2700x/X470 Or 1900x/X399?

Hardware Build a PC
1

Hello all
I upgrade every 5 years or so, my current mechine which i built in late 2013 is an i7-4770k/z87
so the time is due for an upgrade …

i cant decide between :
Ryzen 2700x/X470 asrock taichi and Threadripper 1900x/X399 asrock taichi ( MB chosen for the Wifi, sata ports quantity & IOMMU grouping)
they nearly in the same price range , few or more bucks all in my reach
if I went with Ryzen 7, the future plan is to retire it to be a NAS-file sharing home server and upgrade to threadripper 2 or 3 with the newer
chipset (x499, x599 or whatever it will be called) in the next 3-5 Years
If walked in the tr 1900x path the plan will be to upgrade the CPU only in 18 months or less to threadripper 2 (X series)…
Note : Linux, VMs, light video editing is usually what i will do & I’m a casual gamer, meaning … games and frame rate is not my main
concern, good if i’m able, wont shed a tear if i’m not…
The Questions are :
will XFR boost benefit from AIO water cooing more than air cooler ?
is the tr 1900x worth it over 2700x given it current low price ?
is it just a ryzen 1800x with extra lanes and a quad Chanel ?
what are the cons and the pros for each CPU and Chipset combined, 2700x/x470 VS 1900x/X399 ?
Finally I appreciate your inputs

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My personal opinion is unless you need the quad channel memory and shit ton of pci lanes than go x470 and 2700x.

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Of those two I’d go with the 2700X. It is faster across the board. Unless you really need PCIE lanes or memory bandwith there is no reason to get the 1900X. It is slower across the board.

That is a vague question. AIOs are not always better. Some aircoolers do a better job. The big ones from BeQuiet or Noctua for example cool better than a 240mm AIO.

But generally better cooling means higher clocks up to the top limit. A mid range air cooler is plenty. Even the Wraith that comes with the 2700X does a fairly good job in that respect.

No. It is a slower CPU. If you need the lanes than maybe but personally I’d just wait for TR2.

Yes but with higher latency and slightly less performance in latency sensitive applications because it uses two dies.

The 2700X/470 is an updated platform, uses less power, has better performance outside of memory intensive tasks. Cheaper, easier to cool, ect…
Cons: Less PCI lanes. 8 cores is the top for right now. If you need more you need to go X399 though that may change with the Ryzen 3000 series which may bring 12 cores to AM4.

X399 is better in memory intensive applications, boat loads more PCIE, potential to upgrade to more cores later.

Cons: Expensive, big and a pain to install and cool, worse performance generally, more power draw.

For your workloads a 2700X is prob plenty unless you’re planning on doing a shit ton of PCIE pass through and need the lanes but you should be fine.

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I went through this decision myself a while ago and agonised over it for months (basically it was 1800X vs. 1900X and i started agonising over it well before the 2700X was released).

I ended up going for 2700X.

Why?

  • “enough” threads for my use
  • “enough” memory for my short-medium term use (32-64GB)
  • no NUMA vs. UMA shenannigans
  • it’s much cheaper (especially when you take other platform costs such as board, bigger PSU and mandatory aftermarket cooler into account)

By the time i need more RAM and/or PCIe lanes, ThreadRipper 2 or 3 will be out, as will Ryzen 2 or later.

Memory is currently expensive so buying more than i need right now is not economical.

I’m running Crossfire, and the lack of PCIe lanes isn’t a problem. It may be a problem if i was to invest a heap in PCIe SSD, but… that’s expensive. And if you’re playing with that sort of budget you’re looking at a 1950X or whatever most likely.

Sure, the 1900X is an “entry to the X399 platform” but realistically you’re probably not likely to put a new CPU in that socket without replacing the board by then anyway due to new standards for IO, RAM (DDR5), etc.

2c.

My TLDR would be: save the money today, put it aside for the future. Unless you desperately need the cores (which if you’re considering 1900x, you clearly don’t) or PCIe (unlikely) or > 64 GB of RAM, you’re spending more than you need to (likely for less performance, too).

The sticking point for me was future RAM capacity on the 1900X and being able to buy cheaper smaller capacity DIMMS for 32 GB today and still have expandability in the future. But as per my future upgrade comments above, by the time that happens i’ll want CPU and board upgrades anyhow. Which means i just wasted the money today on stuff i don’t need and won’t utilise.

edit:
Re cooling a 2700X… the box cooler is good. i see 4.3 Ghz boost on it and it is quiet, i haven’t touched fan speed. You won’t get much more out of Ryzen than that without LN2 anyhow, so in my opinion, after market coolers on the 2700X are pointless, unless you’re going extreme. Or you already have a custom loop for video cards and plan to just add the CPU to it. Or possibly if you have space issues and need to relocate the cooling away from the socket for whatever reason.

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This.

Eloquently summed up

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On the flip-side…

A 1900X would make a totally kick-ass all flash NAS device (or even just the PCIe slots filled with flash, and all the SATA ports with spinning rust as tier 2) for ghetto SOHO purposes. It wouldn’t be cheap, but the 1900X is just made for that sort of workload. Boatloads of PCIe for cheap.

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I don’t have TR but I have multiple Ryzen 7 machines. Even a 1700 with a slight kick in the back would serve you for a while.
But the 2700X is so much performance and so reasonably priced… just grab one, use the stock cooler and be happy.

Also if you want that rig to become a NAS at some point, get the taichi ultimate. The 10Gbit works great under linux.

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What is your use case?

I have several Ryzen machines with TR down to 1600. Each has it purpose.

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I think the key question here is (based on usage above and that you’re considering 8 vs. 8 cores): how many hardware add-in cards do you plan to run?

X470 will handle multiple video cards just fine. x8 PCIe 3.0 is fast enough.

“light VM usage” - 32 GB is plenty, some may say 16 is enough but i think that’s tight. 64 GB is overkill for “light VM usage” and X470 can go that far.

So really all you’ll gain (that is relevant to your usage) from X399 is more cores, which you aren’t buying. And more PCIe which you may never use.

with the 1900 you will lose on memory latency, clock speed, IPC, no box cooler and higher power consumption vs. the 2700X.

X470 should likely see higher core count upgrades with Zen2 and onwards.

X399 will come into into its own if you’re thinking about M.2 RAID or possibly even adding additional PCIe connected SSDs. Or 10 GbE at the same time as doing 2x video cards.

But if you aren’t realistically doing that… X470 is plenty capable. And being the mainstream platform, any bugs are likely to be squashed more quickly as there are far more users of it.

The money you save vs. X399 and a threadripper cooler + X399 motherboard + possibly bigger PSU could go towards more memory, a bigger m.2 SSD or a higher spec video card.

You’re already going to be outperforming the 1900X in virtually all non-PCIe IO bound cases with the 2700X, the money saved ** for better peripherals or more/faster storage will be gravy.

edit:
** even if the motherboards are the same price and the CPUs are the same price (and last i checked they weren’t quite there, but now for me 1900x is no longer available locally), don’t forget the free box cooler with the 2700x. To make use of 4 channel memory you’d need 4 sticks for the 1900X as well… which may be more expensive than a dual channel dual-rank kit for the 2700x.

If you don’t stick in 4 sticks into X399, you’ll see constant memory access penalties from one of the dies (or possibly even single channel per die with penalty plus single channel when they need to talk cross-CCX for memory access). You definitely don’t want to run threadripper without 4 sticks due to the way the memory channels are wired.

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@sanfordvdev @DerKrieger @thro @noenken @Raziel

thank you all for the insight, i really appreciate giving from your time to advise on this matter…

I listed the tr 1900X for 2 reasons:
1 - the low price that nearly matching r7 2700x or close above
2 - stepping stone up to threadripper 2 that will make the upgrade
easier and less expensive …

the 2700x i’m afraid it will not serve me in 3 years or after ending support for am4 in 2020 …

the use for the machine will be geneal : casual gaming, VMs, nas ( futuer not immediate use) personal and family video editing, studying for Cissco
Certs , experimenting in web dev & programing …
it will have : 6 to 8 HDD, 0 to 2 SSD,( depending on available sata ports)
1 or 2 NVMe (os & date ) , 2 gpu, ( the second for vm passthrougt ),
1 TV turner Card …
my budget cover :
case: Fractal define r6 ( already bought it)
PSU: Seasonic prime 1000w gold ( will order it next week)
ram : Gskill for amd 32G 3200 {-the number of sticks depend on the
motherboard chipset, 4 for quad (x399) 2 for dual (am4) -}
HDD & SSD ( have them in my current bulid)
Nvme : samsung 970 evo 500GB - 1TB
Cooller: Fractal Celsius 240 for assuring compatibility with case
plus of course one of the motherboards & CPUs ( will be orderd all
at once in the next 2 months - ram,cooler, MB,CPU and the Nvme)
gpu: i will use my 980ti till i upgrade to 2 new ones later in 6 months

this machine will be 24/7 running …

it’s really hot here ( 43 - 49c ) in summer, this why i went with aio water cooler.

@thro i can’t thank you enough for your effort in this matter

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No problem.

I’d be careful about trying to predict whether X470 will work for you in three years though, as there’s a drop-in CPU upgrade path, and by the time that path ends you’ll likely be wanting DDR5 memory, USB4.x, PCIe 4.x, etc.

Which you won’t get on X399 either. So you’ll be up for a motherboard upgrade anyway.

edit:
the 1900X should be cheaper than a 2700X, as it is a slower, previous generation CPU… X399 board cost, power, etc. no included cooler, etc. is where you’re going to burn the money…

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Oh one other thing. Maybe i’m a wimp, but in the define R6 (nice case! my choice also) you may find the 1000 watt PSU a bit of a pain due to the space it consumes - because of the PSU shroud, seeing what you are plugging in is very difficult - and with my 850 there’s not a huge amount of space in there for your hands to work without pulling the PSU out the back. Which means your cables need slack to move, etc…

If you don’t need quite that large, going for something physically smaller may make your build easier.

I live in Perth WA so we have pretty hot weather too. While it may get to 40+ C, surely your room you are running the machine in isn’t that hot?

If so, you’re out of spec for most components for ambient temp operation :slight_smile:

I’ve never needed liquid cooling here. I can’t stress enough how competent the stock 2700X cooler is. Unless you’re shooting for heavy overclocking (which on Ryzen is pointless - XFR2 generally does a better job, and you hit other limits before thermals) it is 100% fine. :slight_smile:

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^This.

Also a few points. Buying something now with planning on upgrading soon after is generally never a great idea. You’re gonna lose money and it just seems like a waste of time. Especially since you’re planning on waiting already and TR2 is coming out.

Personally I’d just save up a bit more cash and just get TR2 from the start. The 12 core at the lowest.

Also about cooling:

A watercooler won’t make your temps better. It is still ambient cooling. You won’t be able to cool lower than 43C.

Also 240mm AIOs suck. They really do. They are expensive and worse than big air cooler also significantly less reliable. At the minimum if you must have an AIO get a 280mm.

ALSO
All the non TR4 plate sized coolers suck. Like really bad. You’d be much better served by the big Noctua TR4 coolers. They easily beat even 280mm AIOs because they cover the entire IHS.

Yeah you want an air cooler…

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As i understand it, the 8 core TR2 was dropped.

Its very much a niche purpose CPU that isn’t really good for desktop stuff.

For those tasks where the 1900X made sense (i.e., to be honest, basically a high speed storage server controller), an EPYC 7251 was similarly priced and had more PCIe channels. Thus did/does a better job.

I agree. if TR2 upgrade is on the cards, just wait and buy one of those instead. But if 8 cores is enough (and i’m doing similar stuff to you on an i7-6700 at work OK; my home 2700X will be better)… X470…

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You look to be needing TR. You are maxing a 2700X with one NVMe with your configuration and you are considering two.

You could wait for TR2 or get a great deal on TR1. TR1 1950X can scrub 8K video. So if you work with less the 12 core has seen some awesome deals.

You would definitely benefit from watercooling if 24/7 use. I am not a fan of AIOs but some have had great success with them. Anything above a 8 core should be a triple fan, full cover plate like the Enermax. I would always go custom loop but they can be costly starting from scratch.

A good air cooler will suit you fine if load is intermittent during 24/7 use. If under a consistent load above an 8 core I would ditch the air cooler.

The idea that, depending on use and load, you would not benefit from watercooling over air with those ambient temperatures is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. An air cooler cools down faster, thus with moderate spikes in load it does very well. Consistent load the air cooler cannot compete with water.

I am very hard on my system, so I go custom loop. You can see it here:

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/post-what-new-thing-you-acquired-recently/88085/11142?u=raziel

At those ambient temps, your GPUs would benefit from watercooling too.

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thanks guys, to sum it up if i want the extra lanes 1900x/x399 (as starter before upgrading the cpu to tr 2 (x series) will be the logical choice …
on the other hand ryzen 2700x will do & head to head with 1900x it will be a better choice
( CPU performance wise, heat & power consumption only without taking in consideration the motherboard chipset -x470 or x399- features)
@Raziel when you say watercooling i assume you mean custom not AIO ? i don’t like
maintaining it every 6 months i’m more kinda put,forget till replacing guy …

i think i will lay my plan to go with the 2700x/X470 as main rig for the 2-3 next years
then build a threadripper workstation with a new chipset (x499 or newer ) and let the
r7/x470 be a spare machine for gaming or light day to day work or even a htpc & build
another ryzen 3 1st gen /x370 asrock fatality ( 10 sata ports ) for nas in the coming next year
@thro @DerKrieger @Raziel saying thank you won’t be enough to express my gratitude

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No, AIO is still watercooling.

Who maintains every 6 months? I change the fluid once a year, but I do a system clean once a year anyway on all my rigs, meaning cleaning fans and getting dust out of entire rig. I have two loops in TR build and it takes me 30 minutes to drain, rinse and fill. It is all about where your drain is and I have 2 per loop.

I have two EVGA GTX 480s factory blocked and I hated those cards so much I never even change the fluid once. It ran for almost 8 years on the same fluid. The fluid didn’t even discolor. I couldn’t kill them. I just took them out of an i7 960 rig a few months ago and kept them so I could take the blocks apart and see but I have not got around to it yet. But the temps were fine, for a 480, right till the end with no deviance from original install.

Exibit A:

20170910_090031
20170910_090031.jpg5312x2988 5.08 MB

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That will be a very nice machine.

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If you’re going to go X399, save a little harder, DO NOT get the 1900X and get either 1920X, 1950X or ideally, 2920X for better IPC.

I would not suggest the 1900X only to replace it later (you’d be selecting a very unpopular CPU (AMD dropped 8 core X399 for TR2 because it didn’t sell) that doesn’t perform as well as other options). TR2 is out THIS MONTH(?)

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That’s better.

I believe they’re shipping on Monday (that’s what Amazon says, or at least released on Monday the 13th).

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