# Ebay server vs home constructed ONLY for julia coding

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044>\
**Category:** Offtopic\
**Created:** [October 19, 2021, 3:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044 "2021-10-19T15:43:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anon69491625](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@anon69491625](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/anon69491625)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 3:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044/1 "2021-10-19T15:43:08Z")

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Hi all  
I’ve been putting this off for about a year now as I managed to eke out some more time from my trusty daily driver. I’m going to be starting a new project that will load up about 20 - 30 gb ( minimum) data into memory and run analysis against it. I have been enjoying reading the book  
“Julia high performance 2nd edition” by Avik Sengupta. It’s easy to read, more like a novel really, and lashings of excellent guides relating to getting the most out of Julia. I a particularly interested in the relationship of cpu, memory, gpu ( cuda) and getting to know more about it.

Using advice, over time, from the great people on this forum  
I came up with an homebrew approach about $1200 - $1400 with enclosure, power and cooling etc. NOTE the HP ( great workstations in my experience) has 2 Xeon E5-2699 v3 therefore 2 \* 18 core and 2 \* 36 threads. The cooling is stock and awesome and the power is a beefy 1125w designed for the unit. I can see that the homebuilt has expansion capabilities and the relationship between the components would be faster. I also can see that the cpu’s are AVX2 not AVX512.

either system will have Linux mint 20.2 loaded

**HOMEBREW $1500 with cooling, power,case,gpu etc**  
B550 ,  
amd5900x,  
64gb ram ( 2 sticks ),  
m.2 500gb,  
and an old gpu I have lying around until the current silliness abates and I can get a decent one.

VS

**EBAY BOUGHT $1500 nothing to add for about a year**

( no avx512 though)

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/294444768541?hash=item448e469d1d:g:ATMAAOSwveNdyy68](https://www.ebay.com/itm/294444768541?hash=item448e469d1d:g:ATMAAOSwveNdyy68)

2x Xeon E5-2699 v3 2.3ghz 45mb SmartCache 9.6 GT/s QPI (18 Core) CPUs  
8x 16gb 2133p DDR4 Memory = 128gb  
1x 500GB SSD Drive  
Quadro 2000 1gb GDDR5 (1x DVI – 2x Display Port

[![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/c/9/c972048231517c6a47858c66130fe289e9654184.jpeg "The ultimate HP Z840 Workstation, a 2021 Review") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybqzcU3Ay3Y)

So what should I be considering for julia development using core and threads. Thank you  
theakson ( chicago)

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**Author:** ![ImreSamu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/imresamu/32/20677_2.png) [@ImreSamu](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ImreSamu)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 3:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044/2 "2021-10-19T15:55:59Z")

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3rd alternative is renting.

> I’m going to be starting a new project that will load up about 2 - 3 gb data into memory  
> and run analysis against it.

in Europe from EUR 45 / month (+setup) - you have a good machine

- [Dedicated Server Hosting](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ax)

or you can find a free service

- [Cloud Free Tier | Oracle](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/#always-free) - always free
  - 2 AMD based Compute VMs with 1/8 OCPU\*\* and 1 GB memory each.
  - **4 Arm-based Ampere A1 cores and 24 GB of memory usable** as one VM or up to 4 VMs.

and later you can decide …

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ImreSamu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/imresamu/32/20677_2.png) [@ImreSamu](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ImreSamu)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 4:04pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044/3 "2021-10-19T16:04:14Z")

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- The 2x Passmark [Intel Xeon E5-2699 v3 @ 2.30GHz](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2699+v3+%40+2.30GHz&id=2366) = 2x 20997 ~ 42000

- [AMD Ryzen 9 5950X](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+9+5950X&id=3862) = 46127

So I will select the Ryzen5950 …

- it is easier to sell later …
- more economy friendly ( less power )
- has a better / faster disk ( Gen4 )

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**Author:** ![anon69491625](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@anon69491625](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/anon69491625)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 4:05pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044/4 "2021-10-19T16:05:29Z")

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Hi there  
I thought about renting BUT I sometimes throw my machine into the back of my “car” and go into the depths of Wisconsin to relax and go off grid. I tend to like to design for isolation AND distribution so nothing concentrates the mind like cutting the cord and seeing what breaks. I do have 5G but that gets turned off straight away when I have my first trip to the local diner. thank you for the suggestion though

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anon69491625](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@anon69491625](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/anon69491625)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 4:08pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044/5 "2021-10-19T16:08:42Z")

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I did look at the 5950x but couldn’t face paying $800 for just the processor. I tend to stick to $1500 for the whole machine. After that , as you suggested, comes renting.

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**Author:** ![ImreSamu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/imresamu/32/20677_2.png) [@ImreSamu](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ImreSamu)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 4:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044/6 "2021-10-19T16:25:10Z")

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> BUT I sometimes throw my machine into the back of my “car” and go into the depths of  
> Wisconsin to relax and go off grid.

🙂

the other alternative is the Laptop + AND/OR renting

( you can wait for the next “black Friday” )

And buy a cheap (gaming) Laptop with

- nVidia RTX + ( AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800H or Latest Intel ))  
IMHO: for learning it is perfect and If you don’t like it you can easily sell 1y later.  
And If you need: you can buy a second desktop monitor for home.

example:  
[https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/subseries-results?visibleDatas=991:Legion](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/subseries-results?visibleDatas=991:Legion)

[AMD Ryzen 7 5800H passmark](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+5800H&id=3907) **21621**

> I’m going to be starting a new project that will load up about 2 - 3 gb data into memory  
> and run analysis against it.

IMHO: 16GB RAM is fine for starting …  
And If you have a bigger data … you can rent a bigger machine for a few hours …

- in the Google Cloud / AWS / …
  - there is a free credits … example : [https://cloud.google.com/free](https://cloud.google.com/free) $300 in free credits

EDIT:

- or you can buy gaming Notebook with Intel CPU ( + AVX512) + nVidia RTX

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anon69491625](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@anon69491625](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/anon69491625)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 4:48pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044/7 "2021-10-19T16:48:52Z")

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all excellent suggestions BUT…

EVERY laptop I have ever owned ( except my fav x1 carbon gen 3) has been a disaster. I do see your point though.

I typed in the wrong numbers for the data load, you are NOT dealing with the top tier of intelligence here, I meant 20 - 30gb of data. No doubt this will, like a gas, expand to fill the available memory.

I’m not a huge fan of google, right from day one. I spent a while in the valley before they took off and spotted the change. I’ve seen it before in Yorktown Heights, Redmond etc. It’s not pretty.  
thank you for giving me food for thought, exactly what I am looking for.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ImreSamu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/imresamu/32/20677_2.png) [@ImreSamu](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ImreSamu)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 7:00pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044/8 "2021-10-19T19:00:34Z")

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> [@anon69491625](#):
>
> EVERY laptop I have ever owned ( except my fav x1 carbon gen 3) has been a disaster. I do see your point though.

other alternative: [https://frame.work/](https://frame.work/) laptops

- DIY friendly Linux compatibility; max 2x32GB RAM ; i5-i7 11gen + AVX512; + [SN850 is the fastest Gen4 SSD](https://www.anandtech.com/print/16505/the-western-digital-wd-black-sn850-ssd-review)
  - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28849220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28849220)
    - —\> [https://frame.work/marketplace](https://frame.work/marketplace)

  - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27926425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27926425)
  - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26263508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26263508)

it is not nVidia CUDA; but you can test the Intel oneAPI solution

- [GitHub - JuliaGPU/oneAPI.jl: Julia support for the oneAPI programming toolkit.](https://github.com/JuliaGPU/oneAPI.jl)

> [@anon69491625](#):
>
> , I meant 20 - 30gb of data. No doubt this will, like a gas, expand to fill the available memory.

Sometimes I am processing [a ~100GB compressed Wikidata JSON DUMP](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/) or OpenStreetMap dump on my laptop  
( 24GB RAM + 1TB SSD + 8gen Intel CPU - Thinkpad T480s )  
My method: extreme prefiltering → loading the minimal data to SQL database (PostgreSQL)  
( in my case this is geodata - so [PostGIS](https://postgis.net/) is a must )

IMHO: with sqlite/postgreSQL/mySQL you can handle data larger than fits into RAM

And with PostgreSQL - you can use Julia as an embedded - procedural language

- [pljulia / pljulia · GitLab](https://gitlab.com/pljulia/pljulia) ( … work in progress )

in the next year: you can expect laptops with 12c - 16c Intel mobil CPU-s - so no easy decision.

- [Intel Core i9-12900H high-end laptop CPU spotted with 14 cores and 20 threads - VideoCardz.com](https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-core-i9-12900h-high-end-laptop-cpu-spotted-with-14-cores-and-20-threads) ( only AVX2 )

+info: [Dataframes.jl #1 requests: “handling data larger than fits into RAM”](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/future-directions-for-dataframes-jl/66247/1)

> 2 Xeon E5-2699 v3 therefore 2 \* 18 core and 2 \* 36 threads.

other important: you can expect extremely low single-core performance;  
and not all Julia package is optimized for multithreading.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anon69491625](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@anon69491625](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/anon69491625)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2021, 7:54pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ebay-server-vs-home-constructed-only-for-julia-coding/70044/9 "2021-10-19T19:54:16Z")

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first of all thank you for taking the time and giving me alternatives.

laptops I break them, usually in half. So that’s not something I want as a daily driver.

not really an Intel fan at the moment. I think AMD have better price performance.

> **[PassMark CPU Value Chart - Performance / Price of available CPUs](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html#xy_scatter_graph)**
>
> PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Over 1 million CPUs and 1,000 models benchmarked and compared in graph form, updated daily!

I don’t really want to mess with the data if I can avoid it. I’ll have already cleansed it to the bare minimum before loading it up. There’s a LOT of it and I don’t really want to load it into a database.

can’t wait until next year as I’ve put this off long enough.

thank you so much for all your wonderful suggestions and I’ll take the time to investigate all the links you sent.