My 2025 high-end Linux PC

26 points by secure 1 month ago | 9 comments
  • jauntywundrkind 1 month ago
    Just got a Minisforum 795S7. 16-core AMD laptop processor (7945HX) barebones (needs ram and disk) for a little over $400.

    Absolutely crazy bonkers deal. But yeah, idle is a little under 30W which could for sure be better!

    I have a 9070xt in my main desktop, which isn't 24/7. I dont see the 40W idle that is reported in the write-up!! I'm forgetting the numbers but I suspect it's significantly less than half that.

    • kderbe 1 month ago
      Idle power almost always goes up with higher resolutions and refresh rates [1], and AMD cards typically raise their idle clockspeeds more drastically than Nvidia cards [2] when resolution or refresh rate increases. The OP uses an 8K 60Hz screen so 45W seems reasonable.

      [1] TechPowerUp and ComputerBase have the most thorough collections of power consumption measurements, but compare them to each other and you'll see how much it depends on the test setup.

      [2] Nvidia's latest 5000 series cards buck this trend. The 9070 XT's direct competitor, the 5070 Ti, has especially high idle consumption for no clear reason.

      • secure 1 month ago
        True, but I tested the Radeon RX9070’s power consumption with a 4K monitor.

          * ASUS, builtin-GPU@4K: ≈39W
  * ASUS + nVidia GF4070@4K idle: ≈50W
  * ASUS + radeon RX9070 (Linux 6.15): ≈80W
    • politelemon 1 month ago
      Well I didn't expect to be this interested in the details. Quite a few things I don't know about.

      Is suspend to RAM the same as hibernate or something else?

      It isn't clear to me but is the author indicating that Linux kernel support for 2.5GbE is still early stages, would it be better to wait a while before getting a motherboard with 2.5?

      There's a diff being presented between two lshw outputs? How is that diff shown?

      • secure 1 month ago
        > It isn't clear to me but is the author indicating that Linux kernel support for 2.5GbE is still early stages, would it be better to wait a while before getting a motherboard with 2.5?

        If you want to play it safe, waiting longer before buying new hardware is always a good strategy. As I wrote, though, aside from needing a new firmware package, I did not notice any issues with the 2.5G support in the end.

        > There's a diff being presented between two lshw outputs? How is that diff shown?

        I ran lshw > lshw-intel-285k-asrock.txt when I used the ASRock board and lshw > lshw-intel-285k-asus.txt when I used the ASUS board. Then I ran diff -u lshw-intel-285k-asrock.txt lshw-intel-285k-asus.txt and copy&pasted (parts of) the output into the blog post.

      • Ocha 1 month ago
        Suspend to ram is same as sleep. Hibernate dumps ram contents to disc and completely turns off. Waking up from sleep (suspend to ram) is fast, from hibernation you need to read the whole file back to memory.
        • SR2Z 1 month ago
          This is true, but I'd like to point out that hibernation to NVMe is almost as fast as sleep. The lines between memory and storage are blurred these days.
        • muchosandwich 1 month ago
          I have had pretty good luck with Realtek's 2.5gb chipset (PCIe card and USB 3 dongle) in TrueNAS, PopOS and Arch. I think the driver situation is pretty stable now.

          I have had an Intel V225 fail on me but the V226 replacement has been working.

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