I am setting up one (or may be two) home-office servers. I have 6 ATI
Radian RX580 graphics cards that are lying in cold storage. I used them
a couple of years back to experiment with various crypto-mining
technologies.
I want these cards to be put to use for experimenting with
multi-threading work loads like may be Machine Learning or may be Image
Processing of deep space data or may be run GNU Radio for experimenting
with signals.
I don’t want any proprietary software to run on these systems. And hence
exploring possibilities. My questions:
1. I had a look at i7 and Ryzen 7. For multi-threading applications, it
appears that Ryzen is better choice because it allows more number of
simultaneous threads. 16 as compared to 8 on i7. Does anybody have
experience with these? Please share your recommendation.
2. Are there good general purpose motherboards available for 3 graphics
cards? I have experience with motherboards with 12 graphics
cards. But those were not general purpose. They were specifically
designed for cryto mining purpose only.
3. I’ll also put these machine to serve local copy of all my data. I’ll
synchronize it with some cloud space. I need recommendations for
reliable hard disks. A combination of SSD/HDD to balance between
cost, performance and reliability will probably be best. But I really
don’t know much about the hardware.
I already have good modular corsair 1200w power-supply. So I’ll put that
to use.
I need your help to setup a system completely free of proprietary
software. Please do reply.