OK, I'm convinced. Can someone tell me what to buy, specifically? Needs to run Ubuntu, support 2 x 4K monitors (3 would be nice), have at least 64GB RAM and fit on my desk. Don't particularly care how good the GPU is / is not.
Here's my starting point: gmktec.com/products/amd-ryzen™-ai-max-395-evo-x2-ai-mini-pc. Anything better?
Beelink GTR9 Pro. It has dual 10G Ethernet interfaces. And get the 128GB RAM version, the RAM is not upgradeable. It isn't quite shipping yet, though.
The absolute best would be a 9005 series Threadripper, but you will easily be pushing $10K+. The mainstream champ is the 9950X but despite being technically a mobile SOC the 395 gets you 90% of the real world performance of a 9950X in a much smaller and power efficient computer:
https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-ai-max-arrow-lake/...
And this would be something cheaper https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-ser9-ai-9-hx-370?v...
Similar single core performance, less cores, less GPU. Depends what you’re doing.
It only goes up to 96GB RAM (54GB usable for the GPU) vs 128GB/96GB on the 395. I have a 370 on a Minisforum AI X1 Pro and on an Asus Vivobook S, but to be frank I've found the performance disappointing.
Fastest threadripper on the market is usually a good bet. Worth considering mini-pc on vesa mount / in a cable tray + fast machine in another room.
Also, I've got a gmktec here (cheaper one playing thin client) and it's going to be scrapped in the near future because the monitor connections keep dropping. Framework make a 395 max one, that's tempting as a small single machine.
Threadripper is complete overkill for most developers and hella expensive especially at the top end. May also not even be that much faster for many work-loads. The 9950X3D is the "normal top-end" CPU to buy for most people.
Whether ~$10k is infeasibly expensive or a bargain depends strongly on what workloads you're running. Single threaded stuff? Sure, bad idea. Massively parallel set suites backed by way too much C++, where building it all has wound up on the dev critical path? The big machine is much cheaper than rearchitecting the build structure and porting to a non-daft language.
I'm not very enamoured with distcc style build farms (never seem to be as fast as one hopes and fall over a lot) or ccache (picks up stale components) so tend to make the single dev machine about as fast as one can manage, but getting good results out of caching or distribution would be more cash-efficient.
Yes of course it depends, which is why I used "most developers" and not "all developers". What is certainly it not is a good default option for most people, like you suggested.
Different class of machines, the Threadripper will be heavier on multicore and less bottlenecked by memory bandwidth, which is nice for some workloads (e.g. running large local AIs that aren't going to fit on GPU). The 9950X and 9950X3D may be preferable for workloads where raw single-threaded compute and fast cache access are more important.
I just bought myself one of these for the same use case https://www.minisforum.uk/products/minisforum-bd770. I did also want to use my existing 3060 GPU, though. It all fit in a relatively small case.
You might be better off buying a mini pc if you’re happy with an integrated GPU. There are plenty of Ryzen mini pcs that end up cheaper than building around an itx motherboard.
The computer you listed is specifically designed for running local AI inference, because it has an APU with lots of integrated RAM. If that isn't your use case then AMD 9000 series should be better.
Not just local AI inference, plenty of broader workstation workloads will benefit from a modern APU with a lot of VRAM-equivalent.
Huh, that's a really good deal at 1500 USD for the 64Gb model considering the processor it's running. (It's the same one that's in the Framework desktop that there's been lots of noise about recently - lots of recent reviews on YouTube.)
Get the 128Gb model for (currently) 1999 USD and you can play with running big local LLMs too. The 8060 iGPU is roughly equivalment to a mid-level nVidia laptop GPU, so it's plenty to deal with a normal workload, and some decent gaming or equivalent if needed.
Yeah, I like the look of the Framework but the (relative) price and lead times are putting me off a little.
There are also these which look similar https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-gtr9-pro-amd-ryzen...
From what I've been able to tell from interwebz reviews, the Framework one is better/faster as the GMTek is thermally throttled more. Dunno about the Beelink.
9950x. If you game, get that in X3D version, or a lower-numbered version in X3D.
Multimonitor with 4K tends to need fast GPU just for the bandwidth, else dragging large windows around can feel quite slow (found that out running 3 x 4K monitors on a low-end GPU).
If you want 3x 4k monitors, you need to care how good the GPU is.