Looking at upgrading my home server / lab workstation from a Sabertooth x79 + Xeon e5-2667 v2 circa 2014 to a Ryzen 1700x + x370 Taichi circa 2017.
The thinking is in 2-3 years I can pop a 3000 series Ryzen in there when the hype dies down.
For ram, the Xeon has quad channel 32g ddr3 8x 4gb sticks. On the Ryzen I will try 2x 16gb sticks of ddr4 ecc server ram, probably won’t work. I also have 2x 16gb sticks of ddr4 2666. Will be keeping an eye peeled for a deal on a 64gb kit.
I use this machine mostly as a docker host and file server (zfs), but also do software dev and some CAD.
Fedora is my preferred OS but also have some windows vms for cad and programming tools that don’t support Linux.
Check the 3600/3600X… It’s about the same multithread performance but single thread it’s noticeably better.
If they are about the same price you may want to consider 3600… Other than that 1700X is a beast…
Anything negative about the x370 I should watch out for? Between the 370 and 470 there doesn’t seem to be a huge difference in specs, and for a “server”, the 370 Taichi has a LOT of on board SATA.
Good point here - the 3600 has a bunch of new instructions the 1000 and 2000 series don’t. Get a 6/12 3600 now and maybe one of the bigger brothers in a few years when the premium price drops away?
Would if I could, trying to keep this at or under $400 USD. Already have some ram on hand I’ll try to make due with, and upgrade down the road.
Just preference. If you like dual-BIOS, 2x LAN ports, specific features in the UEFI, etc.
Wendell usually does a quick UEFI overview at the end of his mobo reviews and also talks about IOMMU for each mobo.
I was going to recommend the 1700 and OCing it to 3.8+GHz yourself but this is just ridiculous. Go with the 1700X.
If you go for a 3600 you’ll probably get a X570 board too, which gives you PCIe 4.0 support. But it’s relatively new, so long term experience is not available yet (like “don’t get the xy board from ab, they all fail after a few months” or something like that").
No plans to spend that much, don’t need any of the features or the power consumption of x570.
According to Asrock, the 3600 is fully supported on the Taichi x370. It’s early though, so not a lot of feedback out there from folks upgrading. Might be worth a month wait to see if AMD is honest about backward compatibility.
Did they say what BIOS version is required? So far I think every Ryzen motherboard needed an update to support CPUs of the next gen (or even APUs).
If you get a X370 board and a 3000 series CPU you might need a 1000 series CPU to update the BIOS (unless it has an update feature that lets you update the BIOS without a CPU installed) to get the 3000 series CPU to work.
BIOS version P5.60 is required for the X370 Taichi to work with a 3600.
Some etailers and stores offer to perform a BIOS update for you before they ship/sell it to you.
So keep that in mind.
A totally personal opinion is to move away from the x370 chipset, and go higher. Starting out with the 1700x sounds like a good plan, as prices are dropping. I also think you could find sweet deals on other chipsets.
Which other chipset? See my previous posts about x470 and x570. The b350/450 boards lack pci options that make it useful as a server.
Edit: Looks like I musta not hit submit comparing x370 and 470. Other than faster ram OC support, the 470 didn’t seem to offer much over the 370. Strictly comparing Asrock boards, I liked the layout on the 370 better, and it has more on board SATA ports.
I have read guys actually running 3900x with that mobo
But for brand new system I would probs look into
because some of these cheaper boards seem great, and the gamble basically is how well the ram runs, and there are some odd cheaper options which dont like have like wifi while its otherwise alrite
ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate (cheapest 10GbE LAN for Ryzen | Amazon): https://geni.us/tSvSqHr
The X370 taichi is crazy good in the VRM department. It should run even the soon to be released 16 core no issues what so ever.
The thing is, x370 taichi is currently available for the price of the low end X570 lineup, and let’s face it, the low end x570 lineup have absolutely no features to speak of, while the taichi is packed full of everything… Yeah, no PCIe4, but everything else is here and honestly, for everyday use 3,5GB read NVME is just about the same as 5GB read NVME but you get a tons of extra features for the price…
Be aware… for a limited time you may be able to find something like an X399 Taichi plus 1900X for similar money to an X370/470 plus 1700X.
The 1900x really didn’t sell that well, but… it gets you the same number of cores as a 1700x and onto the HEDT platform. You can stuff a lot more RAM into it, you have plenty of PCIe (for lab shenanigans with multiple network adapters, other PCIe devices for pass-through to VMs), etc.
For the tasks you describe, the cross-die penalty to performance in gaming that the 1900x has is totally irrelevant. If you need more cores down the track? well currently 32 is your limit and that is likely going to go to 48 or more in short order.
I’d definitely go look for a 1900x combo. I think for homelab, if you can get a 1900x plus board for close to a 1700x plus x370… or just stretch a little… it will be the better buy. For RAM capacity if nothing else… but other reasons as above.
I know it may well be a bit more expensive than x370 + 1700x. But i do think you may also be surprised at the price you can pick up some of the lower end x399 boards (Like the taichi, which is still a great platform) and a 1900x…
When I need horsepower or games, I have a 2950x as my daily driver + office machine. My day job requires a lot of Windows though, so it runs Windows on the bare metal and Linux through Hyper-V.
Totally agree … aside from potentially slower ram, which won’t bother me at all, I don’t see huge benefits from the newer x chipsets. I plan to run one nvme for boot, root and home. One sata ssd for L2ARC, another for ZIL and six spinners the bulk storage.
Thanks for the feedback everyone, it is much appreciated, especially the negatives making me think harder about it.
I decided to grab the x470 Taichi and Ryzen 2700. Prices worked out the same, and one generation newer won’t hurt I hope. Especially knowing I won’t have trouble with whatever bios my board arrives with recognizing the CPU.
I’ll post a quick build blog of the upgrade when the parts arrive.
