3 x R9-3950X Workstations

Thavion Hawk · June 9, 2020

I do love my job some times. As of today all of the parts for a customer order have come in and the builds will be done Tuesday 6/9/2020.

The parts in question?

CPU: R9-3950X (16c/32t Beast)

Cooler: BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4 (Big, Black, Functional)

RAM: 4x32GB Crucial Ballistix 3,200Mhz CL16 (128GB in just 4 Sticks!)

Mobo: ASUS WS X570-ACE (Sadly no 2.5Gb or better LAN. Just 2 x 1Gb)

Storage-

SSD: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO v.2 (Because until Samsung releases a 980 with PCIe 4 support, it's good enough)

HDDs: 2 x 4TB Seagate Ironwolfs in RAID 1 (No SMR here)

GPU: GT710 (No GPU Compute in these rigs. I'd definitely use a different case if there was going to be)

PSU: EVGA 600BR (Enough power, nothing fancy)

Case: Corsair Carbide 200R (Not perfect for airflow do to its solid front panel, but it's a Swiss Army Knife of a case and not bad to build in IMO)

I'll update with build pics and will do some load temperature stuff. Until then, what do you all think of the parts selection? I'd personally use a different case, Gold or Plat' PSU and something 2080 or better for a GPU. That said, it's the customers money and my job is to build what they pay for.

The Build!

I'll be linking to my Instagram for the images as I have uploaded them there already.

Step 0: Double check of the parts... I'm glad we ordered extra kits of RAM to stock for other customers because of the 12 kits we ordered we git shipped 11 + a kit of 2x8GB... The latter is far from the $319 value spent on it. As we ordered more than needed the builds went on without a hitch.

Step 1: Bench Build

First up, the Motherboard itself. If you have built with a full ATX motherboard in the past 3-20 years it's nothing all that new. The CPU drops in the good old Z.I.F. Socket with a lift of the lever. In the case of this motherboard, it has a heat sink over the top M.2 slot so that is where the 1TB SSD will go leaving the bottom slot open. Per our standard we install the standoff and screw for both M.2 Slots even if there is no drive to make sure they are there if the system gets upgraded in the future. Normally I would install the RAM last, however give the size of the cooler it's the RAM in first. Give the all black of the heat spreaders they look perfect in the build.

Mini Review: BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4

This is the first time I have installed the Dark Rock Pro 4 and I'll be honest I liked it. Most of the tower coolers I install are CoolerMaster Hyper 212 versions and compared to those this was simpler by far. No third party back plate, one simply swaps the stock plastic clips with the plastic stand offs, metal brackets and extra long screws included with the cooler. For testing(And eventually on all three) I installed the included thermal compound. The hold down mechanisom is a simple slatted bar with two holes for the screws to go through. The top plate of the cooler has two thumb screw caps in line with the hold down screw holes. The included driver slips into the hole with enough play side to side that you can tilt it out from between the fin stacks and place the screw onto the magnetic tip. Screw in both screws, replace the thumb screw caps and job done! Well almost. Still have to slide in the thin 140mm fan between the fin stacks and clip it in place. Installing the second fan is actually the most annoying part of the install.

Step 2: Install PSU, Run EPS 12v, Install Motherboard.

Given the lack of a full modular PSU in these builds there is one trick that I must point out here. Installing the PSU first and pre running the EPS 12v with slack allows you to slip the motherboard into the case with enough room to get your hand in and clip it to the motherboard. If you have a full modular PSU you can clip the EPS 12v to the motherboard first then slip it through the case as you install the motherboard. With the Corsair 200R this worked quite well. As a bonus, the screw driver that came with the cooler is the perfect slim and long combination to easily screw the motherboard into the case. The top three screws are often obstructed by the top lip of the case.

Step 3: Cable Manage

My order of operations for cable runs in systems is as follows. Front Panel, USB, Audio, PSU/Power, SATA and finally Case Fans. There are no LED, fan controllers or other auxiliary devices to deal with so it's very easy. The reason I do it this way is simply layering the things that are most likely to be undone on top of the things that are least likely. This also often leads to naturally clean cable runs. Given that there will be no GPU/PCIe power needed I've tucked that cable in the nook Corsair provides behind the PSU. The extra SATA and Molex strands are tied down together in the bottom 3.5" HDD bay for simplicity.

Step 4: HDD's, GPU

The HDD's simply slot in from the front and clip in. If you want to hard mount it you can remove the plastic locking arm and simple use screws. As for the GPU, it just slots in with its sadly blue PCB the only stand out part of the build. That said, the lack of a window lets that one part out of place pass unseen... but I know it's there...

Step 5: UEFI Update and Configure

Now I should say I did bench test the system before putting it all in the case, but I did not bother doing updates and configuration. As the customer is going to be running Linux of some sort I simply updated the UEFI, enabled the RAM's D.O.C.P. Profile and left it at that.

Step 6: Burn in and Temps

To be sure everything works and to run some stress tests I simply plugged in a test disk with Windows on it. Given the CPU and Memory are the top parts to test I slammed them both with Prime95 with the side panels on. I didn't think to grab a screen capture or even a picture of the temps, but under every form of stress test I could through at it and the top temperature hit was 65.7C. With those temps I would more than happy pushing an all core O.C. if this was may own system.

All told these systems were a fun build. Well I built two of them and my coworker built the third, but in any case it was a blast. These are the sorts of systems I love building because some if not all of the parts are things I would never be able to get for myself or simply more than I would ever need.

Edited June 9, 2020 by Thavion Hawk

Deli · June 9, 2020

Love the motherboards.

Enderman · June 9, 2020

Yeah I was planning to get that same motehrboard and CPU for my PC, good choices.

I would have spent more on the PSU and case though, I only buy seasonic.

Mateyyy · June 9, 2020

Noice. Well, I would've gone for a better PSU personally, but sounds good regardless.

kkpatel87 · June 9, 2020

9 hours ago, Thavion Hawk said:

-snip-

This looks like a cluster or compute application...if thats the case (no pun intended), im surprised they didnt want it in a rackmount case.

Thavion Hawk · April 2, 2021

On 6/9/2020 at 7:40 AM, kkpatel87 said:

This looks like a cluster or compute application...if thats the case (no pun intended), im surprised they didnt want it in a rackmount case.

Update for you as of 4/2/2021. They came back last week and asked us to build two new 3U Thread Ripper 3970x systems and re-shell these R9-3950x systems into the same 3U cases with 10Gb NICs so they can build a Rack Mount Cluster... New build will start Monday April 5th.