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.
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.
Nice. For folks who wouldn’t need a lot of storage space I guess this could make a nice rather low budget Libreboot computer.
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 :)
Did you get a heavy duty power button because you’ll have to hold it down for ten seconds so often 😂
