About to buy a new Workstation. Need MOBO. Please help.

[Iskren]

Hello everyone, 
I just saw that morning that the new CPU's are released, which is amazing. I was waiting long time for this and I am excited. I would like to share my future build with you and please tell me your opinion. 

CPU: I9 7900x with water cooling, probably Corsair.

GPU: 3x EVGA Hybrid 1080 ti plus one 1080 Air cooled (will be at the bottom slot) which I have now.

Motherboard: That's what bothers me. I liked the Asus ROG Apex, but it has only two slots for memory, which is weird.I will need a Mobo with at least 4 PCIE slots at 8x speed. Any suggestion ?

RAM: Vengeance® LPX 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz C15 Memory Kit. I am not sure what c15 and c16 means but there is huge difference in the price. But from what I read in forums, there is not such noticeable difference in performance.

PSU: Right now I am using EVGA 1000w G2 and I am not sure if it will be enough if I overclock my CPU, so probable have to go to Corsair AX1500i, 1500 Watt.

Case: Already bought it : ThermalTake Core x9

SSD: Samsung 960 PRO 512GB. It's more than enough for all the software I use.

I am using my PC mostly for GPU Rendering and simulations. Please give me your opinion about that configuration.
Thank you !

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

have a look at TUF X299 MARK 2. Built a system with it las week - seems recommendable

[TheLaserCucumber]

It is not really recommender to overclock 2066 CPUs really far, since the VRM on some mainboards overheat really easily.

[Iskren]

Yes, I have watched that video with few motherboards, that heat up to 120 degrees. I really hope the ROG ones wont have that problem, since they are made specially for OC.

ItsTheDuckAgain, looks very good for sure, but I need it for 4 GPU's. That one has 3 slots.

[JoostinOnline]

You should wait a few weeks for Threadripper. You'll get way more bang for your buck.

 

Btw, you should use pcpartpicker.com for your parts. It finds the lowest prices and checks compatibility. 

[Hetz BH]

Looks like the problem with the heat affect almost any X299 motherboard, so you might want to wait at least a month or 2 and see some new reviews then.

 

Also, ThreadRipper will be out next month, you might want to see their CPU, performance, pricing etc..

[JoostinOnline]

5 minutes ago, Hetz BH said:

Looks like the problem with the heat affect almost any X299 motherboard, so you might want to wait at least a month or 2 and see some new reviews then.

 

Also, ThreadRipper will be out next month, you might want to see their CPU, performance, pricing etc..

July 27th. 

[Iskren]

I am not really a fan of AMD. And I am not sure if it's going to work perfect with Nvidia cards. I will probably have to wait anyway to see the latest tests on motherboards, so i can get a proper one. What a struggle...

[tom_w141]

12 minutes ago, Hetz BH said:

Looks like the problem with the heat affect almost any X299 motherboard, so you might want to wait at least a month or 2 and see some new reviews then.

 

Also, ThreadRipper will be out next month, you might want to see their CPU, performance, pricing etc..

On the $400+ boards it is not an issue due to the better design on VRM cooling. This only affects the "budget" boards.

 

6 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

July 27th. 

I agree but if he needs it right now for work purposes then he may not have a choice.

[Hetz BH]

Nvidia cards works great with either Intel or AMD processors. I tested it dozens of times.

[done12many2]

44 minutes ago, Iskren said:

Hello everyone, 
I just saw that morning that the new CPU's are released, which is amazing. I was waiting long time for this and I am excited. I would like to share my future build with you and please tell me your opinion. 

CPU: I9 7900x with water cooling, probably Corsair.

GPU: 3x EVGA Hybrid 1080 ti plus one 1080 Air cooled (will be at the bottom slot) which I have now.

Motherboard: That's what bothers me. I liked the Asus ROG Apex, but it has only two slots for memory, which is weird.I will need a Mobo with at least 4 PCIE slots at 8x speed. Any suggestion ?

RAM: Vengeance® LPX 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz C15 Memory Kit. I am not sure what c15 and c16 means but there is huge difference in the price. But from what I read in forums, there is not such noticeable difference in performance.

PSU: Right now I am using EVGA 1000w G2 and I am not sure if it will be enough if I overclock my CPU, so probable have to go to Corsair AX1500i, 1500 Watt.

Case: Already bought it : ThermalTake Core x9

SSD: Samsung 960 PRO 512GB. It's more than enough for all the software I use.

I am using my PC mostly for GPU Rendering and simulations. Please give me your opinion about that configuration.
Thank you !

 

The Apex has 4 DIMM slots as opposed to the normal 8 on most x299 boards.  This is done intentionally to reduce memory trace routing to the CPU resulting in higher potential memory overclocks.  In addition to the 4 memory DIMM slots, it also has 2 DIMM2 slots, which support 2 x NVMe M.2 drives per slot for a total of 4 on the board without adding in any PCIe adapters. 

 

Speaking of memory, the IMC on Skylake-X is excellent and will support memory in excess of 4000 MHz.

 

Right now I'm using the Gigabyte x299 AORUS Gaming 7, which is a great board, but the Apex is calling my name.

 

Great choice in CPU.  

[tom_w141]

3 minutes ago, Iskren said:

I am not really a fan of AMD

This is a real problem (AMD of old are to blame). Their new products need to be judged on their own merits. Zen (and therefore Threadripper and Eypc) is great

[Iskren]

3 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

 

The Apex has 4 DIMM slots as opposed to the normal 8 on most x299 boards.  This is done intentionally to reduce memory trace routing to the CPU resulting in higher potential memory overclocks.  In addition to the 4 memory DIMM slots, it also has 2 DIMM2 slots, which support 2 x NVMe M.2 drives per slot for a total of 4 on the board without adding in any PCIe adapters. 

 

Speaking of memory, the IMC on Skylake-X is excellent and will support memory in excess of 4000 MHz.

 

Right now I'm using the Gigabyte x299 AORUS Gaming 7, which is a great board, but the Apex is calling my name.

 

Great choice in CPU.  

Ahhhh yes ! Ive been watching review of Asus Maximus IX Apex instead of Rampage. Silly me ! Do you have any Idea if I can add 4 gpu's at 8x speed on that motherboard ?

[Iskren]

9 minutes ago, tom_w141 said:

This is a real problem (AMD of old are to blame). Their new products need to be judged on their own merits. Zen (and therefore Threadripper and Eypc) is great

Yes, I know its stupid, but that's in my head. Also when you see a lot lower price you start to think... " hm there should be a catch, The price can't be that lower " I am pretty sure AMD are cheaper and with same or even better performance, but I will feel a lot batter and stable if I have the Intel one.

[done12many2]

9 minutes ago, Iskren said:

Ahhhh yes ! Ive been watching review of Asus Maximus IX Apex instead of Rampage. Silly me ! Do you have any Idea if I can add 4 gpu's at 8x speed on that motherboard ?

 

Yes, the Apex will support 4 x Nvidia GPUs all running in x8.

 

6 minutes ago, Iskren said:

Yes, I know its stupid, but that's in my head. Also when you see a lot lower price you start to think... " hm there should be a catch, The price can't be that lower " I am pretty sure AMD are cheaper and with same or even better performance, but I will feel a lot batter and stable if I have the Intel one.

 

There's nothing wrong with your thinking if you are looking at things from a purely performance side.  The Intel HEDT part will generally more than likely outperform the AMD HEDT part core for core.  The question is, is that difference worth the price?  To me it is, but that's up to the end user to determine.  

[tom_w141]

9 minutes ago, Iskren said:

I am pretty sure AMD are cheaper and with same or even better performance

AMD are using the same Zen die across their entire CPU product stack. They have an 80% yield for an 8 core die that costs $30 to produce with 8 functioning cores. If a say only 6 cores are functional then they can still use it for Ryzen 5 and if only 4 are functional for Ryzen 3. This means their actual yield is something like 97-98% (someone on reddit did a page of math to theorise this). What this means for AMD is that their waste is very very low, combine that with the low cost and modular design of their new product stack means they can undercut Intel and still make plenty of profit (Intel's yields are much lower + Brand Tax). The only "catch" with this design is that a zen core can only really do 4.1Ghz on average.

[bowrilla]

14 minutes ago, Iskren said:

Yes, I know its stupid, but that's in my head. Also when you see a lot lower price you start to think... " hm there should be a catch, The price can't be that lower " I am pretty sure AMD are cheaper and with same or even better performance, but I will feel a lot batter and stable if I have the Intel one.

One way of looking at it. But you could also say "Wait a minute, why are they asking two, three or four times as much for similar performance. I kind of feel as if I'm about to get ripped off". 

Not saying that's the case but there are usualy at least two ways of looking at things …

[JoostinOnline]

58 minutes ago, Iskren said:

Yes, I know its stupid, but that's in my head. Also when you see a lot lower price you start to think... " hm there should be a catch, The price can't be that lower " I am pretty sure AMD are cheaper and with same or even better performance, but I will feel a lot batter and stable if I have the Intel one.

You're spending thousands of dollars, you need to let go of your pre-conceived notions about AMD.  Six months ago I would have NEVER recommended an AMD CPU, and I'm a computer technician.  Computers are my life.  For years I've only recommended Intel, and I was right to do so.  AMD has been way behind.  But they've made a comeback, at least in the CPU side.  Intel has been taking advantage of near-zero competition, and they've been charging waaaaaaaaaaaaay more than what their CPU's are worth.  Take a look at this recent post for some of the sleazy stuff Intel has been doing.

 

As for the reason AMD isn't overcharging like Intel, there is a very simple reason:  They desperately needed the attention.  If they copied Intel's pricing scheme (like they copied the naming scheme lol), everyone would stick with Intel.  Nobody would look at them.

 

There is one very important note on the performance though.  Ryzen CPU's NEED really fast memory to perform better.  Part of the processor (Infinity Fabric) runs at the same speed as the RAM, so if you pair it with some 2600MHz RAM like you would with an Intel CPU, it won't perform very good.  3200MHz is the recommended speed.

 

Your skepticism is totally understandable.  Watch some reviews on Ryzen (check the memory speed in the setup, if it's low you'll see what I mean).  It's not perfect: for example, the 8 core ones aren't great in gaming because games are optimized for 4 cores, and when it first came out there were some BIOS issues because motherboard manufacturers weren't given enough time to program everything, but BIOS's have been updated and games are starting to be patched.  It's still way better than Intel though. especially in content creation.

[Moress]

If you're going to be running applications that love cores over clocks then you need to let go of the "AMD is bad" mentality and wait for Threadripper. If their pricing ends up at the same ratio of R7 vs I7 (That being ~double the cores for the same price) you will be able to get their 16 core CPU for the price of that 10-core fire starter. If your applications prefer clocks over cores then you will need to look into a large custom loop (480mm+ rad space) if you want to get the highest speeds out of that 7900x, as even high end AIOs hit thermal limits before stability limits from what I saw in early tests.

Also, with that many GPUs running I would think the (rumored?) 64 pcie lanes of Threadripper will help avoid bottlnecks over the 7900x's 44.

[bowrilla]

9 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

There is one very important note on the performance though.  Ryzen CPU's NEED really fast memory to perform better.  Part of the processor (Infinity Fabric) runs at the same speed as the RAM, so if you pair it with some 2600MHz RAM like you would with an Intel CPU, it won't perform very good.  3200MHz is the recommended speed.

And there's the catch … afaik there's no way at this point to run 64GB of RAM on Ryzen at anything close to 3200MHz. Happy to be wrong here and please correct me if I am but the information I have indicate that 3200MHz+ can only be achieved with a maximum of 2x Single Rank modules or 1x Dual Rank. That's basically 2x8GB or 1x16GB. More than that and memory speeds will drop.

Still – there's hardly anything better performance per buck wise for number crunching than Ryzen 7 at the moment. You'd probably even be better off with 2 Ryzen systems linked together for number crunching than with a beastly i9. 

[JoostinOnline]

21 minutes ago, bowrilla said:

And there's the catch … afaik there's no way at this point to run 64GB of RAM on Ryzen at anything close to 3200MHz. Happy to be wrong here and please correct me if I am but the information I have indicate that 3200MHz+ can only be achieved with a maximum of 2x Single Rank modules or 1x Dual Rank. That's basically 2x8GB or 1x16GB. More than that and memory speeds will drop.

https://www.gskill.com/en/press/view/g-skill-announces-flare-x-series-and-fortis-series-ddr4-memory-for-amd-ryzen

 

It's not about bandwidth.  It's about frequency.  And honestly, I can't see why someone would need 64GB of RAM with modern technology, unless they were running a ton of virtual machines (which he isn't).  So yes, there is a catch.  As I said, it's not perfect.  But overall, it's way better than Intel.  It doesn't have to have 3200MHz RAM to be better.  That's just where it's best.  So you can always use 2400MHz now and upgrade later.

[bowrilla]

4 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

https://www.gskill.com/en/press/view/g-skill-announces-flare-x-series-and-fortis-series-ddr4-memory-for-amd-ryzen

 

It's not about bandwidth.  It's about frequency.  And honestly, I can't see why someone would need 64GB of RAM with modern technology, unless they were running a ton of virtual machines (which he isn't).

Interesting announcement. Are there any tests/benchmarks out there that show 3200+ with more than 16GB of RAM? Because about 1 month ago or so that was pretty impossible afaik.

[JoostinOnline]

6 minutes ago, bowrilla said:

Interesting announcement. Are there any tests/benchmarks out there that show 3200+ with more than 16GB of RAM? Because about 1 month ago or so that was pretty impossible afaik.

I don't know if it's for sale at the moment.  I know it was released, but I can't find it anywhere.  Most likely it was bought up right away.  But take a look at my edit.  Threadripper has 32 threads, compared to the i9's 20.  Content creation makes use of more threads.  Even if he temporarily gets slower RAM, it will still outperform an i9.  Down the line, he could sell his old RAM and get some faster RAM to replace it.

 

I'm not saying he has to get AMD.  Maybe when it's released it will have unforeseen problems.  I'm just saying wait.  Worst case scenario, it sucks and he gets Intel.  Or maybe it's good and Intel does a price drop in response.  Less than four weeks of waiting could make an enormous difference.

[bowrilla]

12 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

I'm not saying he has to get AMD.  Maybe when it's released it will have unforeseen problems.  I'm just saying wait.  Worst case scenario, it sucks and he gets Intel.  Or maybe it's good and Intel does a price drop in response.  Less than four weeks of waiting could make an enormous difference.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm certainly not telling anybody not to go Ryzen. I just wanted to point out, that there might be issues with the amount of RAM @Iskren planned with in the first place. Since he's relying heavily on GPUs to do stuff, I'm also not sure why 64GB or RAM were necessary. 

Yet there's another thing. Since I have no experience with that many GPUs in a single system I wonder if there are compatible AM4 boards around. I think E-ATX boards aren't yet available for Ryzen? Can't find anything else than 3x full sized PCIe ports on AM4 boards so far.

[done12many2]

25 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

I don't know if it's for sale at the moment.  I know it was released, but I can't find it anywhere.  Most likely it was bought up right away.  But take a look at my edit.  Threadripper has 32 threads, compared to the i9's 20.  Content creation makes use of more threads.  Even if he temporarily gets slower RAM, it will still outperform an i9.  Down the line, he could sell his old RAM and get some faster RAM to replace it.

 

I'm not saying he has to get AMD.  Maybe when it's released it will have unforeseen problems.  I'm just saying wait.  Worst case scenario, it sucks and he gets Intel.  Or maybe it's good and Intel does a price drop in response.  Less than four weeks of waiting could make an enormous difference.

 

You do realize that right after Threadripper drops, Intel is dropping a 36 thread CPU, right?  Neither the Intel or AMD HCC chips are available yet. 

 

Core for core, an Intel chip will consistently beat a current AMD offering.  That's not to say that this won't change 5 years from now, but from a purely performance standpoint without factoring in money, Intel still dominates performance.