Planning Threadripper 7000 Build - No Kill like Overkill

Hey folks,

I’m figuring out what will be my 40th birthday present to myself - hopefully my workstation for the next 10 years. This is my first opportunity to build a system like this, so I’m really excited - but also a little anxious. Therefore, I would really appreciate commentary or feedback - especially from anyone with any of these components already.

This will be replacing my current system which is a Xeon E5-2698 v3 which I bought for cheap several years ago running in an Asus X99 Deluxe II with 128GB of RAM, so this will probably be an absolutely huge upgrade.

My goal is to run something like Proxmox VE as a hypervisor with a Linux (debian if you’re curious, unless there’s a compelling reason to go with something else) VM as my desktop. I’ve seen this done elsewhere I think, and I like the idea of it. I would like to have GPU passthrough to the desktop so I can play games, and I would also like to have the option to pass through a second GPU to a Windows instance in case I need software that works better there, or another Linux instance for messing around with (I am intrigued by NixOS and would like to play around with it, for example).

I also would like to run other VMs on this host just for fun - I like playing with enterprise goodies like K8s and it would be rad to be able to spin up a test cluster on this machine.

Since I intend for this machine to last a long time, I am also intending to way overbuild. With that said, here’s what I have listed out so far:

  • Threadripper 7970x - I could be persuaded to step down to the 7960 but I probably won’t.
  • Asus Pro WS TRX50-Sage - I like this one because I would really like to have the IPMI add-in card. I’m not sure if the Supermicro WS board is available yet or if it will support the faster memory that the Asus board supports.
  • 128 or 256GB RAM kit - I haven’t entirely decided on this yet. I thought I saw a 256GB kit somewhere for $1200, and if I can find that again I’ll definitely jump on it. I’m would appreciate suggestions here.
  • 7900XTX - this is obviously the most likely part to be upgraded in the next few years but I don’t have any problem starting out at what is currently the top. I will probably add my current 6800XT to the system at a later date, once I get around to decommissioning my current workstation (a
  • 2xWD Black SN850X ZFS mirror for Proxmox storage.
  • 2xKioxia CD6 (or similarly quick U.2/PCI-E 4.0 drive) for passthrough to main Linux desktop. I mean, the theme is no kill like overkill, right? Shooting for several TB here. Though, these seem to be getting more expensive and harder to find. Previously I found the 7.6TB read optimized drives for under $500 and it looks like I should have bought a pair then - can’t find them for anywhere near that price now.

That’s what I’ve picked so far. I’m looking for advice on some other components, though…

  • CPU cooler. I have never done a full watercooling system, but it might be fun! AIO seems a lot easier though. Any recommendations here? I know watercooling will probably be a lot more expensive as well as take me a lot longer to get assembled, but I think I’m OK with that if someone comes along and says “DO IT YOU WON’T REGRET IT”.
  • Power supply. I think I will go with a single here despite the option for 2 - I don’t think I’ll need it t least for a while. I can do like a 1200W be quiet straight power 12 and probably be happy.
  • Case - there are just so many options here. I have some biases toward fractal design, but I also like the idea of maybe rackmounting this in the future so the Silverstone RM52 is appealing…I just don’t know exactly what to do yet.
  • U.2 adapter. I have no idea what to do here. Can someone recommend some options? I guess I’m most partial toward an x8 dual carrier card.

I guess that’s it. Feedback welcome. Please let me know what (other than myself) is dumb here - but remember! There’s no kill like overkill.

I am intending to do open loop for my TR build.
Cost for my loop setup is roughly 800€ using Alphacool parts.

My idea is an IcyDock 5.25" bay to 4x U.2 dock. Carrier-card should also work, from what I have been told, you may have to point a fan at the drives though.

The 10 year workstation is currently a fools errand, you could do two five year WS in the same time span for pretty much the same amount of money, maybe less.

What do I mean by that, well, your core alone would be:

Part Model Price
CPU AMD Threadripper 7970X $2499
Motherboard Asus Pro WS TRX50-Sage $899
Memory 8x32 ECC RDIMM DDR5 6000MT@CL32 $1349
Total $4747

Compare this to a premium 7950X build with 192 GB RAM:

Part Model Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 7950X $549
Motherboard ASUS ProArt X670E-Creator WiFi 6E $449
Memory 4x48 DIMM DDR5 6000MT@CL30 $699
Total $1697

I used Newegg pricing here for a quick rundown since PCPP is awful for anything non-gaming related :slight_smile: Anyway, paying $1.7k for five years now and another $1.7k five years down the road, or $6k+ now for a ten year system that will be about as powerful as the latest Core i3 in ten years…

There is a niche for threadripper for sure, but I would get a 7950X or 14900k system. Except, if I could wait a couple of months I would get the 9950X coming out this year…

Bonus, if you get the 7950X system now you can just slot in the 32 core Zen 6 CPU in 2027 and then a whole new system in 2029. Makes more sense money wise for me.

Sorry to be so negative here, I usually try to be atleast a little bit more positive about new tech, but right now… TR, unless you are going to really use the cores or PCIe Lanes, what’s the point? If you really need that Threadripper for what you are planning to do, though, then I’m not going to stand in the way. Just make sure your overkill doesn’t become roadkill too quickly… :slight_smile:

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Zen6 probably will be DDR6 which is planed for 2027. New memory layout => new socket. And i doubt we will see 32 core CPU on desktop (in near future) because of market segmentation + poor utilization on many desktop applications. Most of them are limited by Amdahl’s law, there is no magic pill that will help parallelize them.

I appreciate the idea here but the board you’ve suggested doesn’t meet my needs for PCI-E slots. I would rather have a bunch of 4.0 than a few 5.0. As far as I am aware there aren’t many (any?) boards that just break out the 28 PCI-E 5.0 lanes a Ryzen 9 7-series processor has into 40+ lanes of 4.0 slots. Just with the 2 video cards and drives, I have already mentioned devices using 48 PCI-E 4.0 lanes (2x x16 GPUs, 2x x4 U.2 drives, 2x x4 M.2 drives) - I just don’t think the consumer boards handle that.

Additionally IIUC it’s still not easy to get 4 dimms working at a good speed with Ryzen 7000, so I’m not sure 48GB dimms will even run at 6000MT.

Anyway, if those two things can be overcome I would definitely be willing to consider stepping down to a consumer level system and saving a bunch of money. I would miss having double the cores, but that’s not really necessary, just very nice to have.

I was going to make an argument that in 5 years I can just buy a 7990x for cheap to triple core count…but then I went and looked at TR3000 & TR5000 top end processors on ebay and that thought got banished immediately. I think TR3990x is actually more expensive than MSRP at launch now. Crazy.

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one thing to point out about buying a 7950x and a 9950x as an upgrade, or getting a 96 core 7995wx threadripper pro “as there isn’t a 7990x”, as a way to double core count. it’s likely that since trx50 can run the pro cpu’s you could have an upgrade path on trx50 to buying a threadripper 9970x/wx when zen 5 threadripper releases.

I disagree, it barely does meet that requirement - although with the small caveat that you will be running x8 / x8 / x2 for PCIe lanes and x4 / x4 / x4 / x2 when fully decked out.

The ProArt has the following diagram for PCIe lanes:

    +-----+                +-------+
    | CPU |-------x4-------| X670E |
    | 5.0 |                |  4.0  |
    +-----+                +-------+
     | | |                  |     |
     | | +-----x4--[ m.2 ]  |     |
     | +-------x4--[ m.2 ]  |     |
    x16                     |     |
====[PCIe x16]====         x4     | 
     |                      |     |
    x8             [ m.2 ]--+     |
====[PCIe x16]====                | 
                                 x4
                                  |
====[PCIe x16]==== --x2--[ m.2 ]--+ 

Now… This is the upper limit of what you can do on consumer hardware, so I do agree with you that this is a compromise - but for a third of the price, it is worth to consider. You’d be running both GPUs in x8 5.0 slots and both m.2 in x4 5.0 slots directly from the CPU. The other two would utilize something like this:

On the drawback side, this would mean you have only one PCIe x16 4.0 slot available and that would pull two PCIe lanes from one of your U.2 drives, but with all peripherals going USB-C and/or USB 4.0 these days I am not as worried as I would have been 10 years ago. Also, running your cards at 8x4.0 is going to cost a frame or two in performance, but this will not affect you for atleast 5 years.

Yes, this is a valid concern, this page might help:

5200 is still not bad performance wise and you’ll only notice it for some benchmarks - real world it is still fast enough to not really matter. You will just be faster than 98% of the PC Master Race, rather than 99% :slight_smile:

Yep… Also, in 2034, will that really be that much faster compared to the chips out there? In 2014, the supreme champ was the Intel Core i7 4770k, a 4 core 8 thread chip running at 3.9 GHz. In 2024, that chip is about 50% the performance of the Intel Core I3 14100 in single core and 40% the performance in multi core.

16 cores will move down the stack in consumer eventually, they just need to figure out how to make the process cheaper.

Now, with all that said, I do not want to discourage you completely here; your use case is borderline, consumer is almost enough for what you want to do but you would need to compromise a little. My goal is not to talk you out of TR, I just want to help you turn a few rocks you might have overlooked. In the end, you do you, and if spending the money on a TR system is worth it to you (after all, there is some value in not having to care about PCIe lanes and thread limitations, too :slight_smile: ) then pull the trigger!

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I’m also planning to build a threadripper system with this asus motherboard. But the noctua cooler for tr5 is rotated incorrectly, because the socket is rotated 90 degrees on the asus motherboard. The arctic cooler has issues with the fans interfering with the vrm cool blocks.

So any advice on a cooler that actually fit on the ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WiFi?

Why haven’t the major workstation manufacturers, HP, Dell, and Lenovo, offered high end desktops (HEDTs) based on AMDs Threadripper 7000 non-pro series processors?