[3dem] Seeking advice on Relion/CryoSPARC workstation

[Colin Gauvin]

I wanted to add a note about SSD space, as I didn't see it among the other 
excellent advice: make sure that your system is using PCI-E enabled SSDs 
(these are commonly denoted as M.2/NVME in traditional desktop systems, or U.2 
in server style systems). But regardless, you want to avoid having SSDs that 
are SATA or SAS, because they will be rate limited by the communication bus. 
PCI-E SSDs are typically something like an order of magnitude faster. 

This adds an additional consideration, as well, which is PCI-E lanes of the 
CPUs and/or chipset. Traditional desktop class CPUs like AMD Ryzen or Intel i-
series have substantially fewer PCI-E lanes and this limits your SSD expansion 
possibilities, especially if you are using 4 GPUs which will also all be 
eating up PCI-E lanes. Workstation class such as Threadripper, Threadripper 
Pro, and Xeon, and server class such as Epyc and Xeon, will typically offer 
far more PCI-E lanes. Adding a 2nd CPU to a system adds even more PCI-E lanes. 

A general rule of thumb is you should expect each GPU to use 8 lanes, and each 
PCI-E SSD to use 4. 

-- 
Best Regards,

Colin Gauvin
colingauvin at montana.edu
PhD Candidate, Lawrence Laboratory
Montana State University

(401) 263-0343
On Monday, January 10, 2022 6:01:10 AM MST 3dem-request at ncmir.ucsd.edu wrote:
>  and as far as I know there are nearly no blower style editions available of
> the RTX30-XX generation, Nvidia Founder Editions are no blower style since
> the 20th generation and custom board partners did not really make or sell a
> lot of bower style for the 30th generation. Easier to get these days are
> workstation/data center grade GPUs, though they are of course more
> expensive and not really needed. A6000 for example is near to equal/bit
> better then the 3090 in FP32, though significantly more expensive, but hey
> you get at least 48GB of VRAM and blower style cooling;) Data Center
> alternative would be the A40, this is passive cooled so only for servers
> with high airflow. You have to check with your resellers if you may can
> apply to education discounts.