- Joined
- Sep 25, 2015
I'm tired of waiting for the unobtainium Intel HEDT chips, so I'm planning a new AMD Threadripper build (about 60% through saving $$ for it) and wanted some feedback:
CPU:
- AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X (32 core, 64 thread)
Motherboard:
- Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming
CPU Cooler:
- Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3
- Will substitute Noctua NF-A14 PWM Chromax Black to replace ugly Noctua colors
- Special Noctua Air Cooler for Threadripper CPU...cools 300W +
NVME SSD:
- 2 x Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4
Network Card:
- Intel X550-T1 10 Gbs Ethernet Converged Network Card
- I am SOOOO addicted to 10 Gbps networking!!!!
DRAM:
-Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4-25600) C16 (64 GB)
- I ended up going with the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64 GB (4x16) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18 RAM
--- From what I have read online, 3600 MHz is the sweet spot for RAM speed on these Threadripper chips
--- I am hoping I can overclock this to C16
- I like the "pretty" LED colors on this RAM
PSU:
- EVGA SuperNOVA 1200 P2, 1200W Platinum
- Planning on a NVIDIA 3090 when they come out
- Estimate peak power usage of around 850 W with CPU overclock
CASE:
- Crystal Series 680X RGB ATX High Airflow
I'll be putting one of my 2080 Ti graphics cards in this system until I can get a 3090. I have a plan for water cooling, but we will see how well the air cooler does.
For the record, I did research on many AIOs and none of them appear to be able to effectively cool the power YUGE beast of the 3970x CPU. I do have my eye on this as the prototypes have gotten RAVE reviews:
https://www.icegiantcooling.com/
For usage of the machine, it will do the following:
- Half the cores (16) running folding@home
- 2 VMs using 4 more cores total
- The remaining 12 cores will be for general usage and gaming
Any thoughts?
Anything I am missing?
Anyone else do a Threadripper build with this generation of CPUs and have any adivce/feedback?
I will have a RED and GREEN PC as an early Christmas present!!!
Thanks!
Edit: Updated memory purchased
Edit 09/29/2020: Got my case yesterday, and did some building before the hockey game
The parts (minus the case, and minus the 2080 Ti I am pulling from another computer):
The case is a Corsair Crystal Series 680X RGB. It's similar in design to the case I use on "The Sith", but has the RGB hub and lighting hub built in. The side, top, and front are 100% glass...and that glass makes it heavy compared to to a normal case. The build quality is spectacular...everything is solid. The front, top, and bottom fan assemblies disconnect from the main case...making working on them pretty easy. Here is a shot looking down into the case before I put in the motherboard:
A closeup shot of the ROG Strix TRX-40 Gaming Motherboard package. I was disappointed in the cheap interior packaging for a motherboard of this price (forgot to take a picture):
Motherboard is all mounted in the case. The biggest pain here is that I had to remove the cover on the top VRM heat sink to get at the middle motherboard mounting screw:
Dang, that's a HUGE chip socket! Here we are with everything opened up and waiting for the CPU:
CPU is and memory now mounted in place. The Threadripper CPU comes with a Torx screwdriver that is also a torque wrench to make sure you don't overtighten the mounting plate:
Next step was to drop in the 2 PCI 4.0 NVME drives. You have to remove the heat sink cover under where the GPU would go. The cover has thermal tape on the underside to help heat sink the drives. The cover was a pain to realign when putting back on as there were not any guide holes...and the screws are the "captive" type and not meant to be removed:
I connected up some power cables and called it a night. I am hoping to finish tonight and see if this bad boy will post!!!!
Edit 09/30/2020:
My objective for last night was to get the system to post, activate the memory XMP profile (3600 MHz and CAS 18), and install Windows. This was a successful night!
I had to get the Noctua air cooler mounted on the CPU. This cooler is tall and heavy (about 3 pounds.) Remember that this cooler is specifically designed for the Threadripper CPUs and their large IHS. Here is a picture of the nice and smooth heat sink mounting surface...it's amazing that Noctua can get this finish on a volume product:
Normally when I do the TIM, I use the "blob" method...putting a single blob of thermal compound in the center of the CPU. The directions for the cooler recommended doing it this way:
As my objective was to get it to post, I followed the directions...and will pull off the cooler later and see how good the coverage was and if this was too much thermal compound.
Here is a picture of the cooler mounted:
I had originally purchased a black fan to replace the ugly Noctua fan...but I ordered the wrong kind...the correct one comes in today.
While I don't have the video card mounted in this picture, I will note that this is a BIG heat sink. But what is cool is that you can adjust the main fins to slide them up or down (in the attached picture) up to 6 mm...this is to allow for clearance of the first PCIe slot. I had to adjust it "up" the full 6 mm.
And LOOK...we have it POSTING!!!!
As you can see form this picture, I just slapped the GPU AIO cooler into the case...my objective was to get the system to post and install Windows. I'll be doing some more surgery later.
What you can barely see in this photo is the really cool OLED display that is on the motherboard. It's under the pretty lights on the back I/O shroud, and to the left of the pretty lit up memory.
This display is pretty cool...and shows actual WORDS (gasp) during the bootup process as to what is going on. It also plays a pretty cool ROG logo that bounces around when the PC is turned off (but the power supply is switched on).
The default (after boot) is that this display shows CPU temperature (it says "CPU Temperature", an icon for the CPU, and the temperature in °C). If I knew how cool it was going to be, I would have taken a better picture. Once I figure out how to change the info on here, I will put up a better picture.
While I haven't benchmarked the PCIe 4.0 NVME SSDs yet, I will tell you that the "seem" fast. Powering on the PC, it takes about 20 seconds to complete tests to post...and then you are at the Windows log in screen in the blink of an eye (and this is with the Windows FAST BOOT turned off...hate the FAST BOOT...hate it.)
This CPU is a beast...and I will leave today's thread comments with this picture from the Windows Task Manager:
More to come soon!!!!
Edit: 10/01/2020
Did some more tweaking...about ready to put the sides on the case and seeing what sort of performance I can get out of the system. I did snap a couple of pictures while playing last night:
Did a quick speed test on the NVME 4.0 SSD drives....WOWOWOWOWOW:
Performance peaks out at 4,250 MB/sec write and 5,600 MB/sec read...WOWOW - that's MEGA BYTES per second!
The heat sink cover for the motherboard (shown in the pictures above) does an excellent job of keeping the NVME SSD cool...the maximum temperature stabilzed at 60 °C...so no thermal throttling in this benchmark. This runs a number of different block sizes write/read from the disk...just incredible performance!
The next picture is a closeup from "Open Hardware Monitor"...a free program that monitors "everything" in your system...has a nice gadget window (closeup screenshot) and graphs things for you over a 24 hour period...pretty cool. In this screenshot, I had the system running folding@home on 31 cores, and running the graphics card on another core (i.e. 32 threads, but all cores getting hit):
As you can see, this processor was pulling a WOPPING 280 watts of power. The air cooler handled this, and the CPU temperature maxed out at 75 °C. I still haven't done any tweaking...and all voltages are on their default values loaded into BIOS. I believe the chip was thermal throttling as the CPU frequency stayed at 3900 MHz.
280 watts...WOWOWOWOW
I'll be moving this over to it's UPS soon, so I can get actual system power draw...stand by...
Edcit 10/03/2020:
OK - did some more playing around. I currently have a stable overclock to 4150 MHz on a CPU core voltage of 1.200 V. Earlier, I just had everything on auto, and the core voltage was 1.400-ish. So, this new setting saves A LOT of power. Here is a picture of the system running the same load as above (31 cores Folding @ home, 1 GPU folding @ home) with the CPU "only" drawing 235-ish watts versus the maxed 280 Watts from before...with my overclock:
Did some Cinibench before and after...
Before overclock at 3.7 GHz, Score: 16,596
After overclock at 4.15 GHz, Score: 17.931
So, 8% increase in score for 12% increase in clock. I did have more "junk" running in the background when I did the second run...and Cinibench can vary run to run...but not too bad for a few hours work!
Edit: 10/06/2020
Got the second Noctua Chromax fan in for the CPU Heat sink...here is a picture of the inside of the build.
The only bummer with the Noctua fans is that the serial number is on the top...so you can see it.
I'll take some final pictures with all the pretty lights and post later!
Edit 10/07/2020:
I have 2 VMs running now...consuming 2 cores...CPU usage stays at about 6% constant usage.
The number of cores on this Threadripper is obscene...this makes everything buttery smooth!
Here are a couple of pictures with everything lit up...it's so pretty!
Of course, all colors (including motherboard) change to Red when I log in...like a good Sith...
Side View:
Front View:
CPU:
- AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X (32 core, 64 thread)
Motherboard:
- Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming
CPU Cooler:
- Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3
- Will substitute Noctua NF-A14 PWM Chromax Black to replace ugly Noctua colors
- Special Noctua Air Cooler for Threadripper CPU...cools 300W +
NVME SSD:
- 2 x Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4
Network Card:
- Intel X550-T1 10 Gbs Ethernet Converged Network Card
- I am SOOOO addicted to 10 Gbps networking!!!!
DRAM:
-
- I ended up going with the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64 GB (4x16) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18 RAM
--- From what I have read online, 3600 MHz is the sweet spot for RAM speed on these Threadripper chips
--- I am hoping I can overclock this to C16
- I like the "pretty" LED colors on this RAM
PSU:
- EVGA SuperNOVA 1200 P2, 1200W Platinum
- Planning on a NVIDIA 3090 when they come out
- Estimate peak power usage of around 850 W with CPU overclock
CASE:
- Crystal Series 680X RGB ATX High Airflow
I'll be putting one of my 2080 Ti graphics cards in this system until I can get a 3090. I have a plan for water cooling, but we will see how well the air cooler does.
For the record, I did research on many AIOs and none of them appear to be able to effectively cool the power YUGE beast of the 3970x CPU. I do have my eye on this as the prototypes have gotten RAVE reviews:
https://www.icegiantcooling.com/
For usage of the machine, it will do the following:
- Half the cores (16) running folding@home
- 2 VMs using 4 more cores total
- The remaining 12 cores will be for general usage and gaming
Any thoughts?
Anything I am missing?
Anyone else do a Threadripper build with this generation of CPUs and have any adivce/feedback?
I will have a RED and GREEN PC as an early Christmas present!!!
Thanks!
Edit: Updated memory purchased
Edit 09/29/2020: Got my case yesterday, and did some building before the hockey game
The parts (minus the case, and minus the 2080 Ti I am pulling from another computer):
The case is a Corsair Crystal Series 680X RGB. It's similar in design to the case I use on "The Sith", but has the RGB hub and lighting hub built in. The side, top, and front are 100% glass...and that glass makes it heavy compared to to a normal case. The build quality is spectacular...everything is solid. The front, top, and bottom fan assemblies disconnect from the main case...making working on them pretty easy. Here is a shot looking down into the case before I put in the motherboard:
A closeup shot of the ROG Strix TRX-40 Gaming Motherboard package. I was disappointed in the cheap interior packaging for a motherboard of this price (forgot to take a picture):
Motherboard is all mounted in the case. The biggest pain here is that I had to remove the cover on the top VRM heat sink to get at the middle motherboard mounting screw:
Dang, that's a HUGE chip socket! Here we are with everything opened up and waiting for the CPU:
CPU is and memory now mounted in place. The Threadripper CPU comes with a Torx screwdriver that is also a torque wrench to make sure you don't overtighten the mounting plate:
Next step was to drop in the 2 PCI 4.0 NVME drives. You have to remove the heat sink cover under where the GPU would go. The cover has thermal tape on the underside to help heat sink the drives. The cover was a pain to realign when putting back on as there were not any guide holes...and the screws are the "captive" type and not meant to be removed:
I connected up some power cables and called it a night. I am hoping to finish tonight and see if this bad boy will post!!!!
Edit 09/30/2020:
My objective for last night was to get the system to post, activate the memory XMP profile (3600 MHz and CAS 18), and install Windows. This was a successful night!
I had to get the Noctua air cooler mounted on the CPU. This cooler is tall and heavy (about 3 pounds.) Remember that this cooler is specifically designed for the Threadripper CPUs and their large IHS. Here is a picture of the nice and smooth heat sink mounting surface...it's amazing that Noctua can get this finish on a volume product:
Normally when I do the TIM, I use the "blob" method...putting a single blob of thermal compound in the center of the CPU. The directions for the cooler recommended doing it this way:
As my objective was to get it to post, I followed the directions...and will pull off the cooler later and see how good the coverage was and if this was too much thermal compound.
Here is a picture of the cooler mounted:
I had originally purchased a black fan to replace the ugly Noctua fan...but I ordered the wrong kind...the correct one comes in today.
While I don't have the video card mounted in this picture, I will note that this is a BIG heat sink. But what is cool is that you can adjust the main fins to slide them up or down (in the attached picture) up to 6 mm...this is to allow for clearance of the first PCIe slot. I had to adjust it "up" the full 6 mm.
And LOOK...we have it POSTING!!!!
As you can see form this picture, I just slapped the GPU AIO cooler into the case...my objective was to get the system to post and install Windows. I'll be doing some more surgery later.
What you can barely see in this photo is the really cool OLED display that is on the motherboard. It's under the pretty lights on the back I/O shroud, and to the left of the pretty lit up memory.
This display is pretty cool...and shows actual WORDS (gasp) during the bootup process as to what is going on. It also plays a pretty cool ROG logo that bounces around when the PC is turned off (but the power supply is switched on).
The default (after boot) is that this display shows CPU temperature (it says "CPU Temperature", an icon for the CPU, and the temperature in °C). If I knew how cool it was going to be, I would have taken a better picture. Once I figure out how to change the info on here, I will put up a better picture.
While I haven't benchmarked the PCIe 4.0 NVME SSDs yet, I will tell you that the "seem" fast. Powering on the PC, it takes about 20 seconds to complete tests to post...and then you are at the Windows log in screen in the blink of an eye (and this is with the Windows FAST BOOT turned off...hate the FAST BOOT...hate it.)
This CPU is a beast...and I will leave today's thread comments with this picture from the Windows Task Manager:
More to come soon!!!!
Edit: 10/01/2020
Did some more tweaking...about ready to put the sides on the case and seeing what sort of performance I can get out of the system. I did snap a couple of pictures while playing last night:
Did a quick speed test on the NVME 4.0 SSD drives....WOWOWOWOWOW:
Performance peaks out at 4,250 MB/sec write and 5,600 MB/sec read...WOWOW - that's MEGA BYTES per second!
The heat sink cover for the motherboard (shown in the pictures above) does an excellent job of keeping the NVME SSD cool...the maximum temperature stabilzed at 60 °C...so no thermal throttling in this benchmark. This runs a number of different block sizes write/read from the disk...just incredible performance!
The next picture is a closeup from "Open Hardware Monitor"...a free program that monitors "everything" in your system...has a nice gadget window (closeup screenshot) and graphs things for you over a 24 hour period...pretty cool. In this screenshot, I had the system running folding@home on 31 cores, and running the graphics card on another core (i.e. 32 threads, but all cores getting hit):
As you can see, this processor was pulling a WOPPING 280 watts of power. The air cooler handled this, and the CPU temperature maxed out at 75 °C. I still haven't done any tweaking...and all voltages are on their default values loaded into BIOS. I believe the chip was thermal throttling as the CPU frequency stayed at 3900 MHz.
280 watts...WOWOWOWOW
I'll be moving this over to it's UPS soon, so I can get actual system power draw...stand by...
Edcit 10/03/2020:
OK - did some more playing around. I currently have a stable overclock to 4150 MHz on a CPU core voltage of 1.200 V. Earlier, I just had everything on auto, and the core voltage was 1.400-ish. So, this new setting saves A LOT of power. Here is a picture of the system running the same load as above (31 cores Folding @ home, 1 GPU folding @ home) with the CPU "only" drawing 235-ish watts versus the maxed 280 Watts from before...with my overclock:
Did some Cinibench before and after...
Before overclock at 3.7 GHz, Score: 16,596
After overclock at 4.15 GHz, Score: 17.931
So, 8% increase in score for 12% increase in clock. I did have more "junk" running in the background when I did the second run...and Cinibench can vary run to run...but not too bad for a few hours work!
Edit: 10/06/2020
Got the second Noctua Chromax fan in for the CPU Heat sink...here is a picture of the inside of the build.
The only bummer with the Noctua fans is that the serial number is on the top...so you can see it.
I'll take some final pictures with all the pretty lights and post later!
Edit 10/07/2020:
I have 2 VMs running now...consuming 2 cores...CPU usage stays at about 6% constant usage.
The number of cores on this Threadripper is obscene...this makes everything buttery smooth!
Here are a couple of pictures with everything lit up...it's so pretty!
Of course, all colors (including motherboard) change to Red when I log in...like a good Sith...
Side View:
Front View:
Last edited:
