So I’m looking at putting a new PC together finally. I know I say this every year, however now I’m actually going to go at it. I’ve been looking over parts the last few months and slowly plotting and here’s the parts I’ve come up with currently.
However I have a few brief questions that mostly I just want opinions on from other users.
1: The 1920X is 200 bucks. Is it worth getting a TR build instead and upgrading the CPU later? I am likely to look at 2990’s when their prices drop again in july or august.
2: 2700 vs 3600? I’d rather have the more threads, though looking at raw performance benchmarks the 3600 has ~13% of an advantage over the 2700/X. Now I could make up that margin easily with an overclock, but from memory all core clock is harder than 1 or 2 on ryzen?
3: Would you choose another mobo, and if so, what one? I’m looking at the 570P because it has good IOMMU last I knew and I might want to play with VFIO.
I already have some parts, which is why certain things aren’t listed. Them being a GTX 970 and a Mac G4 MDD that I might use as a case because the mobo is bad.
I’ll be using the machine for basically everything you can think of. All opinions welcome.
unless you need the memory/channels and pcie lanes I cant think of any reason not to go for a 3rd gen x570 build.
3rd gen is so much easier to set up than 1st or 2nd gen and im sure the 1st gen TR will be just as much of a pain. Plus the clock speeds and ipc gains. Safe bet a 3900x will smoke and t bag a 1920x
also just to add my 2p on 6 core cpus. they wont be around for long. AMD made them relevant for 2 years but I think 8 cores is the new meta for normal desktop/gaming.
Do you need the Gen4 pcie? if not buy the b450 and save a few $$$. I think a 3800x is fine on b450. I wouldn’t go higher than that personally but I think a 3700x on a nice b450 board would go further than a 3600 build on an x570. over here I can now get the 3700x for £265 and the asrock steel legend b450 for £80. 2x8gb viper 3600 speed ram is another £80 but again a good safe bet for 3rd gen chips.
No doubt about that. Point is to upgrade later… but if its that much of a pain…
Yes actually. I’m very likely to start playing with compute cards here soon. Nor am I likely to use this 970 till it dies. As soon as gen 4 gpu’s get good I’ll probably get one.
Also the x570P was chosen because of the iommu groups.
Kinda tricksy to come up with specific recommendations for that
In terms of bang for buck microcenter has the 2700x @ $140 atm - not sure it’s possible to beat that. Except for maybe the 1600 af for $85 on amazon if you want to go super cheap while waiting for 3rd gen prices to drop… I’m thinking about grabbing a 3700/3800 sometime after 4th gen release.
The word seems to be that manual OC is less productive/useful with each generation due to PBO and maybe other stuffs. I’ve got my 1600 (edit - original) stable at 4.075 all core, which gets a cinebench r20 score bout even with a stock 2600x, if that’s useful at all.
With Ryzen 3000 series, you generally seem to get some of the best stable performance,
from just using 3600mhz memory kit.
And slightly tweaking the pbo power limit settings.
You could also go and manualy overclock it,
trying to sqeeze the most out of it.
But it generally doesn’t really seem to be worth it that much.
Yup you should really use 3600mhz memory with Ryzen 3000 series cpu´s.
Timings are kinda less of a concern in general.
Also use at least two modules.
It’s basically all about getting the infinity fabric speed up.
The infinity fabric ideally is half the effective memory clock speed.
Going above 3600mhz on memory modules does not make a whole lot of sense.
Because most cpu´s won’t get passed 1800mhz on the infinity fabric.
Just did a bit of reading about what sort of clocks/performance folx are getting with 2nd + 3rd gen - kinda seems like while PBO is a factor (perhaps mostly in regards to actual returns for tuning a manual OC), the lack of headroom for OC is more due to the silicone not actually being much better/capable of any more, while being pushed farther ‘out of the box’ each generation; with the real gains coming from IPC. Makes me wonder if they held 1st/2nd gen back just a bit to increase what they expected to be able to market/sell in future generation as far as advertised speeds.
Just to add to this point as not really covered. Only reason to go threadripper is if you want massive productivity, ram or pcie lanes. The motherboards are more expensive and now 3 years out of date.
I run a 1920x and it is great, but I wouldn’t buy one today.
Threadripper 1000 / 2000 can still be interesting in certain circumstances.
Of course the Ryzen 3000 series cpu’s perform better.
But if you need allot of pci-e connectivity, and / or you want to run allot vm’s,
and all that kind of stuff.
Then Threadripper x399 can still be interesting.
Decent x399 boards are similarly priced to semi highend x570 boards.
So that is something to keep in mind.
But if you don’t really need allot of pci-e connectivity per see.
Then you could better go with Ryzen 3000 and x570.
The reason I have any interest in TR is for vm’s mostly. But I’m also unsure of the performance I’d get emulatitg other cpu’s, or what I’d get on Ry vs TR.
Then again, 3900x mould probably do everything I needed…
its just been a mess with zen2 specifically, boards not posting with ram on the QVL, rdrand bugs, boosting issues, stability problems, vcore weirdness. zen2 doesnt act like anything I’ve ever had before.
AFAIK most manufacturers have a way to flash without a cpu at this point but they all call it something different.
Why? decent x399 boards cost about the same as decent x570 boards.
You can find decent x399 boards in the $300,- to $350,- range.
Which is the same as semi highend x570 boards do.
