Feedback req on proposed Threadripper 7000 build

[john.navitsky]

Hi,

Looking for some feedback on a build I’m considering. I’ve built all my systems for the last 30 years or so, but only about once every 6 years or so, so each time I am refreshing myself on things.

I’m looking for a fairly beastly machine with the primary objective of running Lightroom Classic fast, but it’s not the only consideration which is why I’m looking to do something a bit different.

As we’ve seen in some of the Puget Systems articles, performance in lightroom is a bit funky because it has various functions and each of those functions have different levels (or lack of) optimization to take advantage of resources. While it can take advantage of cores, several features are benefit from per-core performance. Some features can leverage gpu, but not all.

Right now the best performing options are systems with very good per-core performance paired with a decent gpu and… the Apple integrated silicon, which I’m not interested in because it doesn’t solve all my needs.

Lightroom also seems to have a problem where performance decreases with greater than 32 cores and gpu performance doesn’t appear to scale directly with overall gpu performance meaning at this time, it’s not clear there is an advantage of getting the fastest gpu, although I am interested in putting as much gpu as I can in there.

Of course, Lightroom is software, so this can and likely will change over the lifetime of the system but I figure hopeful that might actually work in my favor if anything.

But the other driving factor is storage. I currently have over 80TB of SSD storage, mixed SATA and M.2, on my current system and while I am planning on being able to take some of this external with the addition of TB/USB4, I’d like to have a healthy NVME capability in the system as I’m pretty committed to not buying any more SATA SSD.

Which means I need more PCI lanes than the current high end desktop solutions provide.

My thinking at this point is a Threadripper 7000 32-core system which splits the difference between the capability of the best high end desktop processors, and the PCI lanes provided by something like Threadripper Pro.

So here’s my proposed build. I’d love feedback on the parts or even the approach or just tips on the build.

• Fractal Design North XL
• be quiet! Straight Power 12 1500W ATX 3.0
• Noctua NH-U14S TR5-SP6 140mm
• GIGABYTE TRX50 AI TOP
• AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X
• V-COLOR DDR5 128GB (32GBx4) 7200MHz (AMD EXPO) (TRA532G72D834Q)
• GIGABYTE GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti Super AI TOP

Notes about components…

Case, looking for something big and with good airflow to deal with the MB.

Power supply. I want something modular, and something reasonably quiet. I didn’t look into this super carefully, but I’ve used the be quiet! parts before and they seem reasonable.

Cooler, again, not looking too hard, I don’t want to do water and I’ve found Noctua to cool well, be quiet and reliable. It would be nice to know if there are any clearance issues, but am guessing it should probably be OK.

Yah, the MB. I know this is an absurd MB. But I really want the PCI and with TR my understanding is this will give me 3 PCI5x16, 1 PCI4x16, plus three PCI4 M.2 which is better than anything else this side of Threadripper Pro, afaik, and TR Pro, while I would really like all those lanes isn’t going to give me good single-core performance for Lightroom.

7970X, fastest I can go before performance starts going back down in LR. 24 would probably be OK, but I’m thinking I’m going to compromise on GPU (see below), so seems like it might be worth going as fast as I can here. Esp. since we’re still not as good as the high end desktop CPUs.

V-Color 7200MHz. It’s on the supported list.

RTX 4070 Ti Super AI Top. While I’m trying to go fast as I can here, I want a true =<2 slot board because I can’t really afford to loose any of the other slots and this card was literally made to work in this config. I’m interested in running this in the bottom PCI4 slot if I can swing it, but either way, I think sticking with a physically smaller card is helpful. I wouldn’t mind other suggestions for cards we know will absolutely fit in the 2 slot footprint without making the adjacent slot unusable.

Anyhoo, thoughts?

Thanks,

-john

ETA: I’m a bit concerned about sourcing the Gigabyte AI TOP Motherboard and GPU are no longer listed as available on Newegg, so looking for sourcing options (or other suggestions) here.

Supplemental

Budget. How much are you willing to spend?
Let's say 10Kish

Where do you live (what country, don't post specific details), and what currency do you use?
US

Is there a retailer you prefer?
Newegg, mail order.

Do you need or already have peripherals? (this can add to costs)
Have.  Will be a 2 x 4k monitor setup.

What will you be using your Glorious computer for? Gaming? Rendering? Mix of both? Or is this a home media PC or Steam Box?
Mostly Lightroom.  Not gaming oriented.

Do you overclock or want to get into overclocking?
No.

Do you plan on going for custom water-cooling now, or in the future?
No.

Operating System. Do you need a new one?
Windows 11 Pro.

[PentaxEnthusiast]

As someone with a 7975WX who uses LrC frequently, as well as Bridge, among various other Adobe products, there are occasional random hiccups during my workflow, not often, but enough to be noticed.

I’ve noticed similar issues with these same apps on my older i9-10900K/3090 PC, so I think it honestly just boils down to Adobe doing a poor job at optimizing for x86 having shifted a lot of their focus to Apple Silicon.

That said, when the software is cooperating, the difference in performance between the 7975WX and the 10900K is night and day. I scan all of my film negatives myself, so often run batches of NLP to convert the negatives to positives and then apply a baseline process to get me close to where I want to be to do further editing in LrC. This includes a luminosity filter applied to rid my exposures of the inevitable vignetting cause in part by the light source, the film holder, and the lens.

I think you’d be right where you want to be, but figured I’d chime in since I do use the same suite with a similar build and still experience the occasional hiccup here and there.

Blender, Rhino, Fusion 360, ArcGIS work flawlessly without those kinds of issues, again leading me to think that’s just par for the course with Adobe these days if you aren’t on an M4 Mac.

[john.navitsky]

Thanks for your feedback.

On my current Ryzen 9 3900X I’ve mostly only experienced what is likely memory leaks where after running a long batch job, including something like syncing subject detection masks to a large set of images, things will be slow afterwords, and beyond the XMP files getting updated.

I’ve learned basically I’ll need to shut down, make sure LRc fully exits, and then restart as needed.

I guess I can learn the new quirks.

[PentaxEnthusiast]

Oh yeah, that sounds rather annoying. Can’t say I’ve had it that bad. After the app recovers from whatever the hiccup is it’s back to normal.

Bridge used to give me a similar issue on my i7-2600K machine, however. I’d have to reboot entirely.

[john.navitsky]

It’s possible I’m just being too impatient.

[PentaxEnthusiast]

It could be, but in all honesty, with how much they rake in on subscription fees, the product should be damn near flawless. There are other QoL things they refuse to do, like allowing more than just two concurrent logins at any given time. I work from numerous different machines, and having to sign in and out is an absolute pain.

As a creature of habit, I’m stuck with Adobe as I don’t have the time to learn anything else, and Negative Lab Pro only works with LrC at this point. I don’t really use any of the AI features, so I could easily get by with GIMP, RawTherapee, or Darktable. But it’s the reliance on speeding up processing my film with NLP that keeps me stuck on Adobe.

Ironically enough, Premiere works flawlessly for video work. Only LrC and Illustrator will have weird snags. Even PS is fine.

[john.navitsky]

I have a suspicion that they were hoping to deprecate LRc in favor of LR and it just hasn’t gotten the attention some of the other products have gotten.

[PentaxEnthusiast]

I think you’d be right. I personally much prefer LrC to the new LR, as I don’t rely on the adaptive presets (while nice, I have my own presets that I’ve made over the years to get me in the ballpark of where I want to be) and other AI features.

Crossing my fingers they don’t deprecate LrC and instead update it, finally. We shall see what we shall see!

I think you’ll still have a better experience with this updated rig you are planning over what you may currently be experiencing, and it should more than last your typical upgrade intervals.

Should you move forward, I’ll be interested in your feedback on the be quiet! 1500W PSU. I think my 1600W Asus ROG PSU is suffering from a manufacturing defect that I need to chase down/resolve. It sat unopened for about two years before I built my current rig. The plan was for it to go into the 10900K machine with the 3090 and potentially a second 3090, but I realized it was a dumb idea and so the PSU sat for what is arguably the most powerful/expensive PC I’ve ever built for myself.

[john.navitsky]

Not hearing additional feedback, I’ve pulled the trigger on my parts. I did make a few changes.

1. I switched to the Dark Base Pro 901. I saw some reviews suggesting the North was a bit flimsy, and also despite the name it’s not really “XL”. My current system is in a Darkbase 901 V1, so I’m comfortable with the quality and should be able to make it work.

2. I switched from the 4x16 @ 7200 RAM to 4x64 @ 5600. I figured more was better than fast and the price is about a wash. TR564G56D446Q from the supported list.

3. Video card switched to a MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER GAMING X SLIM. Sourcing the Gigabyte AI board seemed a bit problematic and I did some searching to find true <= 2 slot cards, of which this was one and Newegg had it in stock. It’s cheaper, too.

4. switched power supply to a dark power pro 13 1600w. i had only looked at what newegg had previously, and they didn’t list this one.

Wish me luck!

[john.navitsky]

starting to look like something

[john.navitsky]

gpu cooling is going to be dicey. it’s worse in the top slot

[john.navitsky]

it’s alive!

[Wask]

Love the box, very similar to the Define XL. what happened to the Hypers? Since joining the forum I am surprised how many people still use Air cooling, especially with Threadripper I would of thought AIO is a no brainer. What kind of temp numbers are you getting? I use a 420mm AIO with my 7965wx and get these numbers.

Full load with same fan settings

[john.navitsky]

At idle. And no, not sure why that fan is running so fast. Things are not sorted at all, I just got windows running yesterday

My configuration is 4 x 140 fans intake (front and bottom), three out (back/top). That’s a total punt, I haven’t messed with it at all.

[john.navitsky]

20+ minutes in with OCCT doing a cpu+ram exercise.

[Wask]

Pretty good going… love that mine doesn’t sound any different from idle to full. People say the 24c run Hot as it has the the same TDP as the larger ones. I don’t think our stats suggest that

[john.navitsky]

yah, overall, i am not unhappy.

i think i can live with that 92c max under this type of load. in reality, i’m never going to peg all 32 cores for any real amount of time.

the case fans need some sorting. it’s loud, but part of it is probably that one fan, and part of it is probably i’m used to silent builds, this is the first fully open build i’ve done and the upper fans point right at me, lol

that said, it’s not really that loud, and i don’t really hear a difference in response to load. basically the only real change it the cpu fans spool up

[Wask]

Well 95C is the throttle so the system works.

[albedo889]

If it’s mostly the CPU fans ramping up under load, that’s pretty normal for these kinds of builds. As long as it’s not obnoxious or constant, I’d say you’re good

[john.navitsky]

so that fast fan is actually a chipset fan, so

it looks like the case fan controller interferes with the fan speed. the fans i have directly plugged in can idle down nicely, but the ones hooked in through the case have a pretty high floor.

gunna have to look into something different there