u/fourcade23

I run R scripts at work that go through a lot of parallel jobs (furrr/future), sometimes for hours, and my laptop just can't handle it anymore — RAM fills up while CPU is at about 50%, sometimes crashes at the end. I looked at prebuilts but they were either overpriced or came with GPUs I don't need, so thinking to build this: PCPartPicker Part List

Went with the 9950X because apparently Intel's newer chips have a mix of fast and slow cores, which I'm worried will be a problem when you're running parallel tasks that all have to finish before the next step — if slower cores slow everything down. The 9950X has 16 identical cores so hopefully I can run 12-14 workers without that issue. Saw this 9950X workstation build as reference but adjusted for my use case.

128GB RAM would be nice but DDR5 prices right now are giving me a medical condition. GPU is just for 2 monitors, no ML or gaming. Total ~$2,270, any feedback welcome!

Also considering an Azure VM since we use M365/OneDrive — run it when needed, pay per hour, deallocate when done, download results via OneDrive. Curious if anyone's running R workflows this way and if it's as straightforward as it sounds.

My work laptop (Intel Ultra 7 268V, 32GB RAM) is hitting its ceiling running a furrr pipeline — RAM maxes out while CPU is only at ~50%, sometimes it crashes at the end. Scaling up soon so need a real solution.

Torn between two options:

1. Azure VM (E16s_v5, 16 vCPU / 128GB RAM) — pay per hour, deallocate when done, data syncs via OneDrive. Worried about complicated initial setup and whether pick_workers() behaves sanely against availableCores() on a VM.
2. Dedicated workstation (9950X, 64GB DDR5) — build here. Went AMD specifically because furrr uses a synchronization barrier and Intel's hybrid P/E core architecture creates straggler workers. 128 GB RAM would have been nice, but the prices are currently insane.

Leaning toward the desktop for now but the VM scales better as data size grows. Curious if anyone's running furrr workloads in either setup and what your worker count / RAM usage looks like in practice. If there are better alternatives, please share them as well.