ThreadRipper2 or new 5950X Workstation - w/multiple NVMe PCIe and 40 Gbps NIC cards?

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So, I have a Tachi X399 and ThreadRipper 2 2950X I bought back in the day, still collecting dust new in their boxes. I also have 128GB of 3200 Mhz ECC for this build to (works with both 5950X and 2950X). All of that is fine for my needs…

What I am debating is… Should I sell the 2950X and X399 Tachi, and just go for an AMD 5950X (16C) on a decent B550 or X570 motherboard? I know I know, “TRX is dead! Multiple NUMA, etc. The 5950X kills it!”

However, my issues are my add-in cards - and I have a lot of them… I often use spare slots to flash HBA cards, and even some BIOS hacks of other hardware from time to time.

  • 1x Intel Optane 960 GB (30GB used for ZIL, rest is L2ARC persistence - overkill!)
  • 2x Samsung PM1725A 3.2 TB PCIe NVMe @ PCIe 3.0 (raidz0 for 4 to 6 GB for video edits)
  • 1x Single-port 40 Gbps PCIe @ 3.0 (using only one port though)

…plus the graphics card! Graphics is not a big deal. Sure, I game - on Linux. I’m hoping the Vega64 I have will be fine. I really don’t have any M.2 drives. Just a bunch of enterprise gear. Hence, the add-in cards.

SR-IOV and IOMMU groupings are kind of important for me, as I do a lot of VMs and want the freedom.

In the end, I’m thinking I need the PCIe lanes of the TRX build - the X399 Tachi. The PBO on my AsRock Rack X399 server is actually pretty cool, running around 4.5 Ghz on all 16 cores (with TDP limits removed). Most likely would do the same in the desktop, as I want a stable system - just let PBO do whatever it thinks is safe and move on.

I have ZERO budget for anything new. Hence, selling the 2950X and Tachi X399 NIB - and using the funds to build the 5950X system. And no, I’m not waiting for the AMD 7000 series - there’s no way I can afford that DDR5 and the insane prices of those new CPUs (when they come).

Pop!_OS (aka Ubuntu) on ZFS root on LVM. Thanks!

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I don’t know about you, but any time I sell something to fund something else, It never quite works out, between not getting what you thought you could for it, supply chain issues causing shortages and price increases, etc.

I would just use what you have and avoid all the hassle!

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Yeah, the hassle selling doesn’t appeal to me either.

I just have that - itch - that the X570/B550 would future-proof me a good bit more in terms of PCIe 4.0 bits and bandwidth needs (from the chipset).

Then again, I don’t like sharing chipset bandwidth… Have hit the limits too many times in the past, and these NVMe PCIe cards WILL do that, easily.

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