AMD X399 / Threadripper motherboards appear

Looks like an absolute monster, and probably with a price point to match.

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Holy crap! I would estimate 400 plus USD, thoughts?

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That looks like a beast! I like it, thanks for posting.

4000 and something pin socket right? LGA this time too I think.

finally something that will match x99 or might be a worthy x79 upgrade. Considering the Ryzen chips was still dual channel. Not that many software exploit that quad channel memory like they used to. Hoping to get myself one with 10gbe as well I mean if i'm paying $300-500 on a motherboard gimme 10gbe.

I know Asus has a X299 board with 10GBE and I think AsRock might have a X399 board or two with 10GBE. AsRock does actually have a X370 board with 5GbE.


Fuck these chipset names, not confusing at all...

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I'm super excited to see what this is gonna end up doing, but hot damn the size of that socket... :open_mouth:

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Look at that motherfuckin' socket. Who's gonna buy this for gaming though? Other than completely insane enthusiasts who just must have all the latest tech. It will be at least 3 years before games start utilizing more than 8 cores. By that time something much better than this will come along.

I want one of these things for handbrake... :smiley: Can't wait for the WS motherboards to come out. Gaming motherboards are nice and all but I'd much rather sacrifice flashy lights for rock solid reliability.

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Waiting for proper reviews first but this one will most likely be the one for me :slight_smile:

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So the rumored price of the Theadripper is $849. 16C/32T
Bits and Chips says the they're going to lower the price of the current Ryzens to make way for a 12C/24T for $500.
http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showpost.php?p=290705&postcount=594

"At AMD HQ are still talking about the prices, however this should be the final price (AMD is lowering the 1800X price in order to sell an entry level ThreadRipper 12C/24T @ about 500$). The main problems of this platform are the mainboards (Very expensive) and the RAMs (Also very expensive ... 4 channels)."

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Well someone like me who needs a workstation and a gaming rig built as one unit. I don't upgrade my computers very three years, more like 7 to 10 years so it doesn't make sense to wait three years just to have a better gaming experience.

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Like Shadowbane I don't upgrade too often so something like that that should still be a good machine in 5+ years is attractive.

The main issue I have found is that when tech is new it tends to either not work well or get abandoned fast. I have an i7 2600k system and the motherboards from that era don't work too well with Windows 8.1 or 10. The first Gigabyte board didn't support Secure Boot or eDrive, and the replacement ASUS doesn't always resume from sleep...

So if I'm gonna pay out a lot of a motherboard it better be damn stable.

The Taichi looks awesome, ASRock seem to make the best boards in terms of features, price and stability these days.

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Despite the CPU socket being huge it actually looks cramped by the RAM sockets. Will be interesting to see what the stock cooler looks like.

I still don't understand why 10-GBit-Ethernet is still not mainstream. I mean we had WiFi access points that can saturate gigabit for a while now and you can buy very cheap SSDs that can saturate the connection very easily already too.

I was really happy to see some X299 boards come with on-board 10-GBit-Ethernet this Computex, so I guess we can hope that the ball is finally rolling.


I don't think they will ship any stock cooler with it. It's an enthusiast platform, so (most) people will want to buy a good aftermarket cooler.


"Rumor" - This was just a guess from the guy who posted that tweet. If you read the replies he even replies to one person says that it's literally just his speculation.

I guess the barrier to 10G is that you need to upgrade your switches and older machines to get any benefit from it. And for most users, 1G is more than enough.

Wifi can't saturate 1G ethernet in all but the most extremely rare cases. The maximum advertised bandwidth is only available when using multiple channels with multiple antennas, i.e. many client devices all trying to saturate at once, and of course no interference from other networks.

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That's just a chicken and egg problem, but you're right, we also need cheaper switches etc.

I think even 802.11n is more than enough for most people, but they are still making faster and faster WiFi. For a few weeks you can already buy 802.11ad APs that seem even more ridiculous when you consider that it is only usable within the same room as the AP.

But we are talking about X299/X399 boards, which are bought by enthusiasts and I think they can indeed make use of that. If all the motherboard manufacturer make boards with 10-GBit-Ethernet, the market for switches will become better as well. I mean the port is backwards-compatible anyways and a chip like that on a board that costs several hundreds of dollars is probably not a big deal and makes it much more attractive, at least for people like me. :wink:

While I agree that in most situations you won't be "bottlenecked" by the 802.11ac WiFi of today, there were situations where I was able to saturate it. If I put a MIMO capable device with 3 spacial streams (I think all new Apple laptops support that) in my office, I can get to that gigabit limit. Of course this sounds like an edge case that's rather rare, but if I am working at my desk with my laptop, I don't necessarily want to plug in a dongle for Ethernet that I need to leave laying around at all time.

Actually most consumer APs will perform worse in that scenario, unless they support MU-MIMO which is rather rare. To get the most out of the AP you need just one device with MIMO.

That of course depends on where you live. I live in an apartment building next to another apartment building and I can sniff north of 20 networks from my office desk, but they are all but maybe one on 2.4 GHz, even though I know from the SSID that some APs do support 5 GHz. The range on 5 GHz is worse, so interference is actually less of a problem.

I think they won't include a cooler with these chips, if they do it's going to provide so little cooling , it probably be replaced with a custom water loop.

I hope there are good air coolers, or I suppose a nice all-in-one water loop. I've had my fill of faffing around with water.

I don't think you are going to get away with an all in one water loop because there isn't room for it with that many ram slots. Also the same with a decent air cooler, ram slots will probably be in the way.