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
If you’re talking 18 months or so upgrade time, Ryzen 3000 (Zen2) will be out. Likely with 12 cores/24 threads in consumer socket. Maybe DDR5.
If regular Ryzen will do the job for you today, by the time your workload grows out of it, likely Zen2 dies will do the job in the consumer board in 18 months time.
Don’t forget that there are some trade-offs with socket TR4 (not just price). Especially on the 1900x - to deal with stuff that doesn’t like the multi-die NUMA memory layout you need to turn off 4 cores. None of that on Ryzen.
My general PC buying advise is to not try and push your upgrades too far out by trying to buy expensive high end gear today. Just buy less expensive and upgrade sooner.
You generally get most of the performance for much less money (price tends to go up exponentially with performance), but performance gets better with time at the same price.
Today’s high end is (generally, ignoring the stagnation while AMD was asleep at the wheel with bulldozer) the mid-range in 2-3 years.
Don’t pay high end premium pricing for high end gear today that you won’t need until couple of year’s time.
Because all you need is an out of warranty hardware failure (probability of that goes up markedly after 3-4 years - which is why no vendor offers 4 year warranty on PC gear) and your whole plan goes to shit. You spent big, expected to make use of it in future and before that point it dies out of warranty…
Also, after replacing the cheaper hardware, you still have the old hardware to repurpose…
The thing is to even speculate about anything after Zen+ makes no real sense at this point. Ryzen 2000 series is a typical second gen product. The rough edges are gone, performance is optimized, it just works. When Zen2 comes along it might deal with new problems, I would not be surprised about that.
I don’t see DDR5 changing the game, DDR4 is not even that big of a deal. And PCIe4… we are barely seeing cards that actually need more than 8 lanes of PCIe3, so that’s gonna take a while too.
If you’re not absolutely sure that you need more than 8 cores right now, don’t buy into TR.
Think about this: a puny 2700X is wiping the floor with most X99 chips, even when those are overclocked.