[plug] Ryzen

[Brad Campbell]

I've got a bigish box here with an FX-8350 in it. It's about 5 years old 
at this point and desperately in need of an upgrade (about 2 years ago). 
I heard about AMD's new processor about 2 years ago, so I decided to 
forego the upgrade and wait to see what they had in store.

The 8350 running on a RAID10 of SSD's capable of about 1.3GB/s does a 
kernel build of "allyesconfig" in about 21 minutes (make -j 8). The 
Ryzen on a single SATA2 SSD that is 6 years old does the same 
"allyesconfig" in a whisker over 8 minutes (make -j16). Times are a 
worst of three.

This thing goes like a cut snake. Use a recent kernel, make sure you 
have your config straight for SMT, Multi-core and enough processors 
(mine was originally limited to 8) and let it loose.

Bollox to the reviews all based on windows 10 and game frame rates. 
Ryzen on Linux is quick. Xeon crushingly quick. Unless you have a 
dedicated AVX 256/512 workload, this thing is bang for your buck.

The latest it87 git tree has a workable hardware monitor module. AMD 
still hasn't released the details to enable proper hardware monitoring, 
but it's only a matter of time.

If you buy an Asus motherboard with "Languard" on it, don't plug it into 
a PoE enabled switch or you might : A) kill your switch, or B) let the 
magic smoke out of the motherboard (I did both). But other than that, 
just do it!

Brad.