Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You • Hacker News Board

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#11

Post by devonkim » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

While each node of a server farm of these can be relatively cheap by enterprise budgets, an entire cluster of these machines is not (at $200k+ that’s the budget for an FTE, after all). Which is why I’d want to check if an Optane drive could be a strong consideration to shave some costs off for a reasonable trade-off in performance. Not sure if 10+ TB of Optane is viable enough to be at least an order of magnitude larger than the RAM capacity.

Also, 1.5 TB RAM became somewhat commonplace around 2014-ish. LinkedIn had to have Dell custom build them a 1 TB RAM machine around 2009. So 10 years later for the same build to be passé is fully reasonable when a lot of the market is doing massive or very latency sensitive graph calculations that won’t accept the variances of distributed algorithms.

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#12

Post by mark-r » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:14 PM UTC

I want to know why ECC RAM isn't more common. With the amount of RAM going into today's computers, it's insane not to protect it.

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#13

Post by drewg123 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

fasteo wrote: post #2

I've done some shopping around, and the best pricing I can find puts these 128GB RAM at about $1,500. Each. Yes, each. Some back of the envelope math -- or math in your head if you are good at that sort of thing -- put the price of 1.5TB of RAM at a cool $18,000. If my memory serves me well, I routinely bought 1Mb RAM modules for 5.500 Spanish pesetas (33 Euro). This was around 1987-1990 I believe. If my math is righ…

In 1993, one of my first tasks in a new job as a sysadmin was to install 256MB of RAM into a DEC Alpha 3000/500. I remember the RAM cost on the order of $20k... I don't remember the exact price, but I remember thinking that the RAM was worth more than I was, and I'd better not screw it up.

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#14

Post by dis-sys » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

in case you don't have $18,000 to buy those fancy brand new DDR4 RAM -

second hand 64GB DDR3 ECC REG RAM is about $100 each, a dual socket c602 motherboard such as my Z9PE-D16 has 16 memory slots, having 16 x 64GB = 1TB RAM in such a workstation costs you $1,600.

bargain!

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#15

Post by safeplanet-fesa » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

ericcholis wrote: post #10

Is it just me, or is it becoming too commonplace for an article to have a video attached to it that is vaguely related? The video attached to this article is how to upgrade the mac mini to 32GB of ram. Interesting, but just left of adjacent in terms of how it's related to this article.

I have an even broader question: why do articles talking about some subject, have a random image representing the subject attached? For example, if an article talks about coffee, there will be a picture of a random cup of coffee or a random coffee tree field. I have never understood the point of it, but this has always existed in all forms of journalism.

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#16

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

I decided to put 32 GB of Ram in my home desktop some months back. I knew I didn’t need that much, but I figured macOS (it’s a Hackintosh) would use it for file caching or some such.

To my disappointment, it goes completely unused more often than not. According to Activity Monitor, I currently have around 7 gb just sitting idle.

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#17

Post by zamadatix » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

devonkim wrote: post #11

While each node of a server farm of these can be relatively cheap by enterprise budgets, an entire cluster of these machines is not (at $200k+ that’s the budget for an FTE, after all). Which is why I’d want to check if an Optane drive could be a strong consideration to shave some costs off for a reasonable trade-off in performance. Not sure if 10+ TB of Optane is viable enough to be at least an order of magnitude lar…

Last I checked Optane still cost more than RAM up to about 2 TB/server (dimms or drives). It does scale significantly higher in drive form though.

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#18

Post by jdsully » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

This is a use case where persistent memory really shines. Its about 10x slower but you can get 1.5TB or it for less than $10,000. You don’t have to use the persistence - you can treat it as RAM.

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#19

Post by sys_64738 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

I had a PC with 32mb back in 1997 when 16mb was he norm. Felt pretty nice. Now, not so much.

Re: Want 1.5TB of RAM in Your PC? It Will Cost You

#20

Post by kd5bjo » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

safeplanet-fesa wrote: post #15

ericcholis wrote: post #10

Is it just me, or is it becoming too commonplace for an article to have a video attached to it that is vaguely related? The video attached to this article is how to upgrade the mac mini to 32GB of ram. Interesting, but just left of adjacent in terms of how it's related to this article.

I have an even broader question: why do articles talking about some subject, have a random image representing the subject attached? For example, if an article talks about coffee, there will be a picture of a random cup of coffee or a random coffee tree field. I have never understood the point of it, but this has always existed in all forms of journalism.

For the print edition, the image is there to catch the eye of people that are interested in the general topic as they scan through the publication to determine what they want to read. I suspect it’s mostly vestigial for the one-article-per-webpage digital edition, but it still helps convey some branding in the particular choice and style of image.