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What's the big deal with having a whole liquid cooled workstation, and why is it important information for me to know what this dude's hardware is? And seriousl
by noduerme 6mo ago
What's the big deal with having a whole liquid cooled workstation, and why is it important information for me to know what this dude's hardware is? And seriously, is there something about the rig that is necessary to chew through a dataset with a few million rows?
- biesnecker 6mo agoIt had a very 90s/early-2000s tech blog feel to it. Only thing missing was his custom Gentoo build.
- jmyeet 6mo agoI had the exact same thought, particularly when I read there were fewer than 4M records. I really have to wonder if people truly know how powerful any modern computer is. Like I just assume any modern PC with sufficient storage can handle a database with a billion rows of data. I think my phone probably could. Now if you were, say, analyzing commercial satellite imagery of the entire US and trying to find rooftop solar, matching it against the database and finding data that wasn't in the dataset, that's something where your computer power would be way more relevant. Come to think of it, you could probably use such imagery to construct a power generation network from power plants to transmission lines to utility poles. Of course some places have underground cables but there are other datasets for that. Another interesting project is mapping the growth of solar. This would require access to commercial satellite imagery over time. I'm sure some government agency already does it. Or used to at least. Snapshots years or even months apart are less interesting. Anyway, I guess the point is the author's computer is capable of way more than I suspect they think it is.
- supermatt 6mo ago> than I suspect they think it is. Because he wants to tell you about his computer it means he doesn’t know how capable it is?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 6mo agoI always make sure to downgrade my computer hardware before running a trivial analysis. Every dataset needs to redline the current configuration.
- seanalltogether 6mo agoHe just does this with all his blog posts, don't overthink it. The tech industry is full of people with unexpected quirks.
- basilgohar 6mo agoWe need more of this, not less. This is Hacker News. He gave us exactly what we need to know to exactly replicate his results.
- hparadiz 6mo agoThat's how I took it too. You always provide hardware information when publishing any data set that takes a long time to compile.
- MisterTea 6mo agoI think it feels a little bit of an Ad for the hardware, especially the way he describes the case, telling you the exact model and how spacious it is. Bit sus but perhaps he is being OVERLY detailed and just likes telling you he has a bunch of CPU's that are well cooled in a case with two big ugly fans on the front (not into that look at all.) Though I can totally understand, geeky people love details. I have a habit of getting way too detailed in my writings here. So I then spend most of the time editing it down to be as clear and brief as possible. I refuse to use an LLM for my own thoughts.
- blitzar 6mo ago> 96 GB of DDR5 RAM Most people drive cars worth less than this.
- basilgohar 6mo agoHe could have gotten it when it was still cheap.
- segmondy 6mo ago96gb of ddr5 ram is about $800.
- nine_k 6mo agoA single stick of DDR5 RAM on Amazon in about $450 now. Three sticks would be $1350. Do most people drive old clankers with less than $1500 resale value? You still need a few terabytes to enter the real cars territory.
- a3w 6mo agoMost people don't own or drive cars.
- rootusrootus 6mo agoWhere? Even in Europe, 88% of households have a car, and on average just over half of all people.
- abdullahkhalids 6mo ago
- basilgohar 6mo agoWhy is the top comment criticising a geek for being a geek? He gave us a wealth of information including his exact methodology and queries on how he produced his results. This is an ideal approach. You want just results and "trust me, bro"?
- everdrive 6mo agoLiquid-cooled computers have one major benefit; usually, your computer ages over time, and there's a long period where it's still barely fast enough but you wish you had something nicer. A liquid-cooled workstation prevents you from needing to manage this grey area by catastrophically failing at unexpected intervals.
- wing-_-nuts 6mo agoHad me in the first half. I looked at using an AIO for my PC build but ultimately went with an air cooler the size of a damned rubix cube and a high airflow case. My room gets toasty with raytracing titles, lol
- virgildotcodes 6mo agoWouldn't your room get equally/more toasty with liquid cooling? That heat has to get dumped somewhere, and liquid would theoretically be more effective at dumping it into your room.
- NetMageSCW 6mo agoWhat alternative wouldn’t end up dumping it in your room?
- wing-_-nuts 6mo agoyeah no doubt. Interestingly, I have seen a water cooling setup that dumped heat to a massive outdoor radiator, but that was obviously a one off project. I'd say I was surprised by the amount of heat a gaming pc can generate these days but when you have a gpu that can consume ~ 400W and a cpu at ~ 100W, only so much my 'space heater that draws pretty triangles' can do, lol. I might look into undervolting this summer.
- swiftcoder 6mo agoI really don't think we should be shaming computer enthusiasts for being enthusiastic about their computers on HN of all places
- segmondy 6mo agoObviously he's telling you their spec incase you wish to reproduce his results. Why don't you try it and tell us how your result compares.
- Noumenon72 6mo agoIt's funny how I started skimming as soon as I saw "My Workstation" without ever consciously perceiving why I had started hitting Page Down, until you mentioned it and I went back to notice what it said there. My brain has really automated web page signal extraction.
- TheGRS 6mo agoMy initial thought was that was a weird choice in this article, but I wouldn't fault someone for being thorough. Probably a better choice as an appendix, move the good stuff up to the top. But overall its NBD.
- amluto 6mo agoThe 9950X is an excellent CPU at a reasonable price point and works perfectly fine with an ordinary air-cooled heat sink in an ordinary case without stupid numbers of fans. The TDP is just not that high. source: my 9950X, happily running air cooled. (Embarrassingly, I have an M4 Max that can almost match it in the CPU-bound workload I care about while sipping some 45W. The rest of the industry really needs to catch up with Apple on power efficiency.)
- russfrank 6mo agoIf you're not familiar with his blog, he also occasionally does benchmarks of databases & extensions. He starts every post by outlining his setup.