[HN Gopher] I Built My New Linux Gaming Desktop in 2021 with AMD...
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I Built My New Linux Gaming Desktop in 2021 with AMD (CPU+GPU) and
GNU Guix
Author : ekianjo
Score : 181 points
Date : 2021-09-23 12:47 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (boilingsteam.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (boilingsteam.com)
| csomar wrote:
| I'm also a happy AMD/Linux user. I have the same GPU as OP, but
| with 5900x, 64Gb of RAM and the x570 motherboard. Except for
| Bluetooth, everything worked without any headaches. There was
| some screen/display issues at first (related to the card, but I
| got it 2 weeks after launch and AMD hadn't shipped official
| drivers back then) but now it has incredible performance to run
| multiple screens without any lag.
|
| One suggestion: Get an NVME with a heatsink. The difference in
| write/read speed is simply ridiculous. You can get 5-7Gb/sec
| speeds and it makes your environment ridiculously lightweight.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Get an NVME with a heatsink.
|
| How did you find out about that? (first time I hear of this)
| yoz-y wrote:
| At least ASUS gaming motherboards come with heat sinks for
| nvme slots already.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Must be a new feature. My B450F did not.
| csomar wrote:
| I custom built my PC. You select all the components yourself.
| My retailer had some of these.
| ekianjo wrote:
| I mean, did your retailer tell you that the heatsink would
| provide much better performance? or did you hear it from
| somewhere else?
| csomar wrote:
| No. But they had same capacity, different prices. I
| figured something must be different and it turns out it
| was write/read speeds.
| archi42 wrote:
| Isn't this common knowledge? nVME disks run pretty hot
| under load. A heatsink gives more thermal mass and better
| cooling, so the disk can sustain its high speeds for
| longer time. Though I doubt a heatsink [significantly]
| increases peak performance.
| bserge wrote:
| It's common sense, isn't it? SSDs fail from overheating, NVMe
| SSDs even more so. Always use a heatsink and better yet, have
| good airflow.
| podiki wrote:
| (Author here) One photo had a bare NVME right after I installed
| it, before I put the heatsink on that came with the
| motherboard. This is my first NVME in a desktop; while I
| haven't done any storage benchmarks, I certainly don't find
| myself waiting much for anything to load. HDD --> SSD might
| have felt a more impressive change though.
| clvx wrote:
| I got the Asus x570 TUF. Wireless and Bluetooth work out of the
| box. I'm using kernel 5.11.x. Looking forward to upgrading to a
| newest kernel as AMD cards are better supported. The build also
| has an AMD 5800x, 6700xt nitro+, nvme 1TB, and celsius S36+.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| How do you do this with with NVMe devices that have a
| manufacturer label placed in between the chips and where the
| heat sink would be effective? It's my understanding that most
| manufacturers won't honor the warranty if the label has been
| removed.
| csomar wrote:
| I didn't install the heatsink. The NVMe had a heatsink (check
| Crosair products).
| dhruvmittal wrote:
| As another builder of a Linux gaming desktop, let me just say:
| nice! I ended up going with an Nvidia 3080 because I'm more
| familiar with CUDA than AMD equivalents (and I do still need to
| get work done). If it wasn't for that, I'd likely have gone AMD
| as well!
|
| One thing that I'd love to hear more on is what Guix gets you as
| a package manager and/or as a distro. I'm not really following
| how it differs from other, perhaps more traditional, package
| managers.
|
| I've stuck it out on Arch, mainly for software availability in
| the AUR-- i.e. getting out of repo gaming utilities like
| greenwithenvy and the glorious eggroll proton fork without having
| to navigate flatpak/snap/etc. My last experience with Steam in a
| snap on Ubuntu was particularly bad: the application wasn't able
| to see the mounted drives where I was installing games, nor was
| it able to detect proton-ge-custom. I've heard the flatpak
| experience is better, but I haven't played with it at all.
| podiki wrote:
| (Author here)
|
| Long time Arch user, and loved it, but now loving Guix. I'll be
| writing a followup article about how I set up everything in
| Guix, but as I mentioned here the only wrinkle on the software
| side was Steam via Flatpak. The beta version of Flatpak has
| solved the Proton issues, and it works great for me. Nonguix
| also has a Steam package, but we need to figure out some newer
| sandboxing that Valve has done to get newer Proton working.
|
| Edit: And thanks!
| tuananh wrote:
| can you elaborate what do you love about guix?
| aijony wrote:
| Not OP but here are some of mine:
|
| - Universal package manager (replaces pip, cabal, npm,
| etc.)
|
| - Declarative OS-config which makes deploys on new devices
| and servers a breeze
|
| - Scheme declaration language (I prefer it to Nix-lang)
|
| - Bootstrapable from 512 byte binary [1]
|
| - I can build a package from source or download the binary
|
| - Easily modify package source, deps, or compiler [2]
|
| Cons:
|
| - No official nonfree software [3]
|
| - Smaller package set than Nix
|
| - No KDE yet and old version of Gnome (it takes a lot of
| work to update)
|
| Neutral:
|
| - No systemd
|
| - Works with GNU Hurd
|
| - No MacOS or BSD support (yet)
|
| [1] https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2020/guix-further-reduces-
| boots...
|
| [2] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Defining-
| Package-Va...
|
| [3] https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix
| ajklsdhfniuwehf wrote:
| > no systemd
|
| i was on this front for a long time, but now it feels
| like a lost cause.
|
| What guix suggest for managing
| services/containers/chroots/cgroups?
| podiki wrote:
| Similar to aijony, and something I will be writing in a
| followup article. Off the top of my head, and based on my
| experience so far, my biggest would be:
|
| 1. Guix is written in Guile Scheme, and I love anything
| Lisp (a joy to work with)
|
| 2. System configuration in one file, no more remembering
| all the random /etc/ files or tweaks here and there, it is
| all together
|
| 3. Easy package transformations: update source, different
| git branch, add a patch
|
| 4. Rollbacks of both the system configuration and packages
| (something breaks, just go back)
|
| 5. Minor, but user installation of packages is nice, rarely
| need to reach for sudo now
|
| 6. Active and friendly community. The project has plenty of
| steam I'd say, but is small enough you can get involved and
| contribute. I've enjoyed writing some patches and packages.
|
| 7. Overall, just a different way of doing a distro and
| running a system (nix is similar). It has been fun to learn
| and use, getting me excited for Linux again.
| 015a wrote:
| In my experience, snap is Just Bad and will probably disappear
| in the next few years like all of Canonical's other NIH
| projects. Software availability is kinda ok, but compatibility
| and functionality is all over the place, primarily I think due
| to the sandboxing. Though, even classically confined snaps will
| sometimes misbehave in weird ways.
|
| E.g. for me, the classically confined nodejs snap cannot be
| used to run a simple mocha test suite for our backend app, as
| it causes every test to time out. native install, no problem.
| The classically confined golang snap, installs a bunch of go
| tools as you'd expect, which are weirdly invisible to VSCode's
| Golang addons. You install Slack, click a link in a
| conversation, and it opens in a new Firefox window with all of
| your settings and addons disappeared; you have to delete an
| about:profiles profile in Firefox to make it use the existing
| configuration. App startup times can range from hundreds of
| milliseconds to 10+ seconds. Its just really not a good
| situation; some of these problems have solutions, but these are
| issues I've seen in, who knows, 19.04, 19.10, 20.04, 20.10,
| 21.04, we'll see if they fix it in 21.10 but I'm not holding my
| breath; we're talking years of decay.
|
| Flatpak is definitely better. I've never ran into any
| compatibility or functionality issues. But, availability isn't
| as good; it seems like flatpak is geared more toward UI
| software; so, Discord, Slack, Spotify, Atom, Steam, even nvidia
| drivers, these I have installed through flatpak (Manjaro Gnome;
| so, Arch). You search flathub for Golang, or NodeJS, or other
| more dev/cli focused software, and it has nothing. So, I don't
| know if that's a cultural or technical thing, but it at least
| seems like flatpak has a focus, and excels within that focus.
| MayeulC wrote:
| It's spelt out in the article, but be aware that Guix as a
| distro will give you a _libre_ kernel, so no blobs. I am afraid
| it might not work with nvidia or AMD GPUs, as well as some wi-
| fi adapters (there 's the _cough_ _non_ guix project umbrella I
| haven't yet dug into).
|
| Other than that, the approach taken by Guix and Nix to package
| management (or even fedora silverblue) is quite interesting,
| and I've been folowing it rather closely.
|
| You get a more ansible-like (one config file for deployment)
| way of configuring your system, with rollbacks possible, it
| lets you have multiple software configurations exist
| simultaneously, that would be hard to achieve on other
| distributions (say, different environments with various
| versions of glibc). And portability+reproductibility of your
| environments.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I am afraid it might not work with nvidia or AMD GPUs,
|
| You can still install non-free blobs on Guix, as described in
| the article.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Yeah, I commented before reading the article, I had missed
| "Guix" in the title. I now read it, and adjusted my comment
| a bit. Nice to know that firmware is easily available,
| though I am not sure nvidia's driver can install and play
| nice with guix, unless it's packaged up in the nonguix
| channel.
|
| I have previously had a test run on Guix on an old laptop
| with 1GB of ram, but it was clearly not powerful enough, as
| a guix pull could take 2-3 days (!) to complete. I guess
| I'll revisit it in a few months on a more powerful computer
| (an leave my old one with Alpine)
| podiki wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly the Nvidia situation, I know people
| have it working but still a little bit of work. I think
| the drivers are fine, but also might need some changes to
| make sure Nvidia's GL libraries are used. But it does
| work. I, for one, am happy to be in AMD-land now.
|
| (Good on you for admitting commenting before reading, and
| extra points for then reading! I jest, but we are all
| guilty)
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| GUIX should work with AMD's open source drivers, just not
| Nvidia's blob drivers.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Not out-of-the box, though, as recent GPUs need to have
| firmware loaded before being usable. IIRC, older AMD GPUs
| have firmware pre-loaded (and though they would be better
| performing with newer firmware, they can run as-is).
| podiki wrote:
| The issue is loading firmware with the kernel, which linux-
| libre won't (by design) do. You can run the full linux
| kernel instead (but not in Guix default channels).
| opan wrote:
| It's not that simple, unfortunately. The AMD drivers are
| free, but rely on some blobs in the kernel that aren't
| there when using linux-libre.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I'd just like to clarify that these blobs are never
| executed on the main CPU, and are instead running inside
| the GPU, or possibly "management engine"-like cores
| inside it. They also likely contain opaque data like DRM-
| related keys, thermal management look-up tables, etc.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| GUIX (and NixOS) are significantly different than other package
| managers. They get you declarative system configuration,
| immutable and reproducible builds.
|
| Declarative config = entire system config specified in a single
| config file - all config that is normally scattered across
| different /etc files and other locations now goes into a single
| config file (which instructs the system to write those /etc
| files on install, so /etc is still used but there's a single
| source for configuring all of it). All packages and package
| config, boot loader, systemd/init system config, networking,
| etc configured in one file. And all config is declarative, not
| imperative - eg, you tell the system _what_ you want in your
| build, and the system handles _how_. In NixOS this all just a
| big JSON file, and GUIX it's a Scheme data structure.
|
| Immutable builds = any time you make a configuration change, an
| entire new system is built with the change incorporated, and
| the system updated to point at the new build. Prior system
| builds are retained unchanged, and you can rollback to them any
| time if needed, if your new one is broken in some way not
| caught by compiler. Since current and prior builds are
| immutable, you can be sure that if a prior build worked
| reliably, it will continue to do so in case you need to
| rollback to it. In NixOS, builds are stored in /nix and soft-
| linked as needed to /bin, /usr/bin/, etc. Not sure about the
| equivalent on GUIX but that's the idea.
|
| Reproducible builds = you can take your system configuration
| file and use it to install an identical system build on other
| hardware. Everything will be the same except different hardware
| drivers for different hardware. Reinstalling the same
| configuration on the same system with no hardware changes will
| result in an identical system build with the same checksum.
|
| One thing this does is make rapidly experimenting with
| different system configs much more possible. There's no penalty
| to experimentation and failure, you can't brick your system. If
| you do, just rollback to the prior working config, only takes a
| few seconds. You can iterate through many different config
| ideas, testing them all, and optimizing it to your needs.
|
| I spent the past spring/summer migrating to NixOS. There's a
| learning curve, but now that I've gotten through most of it, I
| could never go back to a normal linux. GUIX/NixOS is really the
| right way to architect an OS, so much farther out of the tarpit
| than anything else I've seen.
| rixrax wrote:
| I've been thinking of building AMD based gaming Linux workstation
| as well. What has been a bit daunting is to understand which
| combination of drivers should I use? And what they do / how they
| perform? E.g. should I use AMD proprietary driver[0] or it's
| free(?) alternative from AMD? Or stick with the linux default
| driver? What about MESA? Which version should I use? Latest
| available[1][2], or what ever comes with the distro?
|
| Also, it's not obvious (to me anyways) how to properly measure
| performance should I want to measure the impact of different
| kernels/drivers/etc. combinations for the GFX performance.
|
| And then there is VRR / FreeSync. I believe it will work under X
| and Wayland (only using Sway?). What about under 'raw' KMS/DRM?
|
| Nonetheless soon probably boldly going to where little guides /
| instructions exists...
|
| [0] https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-amdgpu-
| un... [1] https://launchpad.net/~kisak/+archive/ubuntu/kisak-mesa
| [2] https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-
| driver...
| podiki wrote:
| I can't answer all your questions, but a few at least. You
| should use the latest kernel (and firmware) and Mesa you can.
| That will give you amdgpu (kernel driver) and radv (user Vulkan
| driver) from Mesa and the best compatibility and performance.
| AMD's proprietary driver, amdgpu pro, sometimes performs
| better, but the consensus these days is to just stick to Mesa
| and open source.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| I built a similar machine:
|
| * NixOS
|
| * AMD 5700G (8c/16t)
|
| * Nvidia GTX 760 (already owned)
|
| * 32GB of old ram at 3400 MT/s (was really surprised my old
| Micron RAM could be overclocked by 1000MT/s but I'll take it).
|
| * Old/existing 850W PSU
|
| Having the integrated Vega 8 graphics lets me run sway at 2 4K
| screens pretty much without issue _. It 's pretty simple on NixOS
| to configure PRIME such where the 'nvidia-offload' command can
| run any program on the Nvidia card.
|
| Sadly Vega 8 is only half the speed of my GTX 760... really wish
| AMD had included RDNA graphics like the Steamdeck. If I can grab
| a AMD GPU at a good price or Nvidia's GBM backend for Wayland
| support actually is released and works well I might upgrade to a
| 5700X or greater. It would be nice to have twice the L3 cache and
| even more threads when it comes to building some NixOS packages.
|
| _ Currently temperature reporting on the 5700G is somewhat broken
| on Linux 5.14. I can see the integrated GPU temperature (I think)
| which should be close enough to the CPU die temp. Using sleep
| (suspend to RAM) on the 5700G has issues with Sway/Wayland.
|
| System idles around ~50W which is about half that of my old 6700K
| system.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Just bought a cheap first gen 12 core Threadripper. I like Void
| Linux so I installed Void Musl. The only issue with Musl libc is
| you can not build the proprietary Nvidia drivers (considered a
| feature to me) so I plugged in an OLD Radeon HD5850 for now. In
| the future I plan to kill off my long in the tooth Win 7 machine
| and move its GTX1060 to the Void machine but I don't think
| nouveau is stable enough. Might have to buy an AMD card or switch
| to Void glibc.
|
| I installed flatpack to install Steam and the experimental
| community build of Proton for flatpack Steam. I was instantly
| able to play a favorite Windows only game: Two Point Hospital.
| Flatpack also made installing Discord (used sparingly I might
| add) and GzDoom to run Brutal Doom, dead simple.
|
| The major hurdle is AAA titles with ghastly anti-piracy/cheat
| software as well as 3rd party gaming platforms do not work. Of
| course this is all getting fixed by Valve so I have nothing but
| praise for them. So as of now the following older AAA's I own do
| not work: GTA5, Skyrim, Crysis, Farcry 3.
|
| So if you think you need a specific Linux to get a good gaming
| experience, you don't. The kernel is the important part. The rest
| is just software dependency solved by flatpack.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I really would like to get Valve interested in NixOS (or Guix),
| because it really is a much better foundation for what they are
| trying to do. Especially when juggling old precompiled games,
| it's essential to be flexible with multiple versions of libraries
| etc. But e.g.
|
| FlatPak is _just_ that, which is the pendulum swinging too far in
| the other direcition when you want the Steam Deck Steam OS too
| still be a coherent experience outside specific games.
|
| The proof of that latter is simple: any fedora silverfish-like
| pure flatpak thing is still vapourware at this point, where Nix
| and Guix are production-ready, and very self-contained so one can
| be sure they aren't going to suddenly fail outside of your
| control.
| TOMDM wrote:
| I really wish I could jump ship from Nvidia.
|
| Having CUDA is just too important for work though, I really wish
| more ML libraries would add ROCm support. I understand it's now
| supported in Pytorch, but doing something like finetuning a
| Transformer model just isn't there yet (someone please, pleease
| tell me if I'm wrong)
|
| The state of the closed source binaries required to get Nvidia
| GPU's running stable on Linux is a frustrating state of affairs.
| siver_john wrote:
| I know for Tensorflow, ROCm keeps their own docker image you
| can pull against.
|
| Though iirc ROCm isn't supported on recent consume level cards
| which I find incredulous that wasn't a goal to have working
| from launch.
| lordleft wrote:
| I'm intrigued by gaming on Linux, but one thing has thrown a
| wrench in the works re: migrating over -- Gamepass for PC. As
| much as I'd like to try to game exclusively on a Linux machine, I
| don't want to lose out on my gamepass games.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You would not necessary lose access to the game pass games:
| https://boilingsteam.com/so-i-tried-xbox-game-pass-on-linux/
| lordleft wrote:
| Very interesting. I'm glad this exists, but it appears to be
| streaming-based, which doesn't meet my needs (I want to run
| my games natively at a high resolution -- though if Gamepass
| streaming gets better and can deliver near native performance
| in the future, I'd seriously consider this).
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I run my homeserver as a sometimes gaming machine (i5/Nvidia
| 1050Ti) and unfortunately Steam and desktop gaming isn't a well
| fit on a machine that gets regular updates (Arch) and doesn't
| reboot often. Kernel/Driver/Steam updates would often leave Steam
| not running and only reboots would fix it.
|
| One of the reasons I'm very excited about the Steam Deck is
| because it would let me de-couple my homeserver and gaming
| usecases while still running Arch in both.
| gowld wrote:
| OP, please compress your photos!
| podiki wrote:
| Slow loading? They were reduced to around HD size (from
| larger), but probably should have used smaller thumbnails in
| the article. Noted. Also, the server is seeing some traffic so
| might be slower.
| fabiensanglard wrote:
| Has anybody tried to use an Intel integrated graphics (for Linux)
| and play games on Windows with KVM/GPU passthrough.
| tlackemann wrote:
| Also built a linux gaming machine this year, AMD CPU but Nvidia
| GPU (3080)
|
| For work, it's a beast. For gaming, it's a beast. I love it.
|
| I'm really happy to hear Steam's push to get all games working on
| Linux. I still dual-boot for those games that require Easy Anti
| Cheat, but for everything else linux has been incredible for both
| indie and AAA gaming.
|
| My biggest gripes aren't all that major but there are a lot of
| Windows-specific tools for changing the colors inside the case
| for the various fans. I'm not a fan of the RGB-puke and like a
| solid color, but after a few tweaks and hacks it mostly works as
| I intend it to.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| Have you seen OpenRGB? https://openrgb.org/
| tlackemann wrote:
| Yes! One of the tools I ended up trying.
| bitwize wrote:
| > I'm really happy to hear Steam's push to get all games
| working on Linux.
|
| Word on the street is that the TPM 2.0 requirements for Windows
| 11 are, in part, to provide a common DRM platform for all
| Windows applications including games. Meaning that instead of
| custom DRM software like Denuvo, antipiracy measures will be
| implemented as common Windows APIs that take advantage of the
| TPM to provide secure attestation of genuine, nonpirated
| binaries. Remember Palladium? Yeah, it's that again, quietly
| implemented piecemeal beginning with Secure Boot.
|
| Linux will have to implement this DRM down to the kernel level,
| or it will be simply locked out of many Windows games.
|
| Forget it. Linux gaming is over. Proton for me has been busted
| enough to have spotty support from release to release anyway.
| netr0ute wrote:
| > Linux gaming is over.
|
| Minecraft: Let me introduce myself.
|
| It's almost ironic that one of the most popular games ever
| made just so happens to perform its best on Linux.
| number6 wrote:
| Hold your horses young one - I haven't finished my run on
| dwarf fortress yet!
| csomar wrote:
| Are you using Wayland? If so, where the compatibility issues
| resolved? (that's one reason why I moved to AMD GPUs over
| Nvidia).
| tlackemann wrote:
| I don't believe I am, I'm using Fedora + i3 but I don't have
| any transparency or special fx on the windows. I do remember
| setting that up on my last machine but it never looked great
| so I left it out this time.
| saint_angels wrote:
| are you using i3 with compton? Without it my 2070s had
| screen tearing, with it, weird visual glitches here and
| there. never figured it out
| tlackemann wrote:
| Compton sounds familiar, I think that's what I was
| confusing for wayland before. It adds a bunch of
| transparency effects and other "nice to haves" but I
| believe I had similar issues.
|
| Drivers on Linux have always been ... non-ideal. I use
| the Fedora kmod drivers these days. It's held up nicely
| so far without any boot halts.
| qudat wrote:
| I just recently setup wayland+sway on my linux dev machine
| running a 970gtx. I made sure to use `mesa` the open source
| drivers for nvidia and everything worked pretty well.
|
| I will definitely be purchasing AMD GPUs if I intend on
| running linux in the future. I know nvidia is working on
| supporting GBM (which is the sticking point for wayland
| support) but who knows when that will land.
| gen3 wrote:
| I went from a 1060 -> 3060ti and didn't have any problems.
| All I did was an apt update after booting. I'm on KDE+X.
| freedomben wrote:
| Not GP but I have an Nvidia card and no, Wayland on Fedora 34
| does not work. And unfortunately Nouveau is highly unstable
| and crashes multiple times per week, usually when I'm in a
| meeting or something important.
|
| I just build a new rig and I didn't even consider Nvidia. AMD
| for me all the way. My only regret is that there's no `nvtop`
| equivalent for AMD.
| agolliver wrote:
| From reading this it sounds like support should land soon
| in Fedora 35
|
| https://lwn.net/Articles/869561/
| one_comment wrote:
| there's radeontop, but i don't know if that's comparable
| freedomben wrote:
| Radeontop is awesome and I'm grateful for it, but it's
| nowhere near equivalent.
| mftb wrote:
| Cool ty, I'm going to check out radeontop.
|
| RE: the article, I also built a 100% amd desktop (in
| 2020) for Linux. Wayland, sway, vaapi, pipewire, etc...
| all working without drama. I've considered posting about
| it somewhere, but just haven't had time.
| penjelly wrote:
| have you bothered with VR? On PopOS i get audio issues with the
| mic and i have to manually switch the speakers to output to my
| index and it still gives me feedback. i dual boot as well but i
| would love to ditch my windows partition.. just need VR working
| 100%
| ekianjo wrote:
| VR is still the one reason to keep using Windows if you want
| a better experience. It kind of works on Linux but it lacks a
| lot of polish as per the example you mentioned.
| [deleted]
| ye_olde_gamer wrote:
| Speaking of Easy Anti Cheat, it's coming to Linux!
| https://dev.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-online-services-la...
| beezischillin wrote:
| Some newer boards allow you to control your RGB LEDs from the
| BIOS (ASUS ones in my experience, at least), if you don't need
| much control over it that can be a viable alternative as well.
| tlackemann wrote:
| Good point! The motherboard I have apparently allows for this
| but it never saves? I tried playing with it for a week before
| giving up. Ultimately, I ended up dual-booting windows and
| using the official brand tool to do something to the
| motherboard to save the correct colors. Been working since,
| even when booting to linux.
| avrionov wrote:
| Have you tried the same games on Windows and Linux? I wonder if
| there is a significant performance difference.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Windows performance is overall much better, don't listen to
| people with 3080 or equivalent.
| RussianCow wrote:
| This is simply not true anymore, at least not across the
| board. In fact, many games run _better_ on Linux than on
| Windows--it depends highly on the title.
| Thaxll wrote:
| This is pretty much a lie. For example DLSS does not work
| on Linux so how can it have better performance that
| Windows.
|
| Drivers are better on windows, games are developped for
| windows and optimized for it so the vaste majority run
| better on Windows.
| RussianCow wrote:
| > For example DLSS does not work on Linux so how can it
| have better performance that Windows.
|
| What does DLSS have to do with anything?
|
| > Drivers are better on windows
|
| [citation needed]
|
| Anecdotally, I've had way more driver-related stability
| problems on Windows than I've had on Linux, at least
| within the last ~3 years.
|
| > games are developped for windows and optimized for it
| so the vaste majority run better on Windows.
|
| How games are developed is irrelevant; Mesa has different
| performance characteristics than the respective Windows
| drivers, and so performs better in a lot of cases due to
| lower overhead. Projects like DXVK can further improve
| performance by translating DirectX calls to Vulkan.
|
| In any case, there are plenty of benchmarks online
| showing some games achieving higher FPS on Linux than on
| Windows. For a fairly extreme example, see this 3-year-
| old benchmark[0] showing Dota 2 on Linux wiping the floor
| with its Windows counterpart in 1080p. I have also
| personally tested this and noticed an improvement on
| Linux with certain games. (Granted, not very many, but
| this was also a few years ago, before some of the recent
| performance optimizations in Mesa, Wine, and related
| projects.)
|
| Disclaimer: I'm not a subject expert, so can't go into
| detail about the how/why, but I also believe the
| benchmarks speak for themselves.
|
| [0]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=
| june-201...
| tlackemann wrote:
| I've tried some, Sea of Thieves primarily.
|
| SoT performs better on Linux for me but the online experience
| has a lot to be desired. Microphone doesn't work, anything
| Microsoft live is absent ... though playable.
|
| I'd say that 9/10 games I try on Linux run at Windows
| performance if not better. YMMV
| ghastmaster wrote:
| I am very happy to see linux gaming grow every year. I gave up
| pubg and star citizen to go exclusively native linux(kubuntu
| 20.04[c. 2019]). There are still plenty of titles out there to
| play that are entertaining. At the end of the day, gaming is just
| a way to entertain the brain and wind down before bed for me.
|
| I have had some minor hiccups with steam, but they seem to have
| ironed out cs:go very well. A lot of the older games I've played
| through the years have open source versions that actually work
| better than their original counterpart.
|
| ryzen 3900x, gtx 1080
| nspattak wrote:
| i would love to buy an AMD GPU but price&&availability are just
| ridiculous and impossible
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| If you don't need 4k 60fps max settings, a used R9 290 is
| reasonably priced.
| podiki wrote:
| Sadly too true still, but same with Nvidia, and even older gen
| stuff. Hopefully things improve, but at the very least would be
| helpful if manufacturers and stores had good bot measures,
| queuing, or some waitlist function for real humans.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Yeah, PC gaming will be dead for a few years at least.
|
| Might try to get a Steam Deck.
| ktkoffroth wrote:
| The problem isn't exclusive to PCs. The PS5 and Xbox Series X
| use the same process as AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs, and tons of
| people have had trouble getting their hands on them.
| podiki wrote:
| It gets worse: on top of things like cars and other
| consumer electronics, even the cheap chips you need to make
| a keyboard are hard to get! I wanted to build a mechanical
| keyboard from scratch but have put it on indefinite hold
| until it gets better.
| risedotmoe wrote:
| I like to build my linux computers AMD only. No intel IME and
| nightmarish proprietary nvidia drivers. Smooth Sailing.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Nice build, but personal preference gripe:
|
| I'm so tired of the glass-box-with LED fans aesthetic.
|
| I bought an intel NUC ECE + a small form factor case. My PC is
| about the size of a 12 pack of beer and runs everything I throw
| at it.
|
| That's nice, but what I really want is a rack in the closet or a
| small impact-resistant case with a handle to carry to LAN
| parties, whenever those exist again.
| Latty wrote:
| The Hyte Revolt 3 might fit the bill for a small case with a
| handle.
|
| If you weren't keen on a handle, I'd recommend the SSUPD
| Meshlicious instead though.
| ajklsdhfniuwehf wrote:
| my mobos all have all the LED standards. no leds connect tho :)
|
| I'm waiting for the consumerist crowd to port decent linux
| control so i can use the LEDs to show system load/status etc.
|
| Ironically, the "gammer" cases lack even a HDD light
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Does what you want not exist? I love the crazy LED features.
| It's a kind of simple fun that I haven't seen in electronics
| since the Game Boy Color, GBA, Nintendo 64, Gamecube kind of
| days.
| pacman2 wrote:
| Hm. I build my Workstation Desktop in 2019 with AMD and nVidia
| and an Ubunut flavor. Focused a little bit on low noise and a
| video card supporting several Screens.
|
| Has assembling a Desktop become an art in 2021?
| khanan wrote:
| You just HAD to have a cat in there, didn't you... Here, have a
| point! Oh, the rest was a good read too :)
| podiki wrote:
| Haha thanks! I swear I didn't put him there. It has become a
| running thing, he just loves to get into the photos I take for
| articles. He tends to want to "help" and knows that new boxes
| and gear means there's plenty to help with.
|
| I also have a shot of him wide-eyed at seeing the computer
| turned on for the first time, and still sometimes stops to
| stare at the lights.
| lanius wrote:
| 750 W seems like overkill for a 5600x + 6700XT.
| podiki wrote:
| (Author) Probably is, but hopefully not far from the sweet spot
| in efficiency for the power supply. I didn't mention it, but my
| preferred GPU would be a 6800XT, which this should easily cover
| too. Also, it doesn't run the fan at low loads, so even quieter
| for light desktop usage.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Why don't massive new ATX cases have 5.25" drive bays anymore?! I
| get that an optical drive on a laptop is a bit extra, but I still
| need to burn media, backups and images!
|
| Where is the IO panel? Where are the hot-swappable drives? Why is
| the underutilized CPU liquid cooled, when the over-stressed GPU
| is poorly air cooled?!
|
| Nothing about this makes sense, except it's conformance to modern
| fashion. Don't even get me started about the fan placement...
|
| Don't get me wrong though, I love the glass (or plastic).
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| CPU water coolers are cheap because the mounting is pretty much
| standardized. A GPU requires a unique mounting bracket for each
| model although you can buy GPUs that come with a AIO water loop
| installed for premium.
|
| >90% of custom PC builds do not install a disk drive and there
| is a large preference for aesthetics over function plus 5.25"
| drive bays also block airflow anyway. It's also easier to work
| in a case that has fewer drive bays. It's a lot easier to just
| buy a external disk drive anyway.
|
| Using optical disks as a backup medium is pretty much dead.
| Optical disks are more expensive per GB than hard drives.
| (Bluray seems to be about ~$38/TB while HDDs are ~$25/TB). I
| would not be surprised if the main use of Bluray drives was
| ripping/saving the disk contents to a hard drive.
|
| Anything plugged into the front panel just looks bad so most
| cases just have a USB A and C + audio ports. TBH the front
| audio ports are often useless anyway because they pick up a lot
| of noise.
|
| Not sure what you mean about fan placement since most cases are
| designed to operate with positive pressure which reduces the
| amount of dust collected.
|
| Also the case in the OP article is not a big case, it is just
| shorter and wider than a normal mATX case so it looks big in
| pictures.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| > CPU water coolers are cheap because the mounting is pretty
| much standardized. A GPU requires a unique mounting bracket
| for each model although you can buy GPUs that come with a AIO
| water loop installed for premium.
|
| True
|
| RE Optical vs Magnetic: Unless someone has some good hard
| data to show me (I'm honestly very interested in seeing more
| numbers on this subject), I'm going to continue to assume
| high quality optical media is going to last longer and
| require less special treatment than hard drives, tapes, etc.
| Flash media lasts even less time. Yes, information density is
| lower on optical, so it really depends what you are backing
| up. If your concern is rolling backups of an entire prod
| server worth of customer records perhaps don't choose
| optical, however that's so far from what we're talking about
| in this thread that I don't see why it would influence your
| decision making process. However, if the goal is to backup a
| save file, or some old family photos, optical is still my go-
| to.
|
| > Anything plugged into the front panel just looks bad
|
| LOL OK, so I need to dig around in back every time I need to
| plug in my headphones? Really?! _Perhaps_ you just make the
| back the new front, I 've done that on a few rigs in the
| past.
|
| > Not sure what you mean about fan placement since most cases
| are designed to operate with positive pressure which reduces
| the amount of dust collected.
|
| Interesting, I hadn't considered that before. I'll have to
| test that out on my next rebuild.
|
| That being said, I doubt the OP has positive interior
| pressure, since there are two "lower speed fans on the
| radiator" for intake, and three pushing out from the top.
| podiki wrote:
| I'm not sure what the pressure would be. And there are dust
| filters everywhere but the rear fan (which is exhaust
| anyway). The fans are pretty similar, and at least by
| count: 5 intake (2 radiator, 3 bottom), 4 exhaust (3 on
| top, 1 rear), plus GPU exhaust (not counting the power
| supply since it is behind everything). There are some tests
| on YouTube of this case and running the radiator as intake
| if it is on the side was better for thermals, from there I
| think the way I have it at least isn't the worst setup.
| Open to suggestions, but as I wrote, thermals are quite
| good (to me).
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Ah yes, I was looking at the incomplete build, sorry for
| my sloppy comment. This thing has so many fans I can't
| imagine having air flow issues. Like I said, don't get me
| started about fans, rofl. Since you have a cat, I'm sure
| you'll be cleaning out those filters quite often, as I
| do.
|
| Can you share your GPU (under load) temps, or did I miss
| those as well?
|
| I hope I wasn't coming off _too_ negatively on your
| build. I 'm still reeling about my last build, which was
| quite similar.
| podiki wrote:
| (Author here)
|
| Yeah, no more 5.25" drivers, but honestly I haven't used my DVD
| drive in the previous computer in a very long time. I'll
| probably get an enclosure or external one for the rare CD
| ripping I do.
|
| IO panel is in the back, I didn't include a picture but you can
| find it on the Asus page for the motherboard of course. Pretty
| much what you'd expect: lots of USB, ethernet, display out (if
| you have integrated graphics), etc.
|
| "Underutilized CPU"? It is not a server, but I do plenty of
| compiling and other CPU tasks. Water cooling is efficient and
| quiet too, so why not?
|
| (Perhaps you've assumed a fan setup here, but I think I've
| configured them sensibly.)
|
| "Over-stressed GPU...poorly air cooled"? I'd love a water block
| and custom loop, but that is outside of what I want to do/spend
| money on. The bottom fans are intake (as are the side radiator
| fans, the rear and top are exhaust). The GPU fans are off
| unless I'm playing games as it stays cool enough. And when I do
| play I don't notice any noise, no throttling, ... is well
| cooled I'd say.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I mean, I have an integrated water block on my CPU as well...
| it just makes sense these days. It's just hilarious to me
| that I have the good cooler on the part that's less in need.
|
| The external thing is a decent idea, but I just have way too
| many junk drawers full of random shit in my little apartment,
| so I'd rather put it where it belongs, and leave it
| connected. There's really no harm in that, plus it can even
| help with air flow if you do it right.
|
| On a tangential note: I once knew a professor with a
| completely passively liquid cooled rig. Just buy a big enough
| radiator (about the size of yours) and test things out for
| yourself. If you have a cool enough room, it should be fine.
|
| Meanwhile, now I'm trying to wire up an old mobo to a side
| table in the living room, so I guess I don't have a 5.25" bay
| (yet) either. Or any fans.
| podiki wrote:
| Some people have made builds with the whole thing immersed
| in some liquid no? Sounds...messy, but interesting.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Mineral oil. Food oils will degrade over time.
|
| https://grabcad.com/library/custom-micro-atx-mineral-oil-
| com...!
| podiki wrote:
| What, you don't want it to double as a deep fryer?
| nixpulvis wrote:
| With GPUs these days running at ~100C we're getting
| closer and closer to this becoming a reality.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| > The external thing is a decent idea
|
| You know... I take this back. I just plugged in my external
| SATA to USB adapter and immediately re-mourned my last
| broken backup HDD, which I broke because I tripped on the
| fucking cable.
|
| Spinning disks should be properly mounted.
| jcelerier wrote:
| > but I still need to burn media, backups and images!
|
| crazy, I haven't used any optical media directly since 2009
| willis936 wrote:
| 5.25" bays are also handy for general purpose I/O shenanigans.
| My eyes were opened when I realized you can fit 6x hot swap
| 2.5" drives into a single 5.25" bay.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Really looking forward to the follow-up article on this.
|
| >There's a lot more to say, which I'll be writing up in some
| future articles to introduce everyone to Guix and breaking out of
| GNU-land for a gaming machine. (Note: please don't discuss non-
| free software on any official Guix channels, like their mailing
| lists or IRC channel. They are friendly and will just politely
| remind you, but best to discuss somewhere like #nonguix on IRC.)
| podiki wrote:
| I better get right on it! If you are curious, you can see my
| current Guix config here [0], though not very commented. But
| those files (combined with the rest of my dot files) would
| reproduce this system configuration.
|
| [0] https://github.com/podiki/dot.me/tree/master/guix/.config
| _boffin_ wrote:
| Why the LEDs? I just don't understand.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Fun
| dicroce wrote:
| Controversial Opinion - 2022 will finally be the year of the
| linux desktop for 2 reasons:
|
| 1) steam deck will fix gaming on linux. 2) flatpak + snap will
| finally fix distributing software on linux.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| To nitpick, it's really Steam Play (Proton) + Lutris (for games
| not available in Steam) + Wine that have already fixed gaming
| on Linux. With those three you can play ~90% of games now. The
| Steam app is already widely in use, but it remains to be seen
| how successful Steam Deck will be.
|
| And Linux Desktop is already here, it's just not evenly
| distributed. Lots of innovators and early adopters, aka the
| cool kids, are now on Linux Desktop, including for gaming
| thanks to the above. It's only a matter of time till the
| mainstream and late adopters follow.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| Not to mention, recent work with things like Maui in KDE and
| the "platform building" nature of Gnome 40+ have lent a
| growing polish to the desktop experience of both
| environments.
|
| There's still a lot of work to be done for Linux to reach the
| hardware and software ubiquity of Windows or the UX polish of
| MacOS, but I increasingly see a more diverse set of talent,
| including design talent, lending their experience to the
| platform.
|
| And as more disciplines work on the ecosystem, eventually
| demand for a more diverse set of software will follow.
|
| Combine that with an initially lukewarm reception to Windows
| 11 so far, and growing privacy concerns on MacOS, and the
| incentives for an alternative platform are more widespread
| than they've been in a long time.
|
| I know "the year of Linux desktops" has been a thing for
| forever, but it really does feel closer to the tipping point
| than ever.
|
| Doesn't mean it will definitely happen, but the momentum
| feels more with it than against it, IMO.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| For now, flatpack and snap sandboxes perf hit are quite
| significant, and devs don't manage the permissions well so you
| often end up with software that can't open the files you want.
|
| When you fire and electron app from a sandbox, it's a hog
| riding a slug, then you try to open your files only to find
| yourself in a temp folder or chrooted to a config subdir.
|
| It think those tech can bring a lot, but there is still work to
| do.
| TOMDM wrote:
| Snap permissions are a mess.
|
| The fact that I have to give Remmina each of its permissions
| one at a time after installing with snap is silly.
| beebeepka wrote:
| No doubt. My 3700/rx5700 build has been running Manjaro with
| minimal issues overall, including on the gaming side.
|
| We're close to the point where pretty much everything will be
| running in an year or so. It's remarkable how much can change
| in just a few years
| yewenjie wrote:
| I tried GNU Guix for a week (coming from Arch). While I really
| liked that it has an integrated approach for almost everything I
| found the following drawbacks which made me switch to NixOS
| ultimately.
|
| - lack of packages, I found myself constantly using the Nix
| package manager to get most of the packages - package download
| speed was considerably slower than Arch - the overall size of the
| community is small
| opan wrote:
| Adding missing packages to the guix wishlist (on the
| libreplanet wiki), and maybe even helping package some things
| yourself is one way to help with that problem.
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