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[Weaver]

What’s the fastest desktop PC AMD or Intel PC that you can get without spending silly money, no overlocking or water-cooling allowed? This would be for compiling and linking large projects with GCC or LLVM-type compilers. Not floating point and absolutely zero games.

[Alex Atkin UK]

That rather depends on your definition of "silly money" considering I spent £1300 on my motherboard, CPU and RAM bundle.

[Weaver]

That’s not silly money. Under £1500 all told, excluding monitor.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Well that was the 5950X, basically the fastest desktop AMD.  Problem is GPUs are so expensive right now they can really crank up the price, Intel 12700K is probably the best value at the moment.

[Weaver]

No GPUs at all, compiling code only. Unless GDC ie GCC for D and LDC2 ie LLVM can exploit a GPU?

[Weaver]

Do the good compilers such as GCC exploit multiple cores? I’m aware of the make -j good thing.

[burakkucat]

I’m aware of the make -j good thing.

That is the means to specify the maximum number of jobs for "make" to run in parallel. My usual Linux kernel builds are on an eight core system and, as a result of a "make -j8 . . ." incantation, up to eight individual versions of gcc will be executing. I.e. one version per core.

[Chrysalis]

Do the good compilers such as GCC exploit multiple cores? I’m aware of the make -j good thing.

I consider clang my favourite compiler, but usually yes.

Sometimes certain software when compiled is single core only, and it can be forced with -j but if you do so it fails due to out of order compilation, but most modern stuff will utilise whatever cores you allow it to.  So compiling typically loves lots of cores.  Also not just for compile speed but also to keep rest of system responsive whilst compiling.

Best system for desktop is a weird one given intel's new cpu's.

I would says the AMD 5000 series, £1500 for that assuming you dont want high end GPU can get the cpu already suggested 5950x or at least the 5900x.

The Intel Alder Lake platform has nice potential, but because of the big/small architecture I consider it too early, it has scheduling issues on windows, it has issues with denuvo DRM, and its unknown how well it works on Linux and BSD currently, but I expect not optimal until new schedulers are made.  Its big cores do win on performance per core though vs AMD 5000 series.

[Weaver]

Is the big.little type architecture supported properly in the Linux kernel but not in Windows then ?

What’s the 5900x like?

As you may well understand, I can’t build one, as I can’t sit upright for long enough so I would need a machine built. I won’t be using a monitor or keyboard other than for bare minimum admin. My current Raspberry Pi is used entirely via SSH from my iPad while I’m in bed.

[Ronski]

How much ram and storage would it need?

[Ronski]

Here's an example I knocked up https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Ron-ski/saved/TT4RK8

Or if you really wanted an air cooler then there is the Noctua NH-D15 for a similar price, but the Artic Liquid Cooler II 360 is the better option, and its sealed for life.

[meritez]

Does it need to run Windows?

[Ronski]

What’s the 5900x like?

A useful site for a comparison of CPU's https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-9-5950X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-5900X/3862vs3870

[Alex Atkin UK]

The Intel Alder Lake platform has nice potential, but because of the big/small architecture I consider it too early, it has scheduling issues on windows, it has issues with denuvo DRM, and its unknown how well it works on Linux and BSD currently, but I expect not optimal until new schedulers are made.  Its big cores do win on performance per core though vs AMD 5000 series.

Seems its still early on Linux too https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.16-Lands-ADL-ITMT-Fix
Though to be fair, I think most of the issues are lower performance than on Windows, which is not exactly the end of the world in the short-term.  But for compiling I believe AMD wins on performance anyway, its single-core where Intel is again on top.

That said, I've not tested the 5950X on Linux as I enabled TPM + Secure Boot for Windows 11 which breaks loading the proprietary NVIDIA driver, plus my GPU being a 3080 I doubt its properly supported in the open-source drivers so not even bothered trying.  Its my gaming rig, no real reason to put Linux on it.

[Alex Atkin UK]

A useful site for a comparison of CPU's https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-9-5950X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-5900X/3862vs3870

That site has a very poor reputation in the PC building community as being not at all a good comparison site.  I always use passmark which is not foolproof (no benchmarks are) but a better guideline IMO.

You can't really beat finding some benchmarks of people doing exactly what you intend to use it for.  Does this help perhaps? https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/build-gcc&search