After over 8 years of hard work my Intel i7-3930K has died. Having to live off my laptop has finally pushed me to do a long overdue rebuild of my workstation and just in time for new CPUs, or it would be If I could buy them!
In my PCPartPicker list the 3950x is standing in for the 5900x or 5950x if I can get my hands on one.
PCPartPicker Part List
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/D3d4dD
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 3.5 GHz 16-Core Processor ($709.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240 56.3 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock X570 Taichi ATX AM4 Motherboard ($269.99 @ B&H)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($244.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: 3x HP EX920 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($124.99 each @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GA 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($149.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fans: 2x Noctua P14s redux-1200 PWM 64.92 CFM 140 mm Fan ($14.95 each @ Amazon)
Total: $1879.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-11-11 04:01 EST-0500
My current setup
CPU: Intel i7-3930k 6 core 12 thread
Motherboard: ASUS P9-X79 Pro
Memory: 8x 4GB Corsair Vengance 1600MHz 9-9-9-24
Storage: 1TB Crucial MX300 SATA SSD
NIC: PCIe 3.0 8x SFP+ (connects to NAS via DAC cable)
GPU: ASUS GTX 1060 Strix (driving 4 monitors)
GPU: Galaxy GTX 660 (driving 2 monitors)
OS: Ubuntu 18.04 DE/WM: XFCE
Description of failure
This is not really necessary but I am including it here in case anybody is interested.
When I press the power button the CPU error light on the motherboard comes on and the fans spin at full speed. There is no post beep and nothing is displayed on the dual 7 segment POST/Error code readout. After about 15 seconds the system resets.
Sometimes, after cycling a few dozen times the system will POST. It does not display an unusual post code while running, nor does it hang anywhere on a post code. When it does come up the CPU error light is not on. The system will run anywhere from a minute to a couple hours before it completely and suddenly shuts off.
This first happened a month and a half ago but the system would boot fine and run for weeks without issue. Only in the past week did it happen regularly, dropping the CPU multiplier and giving it a little extra voltage seemed to help for a couple days but at that point I knew I was scrambling to delay the inevitable.
While it was staying up for only a few hours it could be induced to crash by running the CPU at high load, but it would also happily crash while simply running memtest86+ (no memory errors seen while it was up). It did not have high temperatures and removing all cards and peripherals except the GTX 1060 did not change anything.
Honestly I am a little surprised that the OG Corsair H100 AIO cooler outlasted the part underneath it without the death whine, dribbling sounds, or temperatures creeping up at all! That system ran between 30C and 45C its whole life (15C ambient, it changed a bit in the peak of summer but I can’t remember the numbers).
I will be carrying over the GTX1060 from my current system and I have a case etc.
Does this parts list look sane? Will I be able to buy a 5900x or 5950x any time soon?
I plan to run the 3x M.2 NVMe drives in a ZFS RAIDZ1, I have not run ZFS pools on SSDs before so I am not sure if this is a bad idea. Any reasons I should change this? Should I stick with a SATA SSD array for /home and have / on a single NVMe?
I chose the ram because I would like to go up to 64GB from my current 32GB (8x 4GB) with the ability to upgrade in the future and that was the fastest kit on the QVL for 2x 32GB/4x 32GB. Would I be much better off buying a 4x 16GB kit and fully replacing it later? In my limited experience building and helping with other peoples Ryzen systems buying memory off QVL and mixing kits caused serious problems so i am apprehensive to go off QVL.
Finally, I will be dropping the second GPU (a GTX 660 that I run just for more monitor outputs) from my system for lack of PCIe lanes. It looked to me like the Threadripper options are a lot of money to drop for more PCIe lanes. Is there a sane way to build a comparable system on Threadripper with room for the 2nd GPU, 10Gb/s SFP+ NIC, and multiple NVMe drives? I would like to keep this upgrade under $2000 and have the core components last another decade if possible.
You may rely on it