Hardware latency tests, used PC's

MSI B470, AMD Ryzen 3950, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX2080, 1TB NVME, Preempt-RT:

Asked my brother to do some quick tests yesterday, for some reason no matter what he did to it, the latency never got over 60000 for the base thread and under 40000 for the servo thread !!! This was without any setting changed in bios.
Have to find a way to do more testing as this just seems wrong compared to the above setup with Ryzen 5 3600.

JohnnyCNC wrote:

Thanks for all of your testing Tommy,

I have been looking for a higher end board that gives good results with RTAI. Price is not a consideration within reason I just want to be able to build a kernel that doesn't take 24 hours to compile. I would really like to find something on a mini ITX form factor otherwise I have to make some changes in my cabinet. I have a 6i25+7i76.

First, why are you compiling kernels, there are already two of the 4.nn.n variety ready made and they both work nicely.
The H61M boards from Asus and Asrock mentioned above are 17X22.5Cm in dimensions, so very close to ITX, Asrock has a parallel port header, Asus does not, Asrock works with 2'nd and 3'd generation I3 and i5 processors, tested with an i5 2500 quad core works nicely. Most probably Asus would work too.

BeagleBrainz wrote:

I'm using a J3355 and reckon Mint with MATE is too much of a resource hog, when there's Debian with XFCE available.
I'm really astonished by the number of people that want to use Mint & MATE, especially when Debian has a couple of lighter weight Desktop environment options.

I use Mate on almost all PC's and laptops, and XCFE on the older PC's and laptops.
And i use Debian on production machines that are used only for machining, Mate on ones that also do CAD/CAM. Just a preference.
Debian is also a bit lighter on resources even with Mate, do not know why, but it is.

Updated the Asrock section as adding 2GB of RAM for a total of 4GB makes a world of difference, now it is very usable with Linux Mint 19.3 and RT-Preempt kernel.

-Fujitsu Lifebook E series Laptop, model no. E554 :
-8GB RAM, 60GB SSD, i5 processor,
--default BIOS

--BIOS settings changed to disable everything, like speed step, hyperthreading, virtualisation, serial, modem, etc

Using it to run the machine with a Mesa 7i92, had 1 warning about latency while with default BIOS settings, no warnings when BIOS modified for the second day. Even when there was a warning the machine continued to work so no loss of connection occurred.
Overall very nice to work and use with Linux Mint 19.3 and RT-Preempt kernel.

After a whole day of work, it looks very promising, no issues, no warnings, nothing, it just works, even while inserting USB sticks and copying files, doing light work on it, etc. Rock solid so far.
The bad thing is on ebay there is only one on sale at 340$ ! I found 2 locally at 250Euro each without discount, but since i have some big discount on some of these, i might get them cheaper. Online here they cost 375 Euro a piece.
More on this later, i will have this till Monday to play with.
Removing and inserting the power adapter also does not cause any warnings or issues.

I have around 30 Nvidia and AMD graphic cards, so i do not care much, and i have a Ryzen 3600 that i only use about once in a week or two for about 15 to 30 minutes. This now is the PC i use mostly when in shop, a measly celeron dual core at 2.7GHz with only 4GB of RAM and no add on card, and an 4 core i5 that i use after work, the rest is for testing anything i can come up with. The cards are mostly busy minnig ethereum. In total i have about 20 laptops and PC's at any given time. Worked as an IT Admin for UN and OSCE, had my own computer shops, 3 of them, so i would call that as professional deformation !
Now, before someone here goes on about me being rich, i am not, i am mostly broke because of all this. I have 5 welders that i use about twice in a year, 2 lathes one of the cnc collecting dust, and a lot, and i do mean a lot of other stuff. Now this i call a Hoarder !