I am planning a new build on whatever platform that meets my productivity needs, which are basically the following:
-PCIe expansion slots for 1 GPU and 1 quad 10 Gbe NIC. -Dual M.2 NVMe ports for RAID 0. -Some extra U.2 NVMe ports for extra SSD storage. -Support for, at least, 32GB of dual channel DDR4 memory (2400MHz+). -Thunderbolt 3, I would assume in the form of USB Type-C connector. -USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports.
I can't seem to find any Z270, X99 nor AMD's AX370 motherboards with Thunderbolt 3 ports. This is not a massive requirement, but I would appreciate to have at least one port.
So, to the main point. I really don't know which platform would be more suitable for a productivity workstation, where I will be doing some video rendering, virtualization, gaming, code development, etc. I noticed that the new Kabylake processors are under-powered compared to the older generations Intel Core i7 Extreme editions, specially because they have less cores and cache memory; but Kabylake processors seem to perform very good on gaming and video encoding, and have very nice overclocking capabilities.
Which platform do you think it would be more suitable for my needs? Should I consider new AMD's Ryzen platform instead of the older X99?
I would definitely say X370 or X99. Depends on if you need 40 lanes or 24ish lanes really. With what you said so far though, a highend X370 motherboard (like the MSI Titanium/Pro Carbon or the Asus Crosshair 6) will have support for everything you need. Especially the dual M.2 drives + U.2, and USB 3.1+USB C Btw, USB C as long as it's full speed USB C is Thunderbolt 3.
The 8 cores of say an 1700 will do you much better than anything x99 for the price. Unless for some reason you need 10+ cores and cost is no issue lol.
In terms of native connectivity X99 is going to give you more, and fufill more of your requirements in that way. On Ryzen or z270 you'd be getting add-in controllers to generate more pcie lanes for some of your stuff, and that can result in sub-optimal throughput for some of those high-speed storage needs. X99 will support all of these things natively, but will be more expensive as a platform in terms of motherboard and cpu. It will allow for double the ram of the other two platforms though, as well as having all the connectivity on your list. One such X99 board with thunderbolt 3, dual m.2, and u.2, is this Gigabyte x99 designare:
Its pricey, but you've got a pricey list of wants.
Wait, can you re phrase this? Full speed usb 3.1 is 10gbps, but thunderbolt 3 equipped usb type c is 32Gbps AND is intel exclusive due to the thunderbolt 3 controller being proprietary to intel chipsets.
At least on literally all macbooks that are coming out the "Thunderbolt 3" connector... is just USB C. sooo theres that. Im not sure if that carries over to PCs or not but i mean... it should? Maybe? Idk. Is interesting anyway :P
Not all type c is created equal. Type C can carry displayport, hdmi, usb, and/or thunderbolt 3. No AMD board has ever supported thunderbolt period, over type c or over the previous mini-displayport interface. Thunderbolt 3 is intel only, because the chipset being z270, or x99 is required for thunderbolt 3. No ryzen system will ever support thunderbolt 3 because of this. Not even all z270 or x99 boards support thunderbolt 3 either, even if they have a type c. Thunderbolt must be explicitly certified by intel for it to be enabled on a x99 or z270 board, and a "thunderbolt tax" must also be paid to intel.
There was one AM3+ motherboard that did support thunderbolt, but it was done via an add-in controller. I do not think any thunderbolt 3 add-in controllers exist, so don't get your hopes up for an AM4 appearance. By add-in controller in this case I am talking about on-motherboard add-in, not for thunderbolt peripherals which are done mainly by texas instruments controllers.
On topic: I recommended x370 because it fulfills OP's requirements to the letter. 1x GPU, 1x PCIE addin card, if you get a nice mobo it has support for dual M.2 at full speed, 32GB+ of memory supported (even if at slower speed but meh), and the cost is a lot less.
Yes, technically X99 supports more things natively BUT it is also exponentially more expensive than X370 systems will be. so.
Yes, I linked a board that has thunderbolt 3 as well as checked every other box he needed.
The reason I would recommend 2011-v3 over ryzen in this case is frankly because ryzen doesn't have the lanes to handle all of his needs without using pcie muxers. The gpu and quad-10g interface take up all the cpu lanes, and the m.2's take up the rest of chipset lanes. Any added usb controllers, or u.2 ports, are going to be running off add-in pcie controllers which are sub-optimal when we're talking about storage interfaces which can saturate a lot of lanes fast. Not to mention that a x99 board would allow him to use a thunderbolt accessory as well as have double the maximum ram or more, depending on which x99 chip he goes for. He also could wait for x299 which is rolling around pretty soon, which will more than likely offer more cores for less than current x99 offerings.
there is 8 lanes just for m.2 drives+storage, and 16 for the PCIE. So tell me more how there isnt enough PCIe for a GPU+qaud port NIC+ Dual M.2 drives....
16 split 8 and 8 between a gfx card and a quad 10gb nic. 8 split 4 and 4 between the m.2s. ANY add-in U.2 (which he mentioned wanting) or any add-in Usb 3.1 are going to be running via pcie muxers or off pcie gen 2, which would impact in the case of the U.2 drive. He also has trade some sata for those M.2's if I'm not mistaken.
The M.2's have 8 lanes (granted PCIE 2.0) lanes to themselves, so no problems there. And 16 lanes for GPU and gig card, also no issue. It would be U.2 OR M.2 but thats... meh... there is literally 1 U.2 SSD (and it's not even that popular to get the U.2 version, the PCIE one is better anyway) sooo theres that. And the Sata ports have their own 4 lanes of PCIE. So there really isnt an "issue" in terms of PCIE
for this specific case listed in OP
Yes, there may be limitations if you want more than what OP said but im not going to debate that.
That's not how ryzen pcie lane assignment works on basically every board. There are 4 pcie gen 3.0 lanes that are to the chipset, and these are the 4 lanes being used for first m.2 drive in basically every case. There are 4 lanes that are either sata, or m.2. You can configure this for 2 sata and an m.2 pcie gen 3 x2, or 4 sata, or all 4 to m.2. That is how the second m.2 is handled. They are gen 3 on most every board, and really the second necessitates losing those sata unless you want to run the m.2 at reduced speed. That speed reduction could be very little if your talking about a cheapo m.2, or losing literally half performance sequential read if its something like a 960 pro.
dunno where your getting the pcie one being better. They both connect over the same interface and are the same drive, just in a different form factor. There are also other drives, just one's not as commonly known. There are many pro-sumer/enterprise drives with u.2 connectivity, as well as some OEM versions.
twas slightly wrong, it's x4 PCIE 3.0 not x8 PCIE 2.0 but still
But as you can see, there realistically are no issues running SATA+M.2. Also Dual M.2 is simple enough. x2 to x4 in SSD speds... really, unless you have some insanity with 4GB+/s on each drive theres not a bottleneck.
Yes they are technically the same, but i mean, the PCIE ... why buy the u.2 and have to get the expenssive cable and all that... when there is a PCIE version. Speed is marginally higher (few mb/s) on PCIE but is whatever.
x2 pcie gen 3 is limited to 2GBps assuming no overhead, so in reality a bit under that. That limits a drive like a 960 pro or evo to a half of its sequential read speed and somewhere between 3/4 and 7/8 of its write speed. That limits a raid 0 of two 960 pros or evos to essentially the speed of one drive running at x4 in reads. That defeats the purpose of having such a fast scratch disk. The alternative is to forgo 4 sata ports to run it at x4 speed, as represented in the x370 block diagram shown above.
Also, the U.2 cable comes with the drive so no its not an added cost and no the drive is not slower. Once again, same drive. There is no "couple of Mbps" difference. That stands true for every U.2 connected drive, not just the Intel 750 series.
Well for productvity you cannot really get arround Ryzen 1700 or 1700X. Those chips offer great price to performance wenn it comes to content creation and what not. However if you need thunderbolt3, then AMD is no option. So in that case X99 would be a better choice, X99 also offers more physical lanes directlly to the cpu namely 28 or 40 depending on the cpu you buy.
But yeah again for productivity workloads the Ryzen 8 core 16 threads cpu´s are hard to deny. The 1700X performs better in certain workloads then the 6800K / 6850K 6 core 12 threads parts. However no thunderbolt on Ryzen.
I do have to note that rumors state that intel seems to launch their new X299 platform this year aswell. So it depends a bit on how long you could wait.
I should probably add here, I don't discount the Ryzen option in terms of performance. They do perform really well in productivity tasks talking cpu performance alone. The only reason I would say go x99 or wait for x299 is because the connectivity offered by intel's large socket platforms is flat better than what ryzen can support at this moment.
