After some advice

[jave808]

HI all

Yesterday I set up a 2nd hand Dell Precision T5810 PC.

Bought it off ebay for $340 in total (that included delivery).

Now, specs are a Xeon E5-2697v3 CPU (14c/28t), 64GB DDR4 ECC RAM and a nvidia Quadro K4000 video card.

All is going well, BUT I cannot get BOINC to recognise the K4000. I had to downgrade the kernel version to 6.11, as the 6.14 kernel (plus the nvidia driver 470) in Linux Mint 22.2 doesn't handle two monitors connected to the K4000.

Now as yo can see the video driver is old - version 470. Newer versions don't support the K4000.

Sooo what I'm thinking is buying a newer card (something with an 8pin PCIe socket only). Something like a 2nd hand RTX4060, then sell off the K4000.

Thoughts? What about ATI/AMD cards? I know that there are fewer projects that support ATI cards than nvidia.

What about an Intel card? I don't even know if there are drivers for Intel cards under Linux.

[tazzduke]

Hi jave808

Definitely get rid of the K4000, that is step one.

Now if your primary purpose for this machine is BOINC, well then yes an RTX4060 is a good start.

Others will pip in with their suggestions.

I find getting the NVIDIA cards up an running in Linux Mint, easy as, but I don't have any experience with AMD of INTEL.

Kind Regards

PS Better get in quick with any new and or 2nd hand PC components as prices are skyrocketing

[Abruraspingi]

If you are just doing Primegrid then they accept all GPU's. AMD is better performance for price but Nvidia is always favoured

[Dave Studdert]

I think from a pure crunching standpoint, Nvidia is the better choice with the cuda cores.
Upgrading the k4000 to a 4060 is a pretty solid idea.

[chooka03]

I like the 4060 idea mate. 

[tazzduke]

how quiet is it for crunching????

[Polaxis]

I think from a pure crunching standpoint, Nvidia is the better choice with the cuda cores.
Upgrading the k4000 to a 4060 is a pretty solid idea.

from an AMD crunching point:
If I would use my PC only for BOINC, I would have sticked with Nvidia. More projects support it and there are no AMD-GPU-only projects to my knowledge.
Also some projects like AmicableNumbers or SRBase are (for me at least) much faster on slower Nvidia GPUs than on my AMD. My RTX 2060 outperforms my 9070XT on AmNum by 25% and almost on par on SRBase.

[jave808]

how quiet is it for crunching????

Pretty quiet. Temps are still around 79degC with the side cover off (the anti-intrusion switch has been disabled in BIOS) and around 80-83degC with the side cover on.

A few days ago I bought a new RTX5050 from Scorptec. Just waiting on a deliver from Amazon (a 6pin to 8pin PCIe adapter) to get it going. The stock Dell PSU only has 2 6pin PCIe plugs.

Should be good!!

[jave808]

how quiet is it for crunching????

Pretty quiet. Temps are still around 79degC with the side cover off (the anti-intrusion switch has been disabled in BIOS) and around 80-83degC with the side cover on.

A few days ago I bought a new RTX5050 from Scorptec. Just waiting on a deliver from Amazon (a 6pin to 8pin PCIe adapter) to get it going. The stock Dell PSU only has 2 6pin PCIe plugs.

Should be good!!

Or shouldn't be good! Installed the RTX5050 and the 6pin to 8pin adapter. The PC powers up, but I can't get into my Linux desktop.

Initially the PC rebooted once, then I got the Dell logo on the screen. It then rebooted and it got to the Grub menu. I hit the return key and... not much. The fans on the video card went to full speed. I gave it a bout 2-3 minutes before manually shutting it down.

I then thought that the nvidia drivers for the temporary M2000 video card may need to have been reinstalled for the new card. So I removed all the nvidia drivers with "sudo apt remove *nvidia*" then rebooted to confirm that the stock nuveou drivers were the default with the M2000. All good there. Powered down and installed the RTX5050 card and rebooted. The PC went through its usual recognition process and... same thing as before. The video card fans went to full speed and nothing but a blank screen.

So, one more thing I'm going to try is to see if I can boot up the Linux Mint 22.2 install iso from a Ventoy prepared USB. If I can get to a Linux screen then I'll backup my files and then reinstall Mint. I *shouldn't* have to do that, but I'm out of ideas unless someone knows some trick that I don't?

Right now I'm going to grab a Coke Zero out of the fridge and cool down. 32degC here today in Newcastle!

[tazzduke]

Hi Jave808, so what size is your wattage on your PSU, first thing that comes to my mind.

Cause yes your shouldn't have to reload Linux Mint, the amount of times I have swapped the GPU in one of my linux servers (running Mint 22), it was a case of just powering in down, swap GPU's then power back up and boom away you go.

Regards

[jave808]

Hi Jave808, so what size is your wattage on your PSU, first thing that comes to my mind.

Cause yes your shouldn't have to reload Linux Mint, the amount of times I have swapped the GPU in one of my linux servers (running Mint 22), it was a case of just powering in down, swap GPU's then power back up and boom away you go.

Regards

hi tazzduke

PSU is 685W so it should be ok

I've now managed to get my Dell PC and the RTX5050 working with Windows 11, as I have no idea why it's not happy with Linux Mint.

I even tried to boot up the Ubuntu 25.10 installer but I get the same issue. After 3 reboots the PC sits there with the GPU fans at full speed and nothing but a blank screen.

I did also update the Dell BIOS from A31 to A34.

I may stick with Windows as it seems to be ok now. Just need to update the boot drive selection in the BIOS.

[tazzduke]

Hi Jave808,

Well that is a strange one

Regards

[chooka03]

I think from a pure crunching standpoint, Nvidia is the better choice with the cuda cores.
Upgrading the k4000 to a 4060 is a pretty solid idea.

from an AMD crunching point:
If I would use my PC only for BOINC, I would have sticked with Nvidia. More projects support it and there are no AMD-GPU-only projects to my knowledge.
Also some projects like AmicableNumbers or SRBase are (for me at least) much faster on slower Nvidia GPUs than on my AMD. My RTX 2060 outperforms my 9070XT on AmNum by 25% and almost on par on SRBase.

Yes well after Milkyway@Home stopped gpu work, there went half of a good reason to own an AMD card. Then Einstein was the go to but even NGREEDIA have overtake there too. My Radeon VII still does ok but I think it's on its's last legs.
Can't beat a NGREEDIA card for Primegrid.