Finally, what’s the current preference for RAM speed these days, with a CPU/Board config like this? (again, with reliability over performance in mind).
Thanks in advance, absolutely no hurry to respond!
I don‘t think there is inherently anything wrong with B650. If a board has all the features you need it should be fine.
I also don‘t think X cpus are less reliable. They are the same chips, but run at lower TDPs by default. An X chip running in eco mode will run the same as a non-x. A non-x with pbo activated will run like an x. That said the 7900 is probably a good value depending on prices in your region. But since you make money with your system, and cores should benefit your use case, you could also get a 7950X and run it in eco mode.
Thank you quilt, really helpful info I’ll go with the X and keep my mind open to a B650 board, I do like the TUF boards, never failed on me so far…although my experience is only with 2 of them
Nothing wrong with B650, actually B650 and X670 are the same chipset just that X670 has two of them, either is fine this generation.
Since B650 is more or less same as X670, I tend to ignore chipsets these days and look more at features. In order of importance I tend to check for;
VRMs
RAM slots
PCIe + m.2 slots and lane distribution
ECC support
WiFi and ethernet
Back connections
Fan controllers, SATA et cetera
SATA is pretty much irrelevant for workstations these days, m.2 is simply the way forward and if you have not considered a migration path from SATA by now, you really should. SATA got max five years left of useful life left, by 2030 I think a SATA SSD will be as obsolete as a Bluray disk. HDDs are already obsolete for workstations.
Of the motherboards you listed I would choose between Gigabyte Aorus B650 Elite or Asus TUF B650 Gaming Plus WiFi. Asus has full ECC support which is a plus for workstations, otherwise both should work great for a 7900X.
My experience with the Gigabyte X670E Aorus Master has been okay-ish with my 7950X, but has been disappointing recently and I might need to get mine RMA’ed:
Has 4 M.2 slots but is only able to reliably boot with 3 installed.
Recent BIOS seemed to cause issues with the IO/bluetooth/wifi.
I don’t know how representative my case actually is, though. I’ve also been less impressed with their customer support. I asked them if they could provide the BIOS file for the version I had before applying the update and they said it was no longer in their database or on their website. Seriously, you can’t be bothered to keep around an 8 MB file even just for troubleshooting purposes?
Moral of the story: Just because a motherboard advertises a certain number of slots or ports or whatever does not necessarily imply you can fully utilize them. It’s criminal, really.
Yes and no; without knowing much about your Aourus Motherboard I would suspectthe fourth slot is competing with with a PCIe card, a SATA disc drive or that the drive require 4 lanes but the port only has two available.
I do agree it is ridiculous, we should be able to have 8 m.2 slots sharing 16-24 dedicated lanes and another 24 for PCIe slots. 48 lanes is all a modern plattform needs, surely it cannot be that hard to bring 24 lanes from CPU plus 24 from chipset?
For the motherboard.
Best value: ASUS B650 Creator.
Next, ASUS Strix B650E-E, MSI X670 Carbon and ASUS Strix X670E-E. Any board over $500 isn’t worth it. You should put more budget on CPU instead of the motherboard.
You need dual x8 (or x8 + x4) PCI-E slots from CPU. Trust me. From that point, Gigabyte is out.
This is all very helpful, cheers @jxdking , certainly not going to spend more than 500 on any board…not again I’m hoping to simply get a good mainstream board at a reasonable price, 125 is the kind of price I’ve seen so far.
That x8 thing though, I thought boards normally have x16, perhaps 2 of them and then 1 x4?
For very casual usage, I think it’s indistinguishable. Otherwise, always go with the X version if price difference is not much a concern. They’re different. the X is better. Don’t underestimate chip vendors.
I regards to a motherboard the Asus Pro Art X670E Creator is a bit more expensive,
than some of the B650 boards.
However that board comes with a 10Gbit nic onboard and dual usb4.0 type-c ports.
That might be an interesting board to consider for your particular use case.
However if you already have a 10g nic than of course there are cheaper options out there.
In regards to the cpu because this system seems to be a purely workstation,
either the 7900X or 7900 would be a good choice.
You could look up some productivity benchmarks and compare the 7900 vs 7900X stock.
And see if the performance difference is significant enough between both cpu´s,
for your particular workloads.
I would personally not recommend to overclock a 7900 non X.
Because as a workstation you want stability and reliability.
And there is of course a reason why those chips are sold as they are.
Based on prices in my particular area i would personally go for the 7900X.
Because that is actually cheaper than the non X.
And you can run the 7900X in 105W eco mode to get power consumption,
and temperatures significantly down.
However prices in your area might be completely different.
The 7900X3D could be a jack of all trades here.
But that highly depends if your said applications could benefit from the additional cache.
There are certain applications that actually do.
However it comes with a significant price premium at least up here.
Hi @MisteryAngel , I know a lot of time has gone by, but I just wanted to thank you for this response…that I rudely didn’t respond to initially.
The time is coming now though, slowly buying the bits - went the B650 route in the end…as a starting point at least! Definitely took your advice on board though, so cheers matey
I’ll go with the X and keep my mind open to a B650 board, I do like the TUF boards, never failed on me so far…although my experience is only with 2 of them 