computer

    On our walk to the subway on the way to City Tech yesterday, Y and I found this Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) compact computer left out on the sidewalk. Originally priced about $1000 as a barebones system in 2018, it features Intel® Core™ i7-8809G Processor with Radeon™ RX Vega M GH graphics, two SO-DIMM DDR4-2400 RAM slots, and two M.2 slots for storage. It has numerous input and output ports on the front and rear. For something about the size of a hardback book, it is significantly heavy–I’m guessing its cooling system has a lot of copper. I didn’t have my hex drivers at school, so I wasn’t able to open it up to see how it is configured for RAM and storage. Unfortunately, it didn’t have a PSU, so I don’t have a way to power it up either. There are some compatible PSUs for sale on eBay, but they range from $150 to 185, which is too high for me to gamble on a possibly dead system. While I wait on a bargain on a PSU, I’ll add the NUC to the Retrocomputing at City Tech collection that I keep in my increasingly small office space.