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Let's see * $450 -- 12-core Zen 4 * $250 -- x670 motherboard * $130 -- 48gb RAM * $100 -- 1TB SSD * $170 -- 750w PSU * $130 -- case * $600 -- 3070 GPU *

by hajile 3y ago

Let's see * $450 -- 12-core Zen 4 * $250 -- x670 motherboard * $130 -- 48gb RAM * $100 -- 1TB SSD * $170 -- 750w PSU * $130 -- case * $600 -- 3070 GPU * $80 -- CPU air cooler * $200 -- Windows * $100 -- so-so speakers, mouse, keyboard, etc. We're very close to $2200 if we go with solid, midrange stuff and don't include a monitor. The cost to apple self-repair guys for a 16" mini-LED display is $670 with Apple offering around $100 back if they'll turn in the old screen. If we add in $600 for the monitor cost, we're up to $2800 while the 16" MBP we compared to is actually $4000. The savings of a desktop are there, but they aren't what you make them out to be. If we look at a comparable laptop with good build quality like a Lenove Thinkpad, we're going to pay as much or more. For the same price, we'll have terrible battery life and our performance when not plugged in will drop off a cliff.

manmal 3y ago
But this build is not only equivalent to an M3 MacBook - it’s probably 2+x as powerful when it comes to CPU and GPU. There are cheaper ways to build an equivalent machine.
- zuhsetaqi 3y ago
  Where do you get the 2 times faster from. I doubt it's even close
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Laptop performance is often thermally limited due to less airflow. Desktop PCs have big fans and coolers and can handle sustained load better. Bursty loads are less of a disparity, though. But of course, the tradeoff is that it's not portable like a laptop.
    - sliken 3y ago
      Very common on pc laptops, doubly so with discrete GPUs. However Mac laptops seem pretty good about not thermally limiting and are especially at giving same performance when plugged in as when on battery. PC Laptops with discrete GPUs often show huge differences when on battery vs wall power.
      - ben-schaaf 3y ago
        Macs are notorious for thermal throttling, partly due to inadequate cooling and party a policy to only turn on the fan once it's already throttling. This hasn't changed with Apple Silicon.
        sliken 3y ago
        Every review I've seen for the apple silicon macs show they do quite well, especially compared to similar PC laptops. So not zero impact, but MUCH better than the competition. I'm not basing this on impressions, but the published performance metrics show performance over time as well as performance on wall power vs performance on battery.
        TexanFeller 3y ago
        Previously true on Intel MBPs. M* chip MBPs hardly ever throttle in any significant way.
        acdha 3y ago
        > This hasn't changed with Apple Silicon. The first part of your comment is correct. This part is not true for any benchmark I’ve seen - it’s possible to detect thermal throttling on the Air models but it requires uncommonly heavy workloads and takes much longer to kick in than it did with the Intel processors. In practice, a software developer who isn’t running LLMs locally will likely never hear the fan on their MacBook Pro or experience throttling on an Air.
- npunt 3y ago
  hate to break it to you but they're probably within spitting distance of each other, certainly in CPU and possibly GPU. https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m3_max_16_cpu_40_gpu-vs-amd_ryzen_9_7900 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m3_max_16_cp... https://wccftech.com/m3-max-gpu-only-seven-percent-slower-than-the-laptop-rtx-4080/ https://wccftech.com/m3-max-gpu-only-seven-percent-slower-th... and throttling isn't that much on 16" model https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0sVCUWJ6VU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0sVCUWJ6VU
- hajile 3y ago
  I chose the 12-core because it's very close to the M3 Max in overall performance. There are cheaper ways to build most things. A high-end Thinkpad is $3000-4000 and you can buy a terrible gaming laptop with the same components for $1000-1500. The Thinkpad is going to be more reliable and last longer than the gaming laptop because the build quality is much higher. Apple uses good components that cost more, so comparing to bottom-of-the-barrel components isn't an apples-to-apples comparison.
cwaffles 3y ago
I think this is not a fair comparison. 1. a 750w Corsair PSU is ~$100 2. CPU cooler should be $30. A Thermalright cooler is way more than enough to keep at full boost speeds. 3. case is ~$50, its just a box 4. Windows is not the platform of choice for GPU/LLM work Easy $400 savings. I would also also buy a B660 motherboard as X series motherboards only really offer overclocking options, and modern CPUs do not overclock anymore. $190 at newegg: https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b650-gaming-x-ax/p/N82E16813145449 https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b650-gaming-x-ax/p/N82E16813...
- sbuk 3y ago
  That's still around $2400 - which is $1400 more than the mythical $1000 comparable desktop...
- hajile 3y ago
  You need to compare likes as much as is reasonable. I literally priced everything out on Newegg. 1. You certainly can, but that's the Corsair with the crappy components rather than one with good guts. If I were being completely fair, I'd be spending well over $300 to buy a GaN PSU. 2. Maybe you're different, but I'm not spending almost $500 on a high-TDP CPU only to cripple it with a crappy cooler. 3. I went with a midrange case. In truth,You can't even buy a case on-par with the MacBook Pro case. Even trying to get close would be in the $400+ boutique range. 4. I never mentioned what work was going to be done. If I were going to compare for LLM work and be competitive with Apple, I'd have to go WAY more expensive on the GPU. B650E and X670E are for overclocking and you'd pay WAY more to get them over their non-E counterparts. x670 offers quite a bit more IO. Maybe that's more IO than Apple offers, but the cost difference for a decent B650 isn't very much (maybe 3-4% of build cost). Certainly less than upgrading the other things you mentioned.
  - cwaffles 3y ago
    I see nothing wrong with the CX750M PSU [0]. What do you consider good guts? Compared to the macbook charger, which gets fairly hot under load, I see it as more capable. 2. Cooler cost has very little to do with performance. Thermalright units compete with liquid coolers for a fraction of the cost[1]. 3. What does a macbook case offer? Holes for ports and the keyboard, hinge for the LCD. The components themselves do the work. What does a ~$50 case [2] not do? Plenty of cooling, mounts all your components. 4. For llama.cpp text generation, an M3 pro does ~31 tokens per sec with the Q4_0 profile[3]. A 3070 does ~34 tokens per second [4]. WRT the motherboard, I'm not sure what did I suggest upgrading? I recommended cheaper parts than the original post. [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/corsair-cx750m-2021-power-supply-review https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/corsair-cx750m-2021-pow... [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermalright-peerless-assassin-120-se/2 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermalright-peerless-a... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Zalman-Computer-Workstation-Preinstalled-Acrylic/dp/B07NZYJ9ZJ?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext https://www.amazon.com/Zalman-Computer-Workstation-Preinstal... [3] https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/discussions/4167 https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/discussions/4167 [4] https://kubito.dev/posts/llama-nvidia-3070-ti-benchmarks/#performance-of-7b-version https://kubito.dev/posts/llama-nvidia-3070-ti-benchmarks/#pe...
nomel 3y ago
Yeah, but this won't fit in my backpack, and it'll only have about a 2 hour battery life when plugged into the car battery I'll have to bring with me.
- hajile 3y ago
  I agree and that's why I added the comment about a Thinkpad at the end. My point was that the difference is closer to 25% rather than the 300% that was claimed. I own an M3 Max laptop, so you can suffice it to say that I think the 25% markup is quite reasonable for being able to stuff a very nice desktop into my bag.
sliken 3y ago
Sure, but laptops are generally more expensive than desktops. Your config also includes 1/4th the memory bandwidth.

by hajile 3y ago

manmal 3y ago

But this build is not only equivalent to an M3 MacBook - it’s probably 2+x as powerful when it comes to CPU and GPU. There are cheaper ways to build an equivalent machine.

zuhsetaqi 3y ago
Where do you get the 2 times faster from. I doubt it's even close
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  Laptop performance is often thermally limited due to less airflow. Desktop PCs have big fans and coolers and can handle sustained load better. Bursty loads are less of a disparity, though. But of course, the tradeoff is that it's not portable like a laptop.
  - sliken 3y ago
    Very common on pc laptops, doubly so with discrete GPUs. However Mac laptops seem pretty good about not thermally limiting and are especially at giving same performance when plugged in as when on battery. PC Laptops with discrete GPUs often show huge differences when on battery vs wall power.
    - ben-schaaf 3y ago
      Macs are notorious for thermal throttling, partly due to inadequate cooling and party a policy to only turn on the fan once it's already throttling. This hasn't changed with Apple Silicon.
      - sliken 3y ago
        Every review I've seen for the apple silicon macs show they do quite well, especially compared to similar PC laptops. So not zero impact, but MUCH better than the competition. I'm not basing this on impressions, but the published performance metrics show performance over time as well as performance on wall power vs performance on battery.
      - TexanFeller 3y ago
        Previously true on Intel MBPs. M* chip MBPs hardly ever throttle in any significant way.
      - acdha 3y ago
        > This hasn't changed with Apple Silicon. The first part of your comment is correct. This part is not true for any benchmark I’ve seen - it’s possible to detect thermal throttling on the Air models but it requires uncommonly heavy workloads and takes much longer to kick in than it did with the Intel processors. In practice, a software developer who isn’t running LLMs locally will likely never hear the fan on their MacBook Pro or experience throttling on an Air.
npunt 3y ago
hate to break it to you but they're probably within spitting distance of each other, certainly in CPU and possibly GPU. https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m3_max_16_cpu_40_gpu-vs-amd_ryzen_9_7900 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m3_max_16_cp... https://wccftech.com/m3-max-gpu-only-seven-percent-slower-than-the-laptop-rtx-4080/ https://wccftech.com/m3-max-gpu-only-seven-percent-slower-th... and throttling isn't that much on 16" model https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0sVCUWJ6VU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0sVCUWJ6VU
hajile 3y ago
I chose the 12-core because it's very close to the M3 Max in overall performance. There are cheaper ways to build most things. A high-end Thinkpad is $3000-4000 and you can buy a terrible gaming laptop with the same components for $1000-1500. The Thinkpad is going to be more reliable and last longer than the gaming laptop because the build quality is much higher. Apple uses good components that cost more, so comparing to bottom-of-the-barrel components isn't an apples-to-apples comparison.

cwaffles 3y ago

I think this is not a fair comparison. 1. a 750w Corsair PSU is ~$100 2. CPU cooler should be $30. A Thermalright cooler is way more than enough to keep at full boost speeds. 3. case is ~$50, its just a box 4. Windows is not the platform of choice for GPU/LLM work Easy $400 savings. I would also also buy a B660 motherboard as X series motherboards only really offer overclocking options, and modern CPUs do not overclock anymore. $190 at newegg: https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b650-gaming-x-ax/p/N82E16813145449 https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b650-gaming-x-ax/p/N82E16813...

sbuk 3y ago
That's still around $2400 - which is $1400 more than the mythical $1000 comparable desktop...
hajile 3y ago
You need to compare likes as much as is reasonable. I literally priced everything out on Newegg. 1. You certainly can, but that's the Corsair with the crappy components rather than one with good guts. If I were being completely fair, I'd be spending well over $300 to buy a GaN PSU. 2. Maybe you're different, but I'm not spending almost $500 on a high-TDP CPU only to cripple it with a crappy cooler. 3. I went with a midrange case. In truth,You can't even buy a case on-par with the MacBook Pro case. Even trying to get close would be in the $400+ boutique range. 4. I never mentioned what work was going to be done. If I were going to compare for LLM work and be competitive with Apple, I'd have to go WAY more expensive on the GPU. B650E and X670E are for overclocking and you'd pay WAY more to get them over their non-E counterparts. x670 offers quite a bit more IO. Maybe that's more IO than Apple offers, but the cost difference for a decent B650 isn't very much (maybe 3-4% of build cost). Certainly less than upgrading the other things you mentioned.
- cwaffles 3y ago
  I see nothing wrong with the CX750M PSU [0]. What do you consider good guts? Compared to the macbook charger, which gets fairly hot under load, I see it as more capable. 2. Cooler cost has very little to do with performance. Thermalright units compete with liquid coolers for a fraction of the cost[1]. 3. What does a macbook case offer? Holes for ports and the keyboard, hinge for the LCD. The components themselves do the work. What does a ~$50 case [2] not do? Plenty of cooling, mounts all your components. 4. For llama.cpp text generation, an M3 pro does ~31 tokens per sec with the Q4_0 profile[3]. A 3070 does ~34 tokens per second [4]. WRT the motherboard, I'm not sure what did I suggest upgrading? I recommended cheaper parts than the original post. [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/corsair-cx750m-2021-power-supply-review https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/corsair-cx750m-2021-pow... [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermalright-peerless-assassin-120-se/2 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermalright-peerless-a... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Zalman-Computer-Workstation-Preinstalled-Acrylic/dp/B07NZYJ9ZJ?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext https://www.amazon.com/Zalman-Computer-Workstation-Preinstal... [3] https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/discussions/4167 https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/discussions/4167 [4] https://kubito.dev/posts/llama-nvidia-3070-ti-benchmarks/#performance-of-7b-version https://kubito.dev/posts/llama-nvidia-3070-ti-benchmarks/#pe...

nomel 3y ago

Yeah, but this won't fit in my backpack, and it'll only have about a 2 hour battery life when plugged into the car battery I'll have to bring with me.

hajile 3y ago
I agree and that's why I added the comment about a Thinkpad at the end. My point was that the difference is closer to 25% rather than the 300% that was claimed. I own an M3 Max laptop, so you can suffice it to say that I think the 25% markup is quite reasonable for being able to stuff a very nice desktop into my bag.

sliken 3y ago

Sure, but laptops are generally more expensive than desktops. Your config also includes 1/4th the memory bandwidth.