Threadripper 1950x -- time to give up the ghost?

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Team,

I’ve always had an unexplainable fascination with many-threaded systems, which resulted in me grabbing a used Threadripper and an MSI motherboard when the opportunity arose a couple of years back. I had no specific use for it, though I always intended it for a 2D visual workstation: editing graphics/photos and capturing/editing/encoding video.

I did not have all the parts to complete a system, and I still quite don’t.

Taking stock today, I’m torn between finishing the build (by getting two more sticks of RAM, great timing on this) and simply selling the parts. The latter seems wasteful, the former a bit difficult to justify.

Here are the parts for this almost-system:

CPU: Threadripper 1950X
Motherboard: MSI X399 SLI Plus
RAM: 2x16 GB DDR4-3200
GPU: RTX 2080 8 GB
Disks: a variety to choose from and two prized 480 GB 900P Optane drives

The thing is, in the meantime I’ve also built a gaming PC, which currently includes a Ryzen 7700X and a 7800 XT. There are so many years between the 7700X and the 1950X to make direct comparison really difficult, but I’m definitely picking up on a vibe that the newer CPU is probably better at anything I can think of to throw at the Threadripper. The 7700X will also do its work with better energy efficiency. Right?

The nerd in me is having a hard time letting go of the idea: a Threadripper, Optane SSDs, this thing could be so quick. And it likely would be quick, at least by the standards of seven years ago. It would also beat the gaming PC handily in PCIe connectivity.

But is that enough to buy the two sticks of RAM, in this economy?

All thoughts are greatly appreciated!

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What sort of PCIe setup are you running? Just the SSD’s & the GPU or do you have something more on top of that?

Yes, the 7700x probably might be the power efficient option and especially if you are using single core workloads. It is just way never and the tech has advanced quite a bit

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I should have expanded a bit on the PCIe situation: currently, I’m not running anything except Memtest86+, so it’s just the RTX 2080. In addition to that, I’m most curious about what kind of storage shenanigans I can get into with the Optane drive(s), maybe learn a bit about zfs.

I’m going to get an internal capture card at some point, though I will have room for that one in the gaming PC as well. I mess around with analog video a bit, which for this setup will mean VCR captures via a scaler (Retrotink 4K).

I also toyed with the idea of doing some analog audio capture with the ridiculous Sound Blaster ZxR, but apparently there’s too much interference inside a PC case to get great results with an internal card.

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Frankly, no. But that doesn’t automatically means you must sell the system! When it’s gone, it’s gone and if/when you find a use-case in future, you no longer have it. And as long as it’s disconnected from mains power it doesn’t cost you anything keeping it on the shelf.

If you’re looking for a use-case and can afford the extra power on your bill, consider donating to distributed research projects like SETI@home and/or BOINC. Adding another GPU (or 2!) will significantly increase usability for this purpose as most projects use GPU workloads these days.

HTH