New Threadripper 5975WX build. Need recommendations

Hardware Build a PC
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Hello frens,
I’m a VFX/Animator/Designer and I’m looking into building a new box. Primarily using Adobe, Cinema 4D/Redshift, Unreal, Houdini, Davinci, etc.

Money isn’t as much of an object since this is for work and I’m long overdue and have been watching a lot of the youtube videos that ended up bringing me here.

Here’s what I’m thinking so far after some DD:

  • AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5975WX
  • ASUS Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE
  • 2x Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition (Waiting for Oct release. If I can’t snag them, I’ll opt for 3090 TI’s)
  • 8x Kingston Premier Series 64GB ECC Registered DDR4 3200 KSM64HAR
  • Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler (was told to opt out of AIO’s for long term usage)
  • Super Flower Leadex 1600W 80+ Titanium
  • Fractal Define XL
  • 9x 140 case fans (unsure which ones yet)

Problem I’m coming up on from Pangoly and other PSU calculators is showing me that this 1600W may not be enough wattage during peak usage, extended render times.

Would love some recommendations or anyone to chime in here.

Thanks

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Unrelated, but apparently someone thinks your hardware setup works well enough to sell in professional workstations - This PC blew our circuit! - YouTube.

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If you are going for two 4090s, do be aware they are massive and will only allow, as a theoretical maximum, two more expansion cards (if you slot the cards in slot 3 and 7). The cards will barely, if at all, fit back to back and could get starved for air, so at least one slot is recommended.

Thus, a Threadripper feels like massive overspending in your case, unless you absolutely positively 100% definitely cannot get all your data over fast enough over an x8 4.0 PCIe connection.

If you can settle for x8 for your 4090s, a 7950x AM5 build with two 4090s and an X670E should be good enough to cover all your use cases save for the ridiculous amount of cores, and it would save you 35-40% of your money. Only reason to go Threadripper is if you absolutely need PCIe lanes or 24+ cores.

If you want to overspend though, go right ahead! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Good point. I have no desire to get a 3rd GPU or fill in any of the other slots aside from a potential raid card

As for the extra cores, Premiere and AE rely heavily on memory and cores for multi-frame rendering. The work I do often times requires rendering of individual frames (16-bit png, dpx, etc.) as opposed to video encoded; so the cores will come in handy in this instance unless I’m missing something.

My concern is knowing if the PSU is sufficient.

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Well, partly, but compare these two, TR vs the 7950X:

You would gain 16 cores for a 20% reduction in base and boost clocks, at the cost of pretty much an extra 7950x system with a 3090 Ti. According to benchmarks the 7950x is almost as good of a renderer as the previous generation flagship Threadripper 3995X.

Threadripper holds three distinct advantages over the AM5 platform, at the cost of both money and energy;

  • More memory throughput with 8 DDR channels instead of 2
  • More cores
  • More PCIe lanes

Going above 16 cores / 32 threads means pretty much you need to automate the pipeline for the increased cost to make sense, now absolutely I understand time is money and you can write it off as a business expense.

As for your workload, if you are a heavy Adobe user you might rather want to look to Intel over AMD, since Adobe is known to heavily optimize for the Intel platform. Observe benchmarks from the latest month reported on Puget benchmarks, I took the average of the top five results:

CPU Premiere Pro Photoshop After Effects Lightroom classic
AMD Threadripper 5975WX 1330 1178 1345 1230
AMD Ryzen 7950X 1490 1282 1343 1255
Intel Core i9 12900k 1135 1350 1266 1423

The Ryzen 7950X is beating the Threadripper 5975WX when it comes to Adobe, the extra cores and RAM seems to make very little difference, and the 13900K should blow this out of the water, too.

If you are still set on Threadripper though, to answer your concern:

The 4090 seems to have a power draw of 450W, but that could boost all the way to 600W at short bursts. So max draw looks something like this:

2x4090 - 600W + 600W
Threadripper - 325W
Rest of system - 100W-200W

1600W would probably not be enough in this case. You would want a bigger PSU and the 4090s will require a new PSU regardless. Wait until reviews confirm 4090 power draw before you commit though!

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This is very helpful. Thanks you for all this.

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there is one powersupply to rule them all, and that imho is CORSAIR AX1600i.
probably the best powersupply money can buy.
my 2c.

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1600W doesn’t seem like it’ll cover me, so I’ll need to opt for a 2000W

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I hope you have 240V wall sockets …

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Crap. Just talked to my building manager. I don’t.

I may have to stick to just 1x4090 card and a smaller PSU.

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Could you power limit the two cards to stay within the 1600W target? (110V at 15 AMPs should be able to handle that). Nvidia have also stated that they’ve done more design on the power delivery in the 40 series to reduce the power issues that the 30 series had, so you may not need to overcompensate on the PSU so much.

IMO I’d wait till the cards are actually released, and outfits like Gamers Nexus and LTT can do their power testing.

After a bit of searching online, I see people suggesting 1600W for dual 3090Ti. Which should be roughly the same draw as the 4090.

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Yeah the specs I got from a few vendors to build it out for me all had 1600w psu’s for 2x3090ti’s, but a few people and some PSU calculators were telling me to get 2000’s.

Even the Linus video you posted that featured the same system build out had an EVA 1600w psu. It’s all pretty confusing atm.

The 4090 announcement claimed the power usage is the same as the 3090 (400-600W on full blast)

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my advice to @vantamatter would be give Puget Systems a call and get a quote since work is paying for it. It doesn’t hurt to get a Quote. @vantamatter isn’t going to save a lot of money building his system.

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I’m paying for it, but I’m expensing this under my business. I did consult with Puget but their quote came out a lot higher than expected.

Strangely enough, they recommended a 1600w psu for 2x 3090ti’s which theoretically wouldn’t be enough power. I’ve talked to several vendors that suggested the same which is confusing.

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I am surprised their quote was a lot higher than expected. If you don’t mind, could you share what their quote was? When I was looking to replace the computer I damaged about one year ago; there were three system builders I was considering purchasing Origin PC, System 76, and Puget Systems. Puget Systems’ bid was the Highest but only thirty percent higher than the lowest bid, Origin PC. I’ll wager it was the shipping cost you thought was out of line. I don’t recommend purchasing anything from Origin PC. What I received wasn’t what I expected, and the way it was shipped left much to be desired. I wished I had paid the additional thirty percent and received what I wanted.

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It came out to just over $4k more than my build, not including tax. I’m changing a few things around now, but if I were to do a 1:1, that’s what I’d get.

Granted the Puget guys do some work. testing behind their builds, bios modifications, etc. I still just couldn’t justify that much of a difference in cost. Money may not be an object for me for this, but it needs to be somewhat justified.

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Did that $4000 include shipping from their facility to your home, or when you heard it was more expensive, you didn’t check to see if that had shipping? I guess my time is worth more than yours.

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The itemization didn’t include shipping and was given to me two weeks ago. I mentioned I could pick it up since they’re local. I’m taking a year off so I don’t mind putting it together myself since it’s fun for me, but happy to pay the premium for what they do.

Again, not worth the extra $4k for me.

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If you have a 120v/15a circuit, you can pull 1800W, but that’s not a very sustainable output (this is why most space heaters for 120v markets top out at 1500W). But a 1600W PSU should run just fine, and PSUs typically have some overhead built in, so you could probably pull 1700W in a pinch.

Of course, this assumes you don’t have much else on the circuit. You could easily trip the breaker by adding in a couple monitors, laptop charger, desk lamp, etc. when the system is at full load.

I actually know someone who got a 240v circuit installed just for their PC to avoid this headache. Worked great, the only problem was having to buy an extra cord for every device they wanted to plug into the 240v outlets and sourcing a 240v UPS.

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it will. remember those calculators arent perfectly accurate.