Threadripper Build

Crafty23 · November 30, 2017

So, I am planning on building a system based around the x399 platform, I think I will be waiting for next-gen GPU's depending on if the performance is as good as what the server level cards are getting compared to Pascal

- Threadripper 1950x

- Asus ROG Strix x399-E

- 4x8 GB G.Skill Trident Z CAS 14, 3200mhz

- Samsung 960 EVO 250GB m.2 SSD

- Seagate Barracuda 2TB

- Enermax Liqutech TR4 360

- GTX 1080ti (If I wait, I will be getting the 1180, or 2080)

- NZXT H700i (The EATX board will fit with a couple mm of clearance)

- EVGA Supernova G3 1000W

Are there any issues with the build that stand out? Or is the build solid? I plan to OC the Threadripper to about 3.8 or 3.9 on all cores.

TheSLSAMG · November 30, 2017

Looks like a more than solid build so long as you're properly utilizing the hardware. If it's just a gaming rig, obviously don't do it, but I'm sure you realize this if you're looking into such enthusiast hardware.

mariushm · November 30, 2017

1. You don't need a 1000w power supply for a build with a single video card. The overclocked Threadripper won't go over 250 watts and your 1080 or 1080ti won't go over 300-350w as well. Basically won't go over 600w. (stock 1080 is up to 190-200w and stock 1080ti is 250w ...)

A 750w power supply will be enough but if you want to feel more comfortable go for a 850w power supply with at least Gold efficiency.

2. if your budget is tight, you could probably go for a 2800 Mhz or 3000 Mhz memory kit. Not sure how stable everything's gonna be with 4 memory sticks and later if/when you're gonna add more sticks, i'm almost sure it wouldn't be stable at 3200 Mhz.

3. I'd suggest going for a NAS rated drive or something with at least 3 years warranty ideally 5 ... my current favorite these days is HGST NAS 3 TB or 4 TB , that's where you'll get best value for money. I personally had bad experiences with Seagate but i'm just one person, just like me others probably had bad experience with other brands.

4. Not sure if it's worth going for 1080ti but in the end it depends on how you're gonna use the system. You don't say so ...

Crafty23 · November 30, 2017

11 minutes ago, mariushm said:

1. You don't need a 1000w power supply for a build with a single video card. The overclocked Threadripper won't go over 250 watts and your 1080 or 1080ti won't go over 300-350w as well. Basically won't go over 600w. (stock 1080 is up to 190-200w and stock 1080ti is 250w ...)

A 750w power supply will be enough but if you want to feel more comfortable go for a 850w power supply with at least Gold efficiency.

2. if your budget is tight, you could probably go for a 2800 Mhz or 3000 Mhz memory kit. Not sure how stable everything's gonna be with 4 memory sticks and later if/when you're gonna add more sticks, i'm almost sure it wouldn't be stable at 3200 Mhz.

3. I'd suggest going for a NAS rated drive or something with at least 3 years warranty ideally 5 ... my current favorite these days is HGST NAS 3 TB or 4 TB , that's where you'll get best value for money. I personally had bad experiences with Seagate but i'm just one person, just like me others probably had bad experience with other brands.

4. Not sure if it's worth going for 1080ti but in the end it depends on how you're gonna use the system. You don't say so ...

I plan on using the system for a server, video encoding and streaming, as well as gaming. Why wouldn't the system be stable with 3200 mhz ram, I have read that faster, low latency ram improves performance of threadripper. I chose a 1000W PSU because I want the overhead if I decide to SLI in the future.

mariushm · November 30, 2017

Yes, all the new processors from AMD (Ryzen, Threadripper, EPYC server processors) use Infinity fabric to connect core complexes (unites made out of 4 real cores and 4 threads) together and form a single cpu with lots of cores. Infinity fabric benefits from higher frequencies... it runs at half the memory frequency if I remember correctly, so the faster the memory frequency the faster the communication between core complexes and some applications will benefit from that.

However, the more data signals there are between memory sticks and the socket, the harder it is to maintain signal integrity and not have random errors happening. It really depends on the motherboard and how well the signals from each memory stick are routed and isolated from the signals from the other memory sticks, when it comes to maximum frequencies achievable.

Officially, the Zen core based processors support maximum 2666 Mhz and that's with only ONE stick per channel and only if those are Single Rank memory (pretty much all 4 GB memory sticks and a big percentage of 8 GB memory sticks), that's maximum guaranteed to work , anything higher is considered overclocking. With double rank memories (majority of 16 GB sticks and all 32 GB sticks), they only guarantee 2400 Mhz with 2 sticks of memory , one in each channel.

If you populate a motherboard with Ryzen with 4 memory sticks, the guaranteed frequencies drop to 2133 Mhz and 1866 Mhz

The majority of people building computers will only install two memory sticks and the motherboards are made well enough that in general the processor has no trouble using the memories at 3000 Mhz or 3200 Mhz. However, in the case of AM4 motherboards if you were to fill the motherboard with all four sticks, some percentage of people won't be able to maintain that 3200 Mhz or 3200 Mhz.

Threadripper is basically two Ryzen dies , so you have two memory channels (with 2 slots each) to the left of the socket that belong to one die and two memory channels (with 2 slots each) to the right. With your 4 memory sticks, you're gonna have to install two sticks on the left and two sticks on the right, so you fill each channel with one memory stick and you're in the "2666 Mhz guaranteed frequency mode", so achieving higher frequencies will be easy.

But if you will add 4 more memory sticks, you're gonna have 4 memory sticks per die, and that's more difficult .. and then you have all those 4 sets of signals concentrated under the socket into those pins... a bit more difficult than working with just 2 memory channels.

Not sure I'm explaining it right. Basically, if you were to populate all those memory slots, there's a slim chance the motherboard will be unstable at 3000 Mhz or more, so you'll have to configure all memory sticks to run at lower frequency.

If that happens, you've spent extra money on the original sticks and you won't benefit from the performance, so I was saying if you have plans to add more memory, as slim as the chance is, it's big enough that I'd say just save money and go now from 3000 Mhz or lower memory sticks ( it's not so much performance increase between 3000 Mhz and 3200 Mhz)

In the end it depends on the memory prices and your budget and right now ddr4 costs a lot.

Low latency doesn't improve performance so much, just frequency.

SLI and 1000w ... an 1080ti can do 4K at reasonable fps. Do you really think you're gonna do SLI with two 1080ti ? Again it depends on your budget.. if you can afford to buy two 1080ti then you can afford a 1000w psu.

However, if your budget is limited then you can buy a Seasonic Focus Plus 850w psu for 110$ , while a good 1000w psu starts at 150-160$ ... it's a 50$ difference you can use for other things, like maybe a 4 TB hard drive or a 480-500 GB SSD or a 2nd 250 GB SSD.

And btw... why that Asus motherboard... it's not special in any particular way. You can do better, for example Gigabyte x399 Designare EX is better and it's in ATX format : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?CompareItemList=-1|13-145-044^13-145-044%2C13-119-026^13-119-026

mariushm · November 30, 2017

And btw, there's a sale now on Newegg, for ASRock Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming sTR4 AMD X399 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX AMD Motherboard

It's 400$ , reduced from 450$ and there's an additional 50$ off mail-in rebate .. so you're saving 100$ if the mail-in rebate goes through.

It's ATX format AND it has a 10gbps ethernet card built in AND 2 gigabit network cards, the 10gbps may be worth considering you plan to use this as a server as well.

Crafty23 · November 30, 2017

29 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yes, all the new processors from AMD (Ryzen, Threadripper, EPYC server processors) use Infinity fabric to connect core complexes (unites made out of 4 real cores and 4 threads) together and form a single cpu with lots of cores. Infinity fabric benefits from higher frequencies... it runs at half the memory frequency if I remember correctly, so the faster the memory frequency the faster the communication between core complexes and some applications will benefit from that.

However, the more data signals there are between memory sticks and the socket, the harder it is to maintain signal integrity and not have random errors happening. It really depends on the motherboard and how well the signals from each memory stick are routed and isolated from the signals from the other memory sticks, when it comes to maximum frequencies achievable.

Officially, the Zen core based processors support maximum 2666 Mhz and that's with only ONE stick per channel and only if those are Single Rank memory (pretty much all 4 GB memory sticks and a big percentage of 8 GB memory sticks), that's maximum guaranteed to work , anything higher is considered overclocking. With double rank memories (majority of 16 GB sticks and all 32 GB sticks), they only guarantee 2400 Mhz with 2 sticks of memory , one in each channel.

If you populate a motherboard with Ryzen with 4 memory sticks, the guaranteed frequencies drop to 2133 Mhz and 1866 Mhz

The majority of people building computers will only install two memory sticks and the motherboards are made well enough that in general the processor has no trouble using the memories at 3000 Mhz or 3200 Mhz. However, in the case of AM4 motherboards if you were to fill the motherboard with all four sticks, some percentage of people won't be able to maintain that 3200 Mhz or 3200 Mhz.

Threadripper is basically two Ryzen dies , so you have two memory channels (with 2 slots each) to the left of the socket that belong to one die and two memory channels (with 2 slots each) to the right. With your 4 memory sticks, you're gonna have to install two sticks on the left and two sticks on the right, so you fill each channel with one memory stick and you're in the "2666 Mhz guaranteed frequency mode", so achieving higher frequencies will be easy.

But if you will add 4 more memory sticks, you're gonna have 4 memory sticks per die, and that's more difficult .. and then you have all those 4 sets of signals concentrated under the socket into those pins... a bit more difficult than working with just 2 memory channels.

Not sure I'm explaining it right. Basically, if you were to populate all those memory slots, there's a slim chance the motherboard will be unstable at 3000 Mhz or more, so you'll have to configure all memory sticks to run at lower frequency.

If that happens, you've spent extra money on the original sticks and you won't benefit from the performance, so I was saying if you have plans to add more memory, as slim as the chance is, it's big enough that I'd say just save money and go now from 3000 Mhz or lower memory sticks ( it's not so much performance increase between 3000 Mhz and 3200 Mhz)

In the end it depends on the memory prices and your budget and right now ddr4 costs a lot.

Low latency doesn't improve performance so much, just frequency.

SLI and 1000w ... an 1080ti can do 4K at reasonable fps. Do you really think you're gonna do SLI with two 1080ti ? Again it depends on your budget.. if you can afford to buy two 1080ti then you can afford a 1000w psu.

However, if your budget is limited then you can buy a Seasonic Focus Plus 850w psu for 110$ , while a good 1000w psu starts at 150-160$ ... it's a 50$ difference you can use for other things, like maybe a 4 TB hard drive or a 480-500 GB SSD or a 2nd 250 GB SSD.

And btw... why that Asus motherboard... it's not special in any particular way. You can do better, for example Gigabyte x399 Designare EX is better and it's in ATX format : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?CompareItemList=-1|13-145-044^13-145-044%2C13-119-026^13-119-026