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by bloopernova 904 days ago
My 2015 PC started dying, requiring BIOS resets and other weirdness like suddenly not outputting basic VGA graphics.

So I finally upgraded to an AMD 7800X3D, nvidia 4070 12GB, 64GB DDR5-6400 RAM.

All to play Factorio! :D

Apart from a strange error where Linux will crash if I have 2 DIMMs in the motherboard, it's been a great upgrade. (I'm going to submit bug reports to Fedora, but I'm assuming some combo of the MSI B650 motherboard, CPU, and memory are contributing to the error. Memtest says the memory modules are OK)

Now I have a PC that can handle the modded-Factorio huge railway city block maps I like to play. Each block of space is surrounded by 4 lanes of railway, with interchanges. It's really nice to organize the refining and production into specific tasks, like "deliver lead ore, process it into lead oxide, combine that with carbon blocks to make lead ingots". Now the distribution method is via railway station so it's far more flexible than simple conveyor belt outputs. Loads of fun! And very complex too, but that's half the fun. Needing "blue science" which needs circuit boards, which need solder, which needs lead and tin ingots, etc etc. I can lose hours of time to this, moderated only by my back hurting and making me take breaks.

A nice bonus is that my new PC is capable of running smaller LLMs locally, so I can mess around with learning the new hotness technology. Plus new toys are always fun.

4 comments

The Zen 4 memory controller only sometimes is binned high enough to be stable at 6400. It's likely that linux just loads the memory better out of the box. I had to dial back my 7800 X3D to 6000 after rare but consistent crashes.

You can try OCCT to check if your memory overclock (even with Expo and especially with XMP, those are overclocks) is stable.

You probably have Hynix memory (check your 4 main timings and XMP/EXPO advertised speed) - if you do, these are very save timings you can do that'd probably make up for going down to 6000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlYxmRcdLVw

Thank you, I will check the link out and you've given me some good research to chase.
When I saw the specs my thoughts immediately went to local LLMs, then I got to the last paragraph. I was messing around with Mistral 7b the other day when it was posted on here and have been considering upgrading my PC so I can run LLMs faster.
Just to rule it out, I’d still try cycling the DIMMs. I’ve had multiple bad DIMMs pass memtest at this point.
> AMD 7800X3D

Well, nice CPU to be burned down. Thanks, AMD.