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.
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.
What is your use case?
I have several Ryzen machines with TR down to 1600. Each has it purpose.
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.
@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
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…
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 
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.
^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…
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…
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.
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
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:
That will be a very nice machine.
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(?)
That’s better.
I believe they’re shipping on Monday (that’s what Amazon says, or at least released on Monday the 13th).
Yep agree its better to wait untill TR2 launches really.
Because there will be new x399 motherboards aswell.
Also the TR2 chips might have some improvements on the imc,
and latencies.
But that is all yet to be seen.
In my opinion waiting is the smartest idea atm.
TR2 can be very interesting.
Yeah I think TR2 is going to be my next build. Mainly want to do a pass through rig. Gonna wait for Wendell and some of the other reviewers take on performance and such and then might make the old credit card take the hit.
Xc311, my thoughts are that the gains from a better cooling solution is definite but likely minimal. From my perspective, getting out of the way and allowing XFR do it’s job and stop thinking about it at all is the goal. Can I get a few more MHZ isth a different cooler, possibly… IF (and it is a big if) I am pushing enough cores to cause the temperature to rise to max that the stock cooler can dissipate. ONLY THEN will a better cooler help. The rest of the time it is an expensive paperweight.
As for Ryzen / threadripper, that is entirely dependent on your workloads and time constraints. For example my own usage is as “monster” a machine as I can afford, but for the moment it will just be running a ton of VMs allowing me to explore hyper-virtualization, linux and databases running on VMs. Like yourself I am not a gamer so there is none of that (what I will call) insanity. Do I want a threadripper? HELL YEA! Do I need one? Not at this point.
AFAICT the threadripper is nothing more than a second / third / fourth “ryzen” chip on the same physical part. In the old days you would buy a motherboard with multiple sockets which you would populate with separate processor chips. Those separate chips just moved internal to the threadripper package. So is it just an 1800x with more i/o stuff? Yep.
The pros of threadripper are more CCxs and more I/O including memory channels. The cons are price. It certainly appears to me that if money is no object there is no downside to threadripper. And if you NEED 16 or more cores and you can’t afford Intel, then Threadripper is the only option.
In 2010 (roughly) I built an AMD “server” from parts from newegg. It used an expensive dual socket motherboard with a set of memory sockets for each CPU socket. All I could afford were 8 core chips to put in the sockets, though up to 16 core chips were available (more money of course). But I built a 16 core system with 96 gb ECC ram.
I was actually throwing money at a problem and it worked. I had what I called a “large” database, ultimately 500 MILLION records in a 7 different databases, each with a single table with anywhere from 40 to 650 fields. I needed to be able to ask questions from those tables and get the answers in “real time”. SQL Server uses threads very well (think more cores) and caches data in memory very well (think big memory).
So I had a REASON for that machine and what I was doing, and it worked swimmingly. I essentially ended up with a memory resident database for my largest tables. My client was happy and I was happy.
Today I don’t have that need. So today I buy a Ryzen 2600 with 32 gigs ram and have more power than I can currently use.
Did you hate them enough to ship them to me? 
on one hand, buying 1900x to replace it latter (18 months or less, at least when the price
will be lower) with Zen+ tr 2920x is a good idea
if i consider putting it (tr1900x) to a usefull job to do (like: Home server + NAS + running
Vms instances remotely on lan) but it will cost me the expenses of a suitable parts for
that job (ECC rams, PSU, Case, cooling & fast NIC) and no upgrade path and i will
have to make a jump like now in 4-5 years
on the other, - which is likely what i will do - i can order the Zen+ (2700x), use it and make do for now
skip the Zen,Zen+ threadripper and around this time next year in 2019 when amd
announce Zen2 7nm threadripper i could get it (after start saving for it now) with the newer chipset & arch design
motherboards (with PCie4, ddr5 …etc ) make it a workstations + nas & VMs
and retire the zen+ machine to be a Spare, day to day, HTPC and Gaming rig.
I think this is the better investment in qulity pc parts, time and costs
