Hi there, this is my first post in the forums.
First I just want to say thanks to Level1Techs and tis community, and especially Wendell’s videos on Youtube, they have been SO helpful for my first PC build.
Through a friend I have recently come across an opportunity to buy a brand new TR 3970x CPU with a new Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 CPU Cooler and a new ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro motherboard, all for a great deal below MSRP.
I currently have a TR 2950x with 128GB RAM and the same Noctua cooler, and I LOVE it for my 3D simulation and rendering tasks, and have been looking to upgrade and I guess this CPU would basically double my CPU simulation power for my 3D work, which would be amazing.
I know that the Prime TRX40-Pro MOBO is one of the cheapest available boards but from my research it seems like it has all the functionality I need, except for a couple of important points that I’m not sure about which, I was hoping you would be able to help me with on this forum:
First, is that I want to put in 2 x RTX 3080 GPUs (or 3080ti when they come out). I noticed the PCIE slot layout is a bit strange but if I get the Fractal Meshify 2 case I thought I would have room for the 2 GPUS either in the first and second PCIE slots, or the first and third slots… which would leave one PCIE slot available for a NVME expansion card so I can set up a sweet NVME RAID storage.
Second, is that I want/need to run 256GB for my heavy simulation tasks. I am finding conflicting information online about 256GB RAM with these CPU and MOBOs. Would this CPU and MOBO be able to handle 256GB RAM? If so, which RAM sticks would you recommend?
Third, the VRM sounds like it is high quality on this MOBO but from your experience would I be able to overclock the 3970x up to 4.0 or 4.1 GHz on all cores with this VRM and the Noctua cooler?
Lastly, I read that the next generation of Threadripper CPUs may be announced early in the new year. If the next gen TRs are Zen 3 architecture, would I be able to upgrade the CPU and still use this Motherboard?
Would you suggest waiting to see what the next generation of Threadrippers is before buying a 3970x?
This deal from my friend is something I need to pounce on quick if I’m going to do it.
Phew that ended up being a longer post than I thought, any and all advice on the questions above would be super helpful, thanks so much!
-Mark
Check the QVL list, set the memory size to 8x32GB and you’ll see that you have quite a few options to choose from.
It’s a good starting point, and from there I’d crawl around the internet and see which kit people have been having the most success with. Although every cpu, mobo and RAM kit are different, so you should keep that in mind.
If you have decent airflow in the case, the VRMs will be fine but I’m not sure about the Noctua. You can try it with the Noctua, but incase it doesn’t work out you can always go to the Icegiant Thermosiphon
I think it’ll fit in the case but the lower GPU will probably have to be <2.5 slot design at most if you’re using the last x16 slot.
That’s a difficult one. I’d personally go for the Zen 3 TR, mainly because of the single thread IPC improvement and potential improvement in RAM compatibility.
How good is the deal? It all comes down to that.
I don’t know about that motherboard, but 256gb is doable depending on the speed you want to run it at. I run 256gbs at 3200 (on a different mobo), some people can get 3600 out of 256gb but I think that takes hitting the mobo, cpu, and ram lottery. I think 2666 or 2933 with 256gbs should be achievable on most combos no problem. The gskill kits would be a good starting point, I have a 3200 gskill kit and wendel had good luck with their kits as well. He has a video on the different mobos he tested it on. (https://youtu.be/GSIFsN1Ofqw)
Next gen threadripper on trx40? Anybody’s guess. I havent seen anything official from amd and to say one way or the other would be speculation. I hope next gen is compatible with trx40 buy I’m not holding my breath.
Thank you CybeastRaystriker for the super helpful reply!
I’ve got some research to do on the RAM, so thanks for pointing me to QVL list, I didn’t know about that before.
The Meshify has good reviews in terms of air flow from GamersNexus and other reviewers, so hopefully it’s good enough with the Noctua cooler. I use the Noctua cooler on my current 2950x with a second added fan and it seems to be doing well, but the 3970x obviously draws a lot more power so it will be interesting to see how it holds up, although it is on the AMD website listed as an officially recommended cooler.
I was thinking the same thing that the GPU might barely fit on the 3rd PCIE slot in the Meshify 2 case, so I was considering getting the Meshify 2 XL case which should give it plenty of room… I just wasn’t sure if getting an even bigger case would be worse for airflow in a fan cooled case.
In terms of waiting for the Zen 3 TR, I am tempted to wait but then again it seems like there will always be a next generation upgrade coming around the corner.
This particular deal from my friend would get me about 45% off the MSRP for the CPU + MOBO + Cooler… so it’s a pretty damn good deal I think… although I don’t know how much the 3970x would come down in price anyway once the Zen 3 TRs are released. Do the previous generation CPUs usually drop in price by a lot once the new generations come out? Would you imagine the 3970x dropping by 40% for example when the Zen 3 TR comes out?
Thanks ChuckH.
I’ve definitely got some research to do on the RAM. Here in Australia 256GB of the GSkillz Neo RAM is about $1,800!
For my 3D simulation work, I am constantly filling up my 128GB of RAM over and over with simulation data. Do you think I’d notice a big difference between 2666mhz and say 3600mhz RAM when using a LOT of RAM constantly filling it up and dumping it as I run 3D simulations?
I don’t have a good intuition on what difference RAM speed makes to my use case
Actually, having an oc’ed TR and two RTX3080 might be too much for the case, when I come to think to think about it. You might have been fine if there were any blower-style RTX3080 skus. Sadly, only the RTX3090 has got the blower style treatment this time around, that too only one sku by gigabyte. The Founder’s edition 3080 is (potentially) no good either, as the right fan of the bottom gpu will be dumping heat directly into the top 3080’s right fan, which in turn might be dumping heating into the Noctua. No bueno.
It’s possible. The 3970x’s price could come down to a 3960x’s. The former does still provide quite a lot of multi-threading performance so there still might be (relatively) some sort of demand for them.
If the 3970X is good enough for your needs and you want the system ASAP, get it. But I have a feeling the TR 5960x (with a healthy OC and tuned RAM) will close the gap in multi-threading to the 3970X while providing much more single core performance and RAM compatibility. So, Zen 3 might be a better deal in the long run, but that also depends on by how much $$ AMD increases the price of the comparable skus. Zen 3 Ryzen prices increased by 50 usd, but TR costs more to make and they sell less of it, so the $$ increase might be higher.
I am getting conflicting information regarding cooling the Threadripper 3-series on air and OC. Some say you can but others reject this thought especially if you are looking to have this machine as a production machine. Imagine running a render for 6-8 hours and the cpu is sitting well above +80C
I haven’t assembled mine 3960x , but will use two Alphacool 280 extreme units with Optimus Absolute Threadripper 3+ cpu block (as you can tell I have never water cooled before).
I do look forward to hear about your build and I hope it goes well
When I bought my ram it was about 1300 usd for 256gb of gskill 3200 cl16 ram. I think the 3600 was more. That much ram isn’t cheap no matter what it is. And buying a bad brand can waste alot of time troubleshooting (though I had my own growing pains with gskill)
I’ve run some cfd simulations in the past and they were fairly cpu bound until they ran out of ram, then everything slowed down to a crawl. So ram quantity was more important than speed.
You could try downclocking your current ram and seeing the impact on your workload.
If you buy higher clock ram you can always downclock it until stable, it’s just a waste of money.
I run a different mobo (zenith ii extreme alpha) but I’ve gotten 3.9 GHz all core pretty easy with a custom loop and only a single 240mm x 60mm radiator. For short periods it will even pull 4.1 to 4.2 ghz all core but I never tried tweaking it. I prefer to keep temps low (I think it was 70C max) vs max OC. I dropped back to stock for noise and life.
Maybe this will make people here cringe but I have my 2950x overclocked on all cores to 4.0Ghz and I have it running pretty much constantly at 100% running large 3D volumetric sims and the temp is usually sitting at around 85 degrees celcius.
I’ve been running it like this for almost 2 years now without any issue…