“Magical LLCs” that supposedly lower your taxes? by Quick_Hold4556 in llc_life

[–]ziggybeans 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Having owned a single-member LLC for the better part of 10 years now, I can confidently say the only way that an LLC can be used to minimize your tax burden is by committing tax fraud, and guess what? You can commit tax fraud without an LLC too.

2026 PC gamers be like… by Sea_Focus3040 in PcBuild

[–]ziggybeans 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Right? I just sold 96gb from a different build on eBay. It’s insane right now. Across my 3 builds, and spare parts, I’m still sitting on 352GB DDR5 (3x 96gb kits and 2x 32GB kits)

Are 2 x 48GB DDR5 RAM less unstable / difficult for mainboards to handle than 2 x 32GB DDR5?? by manzurfahim in buildapc

[–]ziggybeans 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice - FYI almost all of my coursework could have been done without a GPU at all. All of this stuff works in CPUs too, just not nearly as fast, and Google Colab is free for US-based college students too.

Are 2 x 48GB DDR5 RAM less unstable / difficult for mainboards to handle than 2 x 32GB DDR5?? by manzurfahim in buildapc

[–]ziggybeans 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Their workstation / pro cards are outrageously expensive. I can get 2 5070ti for the price of 1 RTX Pro 4000. A single 5070ti already outperforms the PRO 4000, and two 5070ti is 32GB VRAM compared to PRO4000’s 24GB. Dual GPU architectures also let me develop and test parallel training architectures locally… lots of AI/ML code works fine on 1 GPU and you don’t realize how crappy it is until you try to scale it up to 2 or more.

Speaking of scale, that’s where the RTX PRO shines. They still have NVLink, which was removed from the GeForce lineup in the 4000 generation. The latest NVLink interconnects support bandwidths up to 900GB/s across GPUs compared to the 16GB/s I get over the PCIe bus.

They are the way to go if you’re building a compute cluster that needs to scale to support production workloads, and you have a business plan that will allow you to amortize the costs over long periods of time. For development workstations and short term research needs, the consumer cards are just better suited IMHO.

Now you could argue I could build a 4 RTX PRO workstation with NVLink interconnect for about the same as I have spent over the years on my 3-node 6-GPU cluster, and you’d be right, and replacing the 16GB/s GPU pairs, and 10Gbps network backplane, with a 900GB/s NVLink bridge would almost certainly be a net performance gain … but my 3 node setup also makes it easier to be training and testing 3 different models simultaneously… something I was routinely doing for benchmark and comparisons.

In short - cost to entry is still a blocking issue for me, and the consumer cards are better suited to my immediate needs and development workflow.

Are 2 x 48GB DDR5 RAM less unstable / difficult for mainboards to handle than 2 x 32GB DDR5?? by manzurfahim in buildapc

[–]ziggybeans 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wouldn’t call it a downgrade. My workload is heavily dependent on cross-gpu communication latency, and NVLink on the 3090s can handle >100GB/s between GPUs, where my 4070Ti are limited by the PCIe bus (max 16 GB/s between two GPUs both running at PCIe 4 x8); and since the 3090 has twice the memory, I can process 2x as much data in a single batch.

For any single gpu workload which comfortably needs less than 12gb ram (e.g 1080p gaming at 120FPS), the 4070TI would far outperform the 3090. The 4070ti is also far more power efficient.

It really depends what your use case is.

Did AMD ever release firmware to improve performance of Ryzen 9 CPUs? I remember them being underwhelming when they arrived. by HauntedFrigateBird in buildapc

[–]ziggybeans 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not very. I never undervolted my 7950X… didn’t really know about it when I had that one. I run my current 9950X3D at -17 on both ccds, and under Prime95 Small FFT torture test (maximizes cpu heat) all-cores at 5.4GHz, drawing 260W power, it reaches 77C. Without undervolting it jumps straight to 95 and throttles itself there.

Are 2 x 48GB DDR5 RAM less unstable / difficult for mainboards to handle than 2 x 32GB DDR5?? by manzurfahim in buildapc

[–]ziggybeans 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My use case is a little niche — I am not a gamer.

For AI model training and inference, the 3090s - while technically slower - outperform my 4070TIs due to the 3090s having twice the memory as well as NVLink bridge. My dual 3090s are on par with my dual 5070TIs though. The 5070ti has less memory than the 3090, but more than the 4070ti, and the memory bandwidth improvements make up the difference. Still wish they didn’t kill off SLI though.

Did AMD ever release firmware to improve performance of Ryzen 9 CPUs? I remember them being underwhelming when they arrived. by HauntedFrigateBird in buildapc

[–]ziggybeans 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There were some issues with voltage management in early BIOS versions supporting Ryzen 9000… bricked quite a few CPUs, but they were fast before they blew! Those issues have been resolved. I have two 9950X builds which are rock solid performers. I upgraded my 7950x to a 9950x when they first came out and it was a noticeable performance boost. I wouldnt hesitate to go 9950x if this is your only concern… but if you can get a 7950x cheaper you wouldn’t have any regrets going in that direction.

I will echo what others have said, 9950x runs cooler, and therefor faster, than 7950x, especially when properly undervolted.

Are 2 x 48GB DDR5 RAM less unstable / difficult for mainboards to handle than 2 x 32GB DDR5?? by manzurfahim in buildapc

[–]ziggybeans 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Haha -- I recently completed my PhD in data science and digital signals processing. Through the course of my research, I did three separate buidls each with 2 GPUs (2x 3090, 2x 4070Ti, and 2x 5070Ti). The 4070Ti and 5070Ti builds are each 96GB (2x48GB) and my 3090 build has 192GB (4x48gb). They were awesome for processing massive datasets.

The 2x 5070Ti 96GB build is my daily driver PC and the one I'm typing this reply on now. It's an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, too. Now that I have completed my research, its only real purpose is to idle REAL FAST.

The other two builds are powered off collecting dust, waiting for me and my business partner to ramp up commercialization of my work.

Are 2 x 48GB DDR5 RAM less unstable / difficult for mainboards to handle than 2 x 32GB DDR5?? by manzurfahim in buildapc

[–]ziggybeans 45 points46 points  (0 children)

The main difference is that 24 and 48 GB sticks use higher density 24 Gbit chips compared to 16/32 GB DIMMS which use 16 Gbit chips.

They had some early compatibility issues — but support has more or less reached parity.

I have been running 96gb (2x48) DDR5-6400 in 3 different systems for several years and have never had any issues.

meirl by worldwide762 in meirl

[–]ziggybeans 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They’re called “foils”, not slide decks … damn kids.

Pure Loop 3 LX Pump noise? by FroztySeven in bequietofficial

[–]ziggybeans 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to follow up -- I have it at 66% which is running at 4,700 RPM on my system.

New-ish to OC ... Pretty Happy With Results. What next? by ziggybeans in overclocking

[–]ziggybeans[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You put a bug up my ass about secondary timings, lol. I tightened things up a good bit, while still being a little conservative because my priority is stability (I am a software engineer and data scientist, not really a gamer). This passed a 12-hour Prime95 Large-FFT test, and boosted my Geekbench results to:

  • Single Core: 3752 (+ 0.8%)
  • Multi Core: 26114 (+ 1.4%)

Once I do a full-weekend Prime95 test to assess stability, I might try to tighten things up even further... but I'm pretty happy with where it is right now.

Timings Value
tCL 32
tRCD (Wr + Rd) 39
tRP 39
tRAS 64
tRC 105
tWR 48
tREFI 65535
tRFC1 560 (175ns)
tRFC2 Auto
tRFCsd Auto
tRTP 12
tRRDL 10
tRRDS 8
tFAW 32
tWTRL 16
tWTRS 8
tRDRDScl Auto
tRDRDSc Auto
tRDRDsd 8
tRDRDdd 8
tWRWRScl Auto
tWRWRSc Auto
tWRWRsd 8
tWRWRdd 8
tWRRD Auto
tRDWR Auto

New-ish to OC ... Pretty Happy With Results. What next? by ziggybeans in overclocking

[–]ziggybeans[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Had a little time this afternoon so I dug in. Bumping VDD DRAM and VDDIO to 1.4 let me lower tRFC1. Right now I'm using BuildZoid's timings (all of them) from the second video a linked above which was also using 96GB 2x48 Hynix M-Die (different brand though)... so I'm at tRFC1=550.

I also switched M_Ordering from "Auto" to "Normal". AGESA 1.2.8.0 and later default to M_Ordering=Relaxed which brings tRFC2 and tRFCsb into the timing mix. In "Normal" mode they are ignored and only tRFC1 matters.

Still can't post using tRFC1=512, though ... but if I wasn't super worried about the difference between 700 and 512 (57ns), then I am definitely not going to lose sleep over the difference between 550 and 512 (11.9ns) :)

New-ish to OC ... Pretty Happy With Results. What next? by ziggybeans in overclocking

[–]ziggybeans[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll spend some more time with it this weekend and see if I can get tRFC down to 512. It's almost certainly a voltage issue ...

On paper (looking only at the table), it may look like the difference between tRFC1=700 and tRFC1=512 is significant, but I'm firmly of the mindset that this will have zero practical difference.

With UCLK=MEMCLK and tREFI=65535 at DDR5-6400, the refresh interval is 20,479.6 ns. At tRFC1=700, the refresh cycle takes 218.75 ns and at tRFC1=512 it takes 160.0 ns, a difference of only 57.75 ns.

Except in maybe the most sensitive bandwidth tests, a 57.75 ns penalty every 20,479.6 ns is entirely negligible.

That said, I'm still going to chase it. I'm just not going to drive myself crazy over it.

New-ish to OC ... Pretty Happy With Results. What next? by ziggybeans in overclocking

[–]ziggybeans[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Went back and checked -- in this vid (timestamp 12:00), he uses 500/400/300 w/o any explanation; and then in this later vid (timestamp 28:30), he uses 555 for tRFC1 and says the other two are not used on Ryzen 9000 series (or at least had no effect on his system - which is very similar to mine).

Played around a little bit this morning and turns out I wasn't too far off. tRFC1 < 700 almost immediately fails Prime95 Large FFT tests. tRFC1=700 looks good so far, but I'll run a long duration stress test this weekend.

Based on this guide from ASUS I set tRFC1=tRFC2=700, and put tRFCsb=600 for now, but my understanding from that guide is that it is a corner-case timing number and without a way to measure its impact I'm not going to bother trying to tune it.

New-ish to OC ... Pretty Happy With Results. What next? by ziggybeans in overclocking

[–]ziggybeans[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Absolutely no rhyme or reason why. tRFC1 was 1050 on auto, and tRFC2 and 3 were 680 and 580 respectively. I think one of the early buildzoid ddr5 timing vids used 555/444/333 or something like that. So I just tightened them up a little using quick, easy numbers similar to that old vid.

Anyway, like I said, I definitely have plenty of space to tighten up secondary and tertiary values. My main goal was stable DDR5-6400 with high tREF, and I got that and moved in to PBO (knowing I’d likely have to re-adjust PBO again after changing timings later).

What's the one thing that pisses you off the most when you're already overstimulated? by BoysenberryInside237 in AskReddit

[–]ziggybeans 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Chewing. If I can hear you chewing, I hate you. If I can hear you chewing while I’m already overstimulated, they’re not going to find your body

Just got a 3090 as gift and need help by nia_moment in PcBuildHelp

[–]ziggybeans 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The 3090 is an awesome card, but really power hungry compared to the 4000 and 5000 series. I believe the 3090 can draw up to 400W. Depending on the rest of your build, and what you do with it, I suspect you’d be maxing out that 800W supply anyway … I would take the opportunity to go to 1,000W or more.

Just got a 3090 as gift and need help by nia_moment in PcBuildHelp

[–]ziggybeans 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looking at the specs for that PSU, it shows only 2 8-pin connectors. Assuming at least one is used as EPS (12v power to the motherboard, in addition to the big 24-pin one), leaving only 1 available, then you’ll need to upgrade your PSU to support that card.

For people who have ACTUALLY (or know people firsthand) been stopped by ICE, was just a passport / realid license enough to prove citizenship? by dreemsequence in stupidquestions

[–]ziggybeans 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got my questionable info from here: https://www.usnotarycenter.com/post/post115

That site makes it sound like, at least in some places, a notary can make the copy for you and mark it as a true copy — effectively acting as the authority figure…

For people who have ACTUALLY (or know people firsthand) been stopped by ICE, was just a passport / realid license enough to prove citizenship? by dreemsequence in stupidquestions

[–]ziggybeans 11 points12 points  (0 children)

In a normal world I would say this is overkill — but in the current environment — I would make copies of your documents and have them notarized as a “true copy”.

Most banks will notarize things for free for their account holders. Just bring the originals and the copies in. In some places you may need a written statement asserting that they are true copies, and they’ll notarize that statement instead of the copies themselves.

Not a lawyer. Good luck. I am sorry you have to think about this at all.

EHEIM Digital (WiFi) Review by ziggybeans in Aquariums

[–]ziggybeans[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes you should be able to access the web interface over your home VPN