32GB Enough RAM for an i9 7940X on BOINC?

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RFGuy_KCCO

DCOTM x4, [H]ard|DCer of the Year 2019
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I'm thinking about being stupid and purchasing an i9 7940X from Silicon Lottery to use exclusively for BOINC crunching. Do you guys think 32GB is enough memory (I run many different projects), or should I spring for 64GB? Memory prices are ridiculous at this time, so I would prefer to purchase only 32GB, but I am concerned it may cause issues with some of the memory-hungry projects I run, such as LHC@Home.

If memory prices weren't so stupid right now, I'd go with 64GB all day. However, I need to offset the insane cost of the the CPU somewhere and memory seems a good place to do that if I can get away with it.

What are your thoughts? How memory much do I need?
 
I ran 32GB on a 64 core rig for a little while and only ran into issues with a couple projects. Can't recall off hand which projects struggled with it, but it was trying to run 64 tasks at once not 28. So I think for most projects you will be fine and the ones that do consume a lot of RAM just don't run that many tasks at once.
 
RFGuy_KCCO, how many VM projects are you planning on running at any given time? 32GB RAM may be fine if you run a variety of projects. However, you may cut it close if you run something a bit more memory hungry like NFS. As long as you are willing to upgrade later, you should be fine. However, if you went ahead and splurged on the 64GB, you could set up a RAM drive and really push some of the projects further...lol. I typically try to run 2GB per core/thread if possible. However, I have the luxury of having access to a lot of DDR3 sticks right now. I too am now in the market for some DDR4. If you find any insane deals, make sure to send me a PM.
 
Yeah send me a link on some insane deals as well. I need a lot.
 
Gilthanis said:
RFGuy_KCCO, how many VM projects are you planning on running at any given time? 32GB RAM may be fine if you run a variety of projects. However, you may cut it close if you run something a bit more memory hungry like NFS. As long as you are willing to upgrade later, you should be fine. However, if you went ahead and splurged on the 64GB, you could set up a RAM drive and really push some of the projects further...lol. I typically try to run 2GB per core/thread if possible. However, I have the luxury of having access to a lot of DDR3 sticks right now. I too am now in the market for some DDR4. If you find any insane deals, make sure to send me a PM.
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I do run NFS and that seems to use almost 1GB per thread. As for VM's, I run both LHC@home and lhc-dev@home. On my current machines, the Atlas VM tasks take up 8 threads and about 9.8GB of memory. Do you know how many cores these projects are able to use? Can their tasks scale up to 24 threads? I plan to run Linux on the new machine, if that matters.
 
I honestly have not kept up on LHC's VM apps after hitting the milestones. I will keep my eye open though if I have time to read through their forums.
 
Gilthanis said:
I honestly have not kept up on LHC's VM apps after hitting the milestones. I will keep my eye open though if I have time to read through their forums.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was being lazy and hoping you knew offhand.
 
I decided to go with 32GB. If that turns out to cause issues with any projects, I will just use an app_config.xml on a per-project, as-needed basis, to limit the number of tasks that can run at one time. I plan to order everything soon.

Oh, and no good deals on RAM anywhere. I am paying $500 for 32GB of G.Skill DDR4-3600 (16-16-16-36). Yuck.
 
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