Specs:
i7 4790K ($50)
9020 Optiplex Motherboard ($10)
32GB DDR3 RAM ($35)
7900 XTX 24GB VRAM ($900)
1TB M.2 NVMe ($50)
EVGA 700 BR PSU ($50)
24 pin to 8 pin adapter for motherboard ($20)
NVME PCIe x4 Adapter ($12)
Molex to fan adapters ($7)
Power button adapter ($6)
Total: $1140
Using Arch GNU/Linux (Tried installing Debian, couldn’t get the AMD drivers to work properly, so I’m using Arch for the moment)
Can run Stable Diffusion, LLMs, and basically all my games at 1440p High to Ultra settings (RDR2, GTA V, Arma 3, etc.)
GPU passhtrough doesn’t work for the moment, but I can still run virtual machines. This is a Haswell motherboard, which can be 100% freed in the BIOS over time when we have enough Libreboot devs who can reverse engineer the rest of the blobs. Intel ME is also disabled (theoretically, since you can’t actually fully remove it). This is a build that I did for fun, in the future, I’m planning on switching to a Z690-A motherboard with DDR5(can be flashed with Dasharo firmware). If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
i5 4790K and a… 7900 XTX?
The mother of all bottlenecks.
It’s bad, but is it?
i7, and honestly still a ridiculously powerful one
I’m still rocking my 4790K with an AMD 7600XT, the videocard is more often the bottleneck to heavy tasks than that CPU is.
You are not supposed to power the GPU like that. You should use two separate cables from the supply. The other connector of the same cable is intended to “daisy chain” low power cards.
It will probably work anyway, but better safe than sorry.
Edit: I think it’s needed because:
- The power supply might have separate circuits for separate cables and might not be able to supply all the power needed by the GPU through just one
- The cable might not be rated to have that much power flow through and might overheat and melt over time
- If you could just fork the cable into two why would they put two connectors on the GPU, it’s not like they have different voltages, they are literally daisy chained
I just fixed it, thank you for the heads up!
Unless you have a very bad PSU, this doesn’t actually matter.
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This picture raises some questions.
- Why do GPU vendors make the top look all fancy if no one sees it, because it’s always mounted upside down?
- And why no one mods the GPU itself for looks, adds crawly legs or whatever, if the case is a glass box anyway?
Some cases let you mount the GPU vertically, especially SFF cases. This would display the fans of the GPU through the glass.
I’ve seen some people paint their GPU backplate.
I’m quite curious, are there many advantages to building a libre PC? Last I checked, my hardware doesn’t bombard me with ads, AI and other manifestations of enshittification. Yet.
You can encrypt your /boot partition with Argon2, which allows you to have a fully encrypted disk. You can check the integrity of your kernel at boot via Libreboot GRUB using GPG. Not as much spyware as you get with modern day computers. I know there is still proprietary ECs, microcode, etc. but we should all be trying to minimize proprietary software as much as possible.
minix is the end of user privacy
Minix inside everyone cpu
Well theoretically this is how you secure your bios properly?
But it ain’t ready for mainstream at all is my understanding. OP is a FOSS trail blazing chad.
Hoping to go libre on my next built around 2030
I remember a colleague who had a laptop with a cpu that supported virtualization, but it wasn’t enabled, and there was no option in the uefi to enable it, so he couldn’t run virtualbox. Perhaps libreboot could help getting rid of such arbitrary limitations?
Nice. For folks who wouldn’t need a lot of storage space I guess this could make a nice rather low budget Libreboot computer.
7900 XTX
“”“Budget”“”
TBF the whole PC was apparently only about 1100, not a budget PC in my book but a far cry from expensive
He said it was only 900! haha
There are PCIe x4 cards with dual NVMe slots, and there’s other PCIe cards that have like 4 SATA slots. You can use as much space as you want :)
Is the ddr3 not hindering you in your AI training? I mean maybe not because of that massive VRAM. Just curious!
It’s actually not that bad, I can run basically everything I need with good speeds. I will need more RAM in the future for larger models, but for my use case, this works just fine. I’m considering upgrading to the MSI Z690-A DDR5 motherboard, it can be flashed with Dasharo firmware but it unfortunately has more blobs (e.g. FSP binaries)
Thanks for the info!
I’m starting to believe you don’t really need beefy PCs any more, with exception ofc, but those exceptions seems to be more and more rare, especially for the normal guy in his garage :-)
My kids took over my “good” PCs (modern with a good graphic card) and I’m on oldish thinkcentres/thinkpad and well it’s kind of okay actually.
I even think that if I could use my mobile phone (like with 2-3 screens, ethernet…) I bet the experience would be totally acceptable.
Your card also make me remember when the trainee at work doing AI training and having the model being too big for the 16GB card the company splurged some 5.000€ for a 24GB card. Tensorflow back in 2017 or maybe 2018.
Cheers
Thanks for the info!
I’m starting to believe you don’t really need beefy PCs any more, with exception ofc, but those exceptions seems to be more and more rare, especially for the normal guy in his garage :-)
My kids took over my “good” PCs (modern with a good graphic card) and I’m on oldish thinkcentres/thinkpad and well it’s kind of okay actually.
I even think that if I could use my mobile phone (like with 2-3 screens, ethernet…) I bet the experience would be totally acceptable.
Your card also make me remember when the trainee at work doing AI training and having the model being too big for the 16GB card the company splurged some 5.000€ for a 24GB card. Tensorflow back in 2017 or maybe 2018.
Cheers
Did you get a heavy duty power button because you’ll have to hold it down for ten seconds so often 😂
