Build check to replace dead threadripper system

[BongoHunter]

My Threadripper system is becoming increasingly unstable and I don't really want to try and fix it as it's old tech and long in the tooth at this point. It's also a power hungry monster. I built it back when threadripper was first released so it's lasted well but is now showing its age (especially in modern games).


Purchase Timeframe:
This week

Budget:
£1200-1600 (closer to 1200 would be nice)

Usage:
Some gaming at 1440p, mainly coding + running VMs to test stuff

Preferences:
I like Asrock - I've never had an issue with their stuff so I tend to pick them by default. Happy to look at other stuff if there's a significant saving to be had.

Current Hardware:
Threadripper 1950x (16c32t)
64GB (8 x 8GB)
Asus Prime X399
Zotac 1070
Corsair RM1000x
+ Lots of NVME + SATA SSDs

Special Needs/Requirements (inc Wi-Fi):
Smaller and quieter than my current setup - other than a new boot drive I intend to use my existing disks.

Current thinking:
My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-GSK-01357) = £229.99
• 1 x Lian Li A3-mATX Tempered Glass Micro-ATX Case (Black) (SKU: CAS-LIA-04811) = £69.95
• 1 x be quiet Pure Rock 3 PRO CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-BEQ-04689) = £37.99
• 1 x Asrock B850M Pro-A (Socket AM5) DDR5 mATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-04009) = £127.99
• 1 x Samsung 9100 Pro 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-SAM-04765) = £164.99
• 1 x Seasonic Focus GX-750 ATX 3.1 750W 80 Gold Modular Power Supply (SKU: POW-SSC-03150) = £124.99
• 1 x Asrock Radeon RX 9060 XT Challenger OC 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ASR-05280) = £350.00
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D Twelve Core 5.50GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-04503) = £539.98

Total: £1,657.87 (includes delivery: £11.9
8)​

Help!
I've not built/specced anything but servers since I build my current system and stuff has moved on a lot!

Thanks in advance!

 

[mickyflinn]

Tell us the most demanding task your pc needs to do ?

 

[Quartz]

1 x Samsung 9100 Pro 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-SAM-04765) = £164.99

Do you really need a PCIe v5 drive?

And how old is your PSU?

1 x be quiet Pure Rock 3 PRO CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-BEQ-04689) = £37.99

Get one of the Thermalright Assassins for much the same money.

Threadripper had lots of PCIe lanes so will you have enough for your existing NVME drives?

 

[deviation]

Get one of the Thermalright Assassins for much the same money.

Beat me to it

 

[BongoHunter]

Tell us the most demanding task your pc needs to do ?

Run a 3 node OpenSearch cluster under high load on VMs (disk IO is quite important for it)

Do you really need a PCIe v5 drive?

And how old is your PSU?



Get one of the Thermalright Assassins for much the same money.

Threadripper had lots of PCIe lanes so will you have enough for your existing NVME drives?

Existing PSU is as old as my Threadripper build (2017) so I assume it's fairly near the end of its life?

Is there much of a performance gain between PCIE4 and 5 for NVME drives - on my current build moving to faster storage made a huge difference to VM performance. I won't be able to move all my drives, I'll only be able to move 2 at the most (my current system has a 4 NVME drive RAID array that I'll have to retire).

Will take a look at the Thermalright Assassins! Ta

 

[mickyflinn]

Reuse you PSU the Corsair rmx is a great unit.

Why not get the 9900x at £350 instead of paying for the v cache on the x3d .


There's £65 To be saved if your not fussed on memory trimmings .

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/corsair-vengeance-xmp-64gb-2x32gb-ddr5-pc5-48000c38-6000mhz-dual-channel-mem-crs-05105.html

 

[jonneymendoza]

How many ssd's do u have?

 

[Kurgen]

Check your motherboard...you mentioned wifi and that board doesnt have it.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Asrock B850M Pro-A WiFi (Socket AM5) DDR5 mATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-04010) = £145.00
• 1 x Asrock B850M Pro RS WiFi (Socket AM5) DDR5 mATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-04008) = £164.98
• 1 x Asrock B850M-X WiFi R2.0 (Socket AM5) DDR5 mATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-05290) = £125.00

Total: £434.98 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[Tetras]

Current thinking:
My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO RGB 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-GSK-01357) = £229.99
• 1 x Lian Li A3-mATX Tempered Glass Micro-ATX Case (Black) (SKU: CAS-LIA-04811) = £69.95
• 1 x be quiet Pure Rock 3 PRO CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-BEQ-04689) = £37.99
• 1 x Asrock B850M Pro-A (Socket AM5) DDR5 mATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-ASR-04009) = £127.99
• 1 x Samsung 9100 Pro 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-SAM-04765) = £164.99
• 1 x Seasonic Focus GX-750 ATX 3.1 750W 80 Gold Modular Power Supply (SKU: POW-SSC-03150) = £124.99
• 1 x Asrock Radeon RX 9060 XT Challenger OC 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-ASR-05280) = £350.00
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D Twelve Core 5.50GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-04503) = £539.98

Total: £1,657.87 (includes delivery: £11.9​

​

Tell us the most demanding task your pc needs to do ?

Run a 3 node OpenSearch cluster under high load on VMs (disk IO is quite important for it)

Usage:
Some gaming at 1440p, mainly coding + running VMs to test stuff

What kind of IO is it?

You'd normally only buy PCI-E 5.0 drives for massive file copies (& sequential reads), since the improvement in their general performance and utility is generally not that high/noticeable because it relies on the controller and the flash outside of bandwidth (which is what the PCI-E gen increases). You can check reviews though, if you can narrow it down to which particular benchmark is most/more relevant to your VM usage.

If you're likely to need a memory upgrade (since you already have 64GB now), I'd be inclined toward a larger kit (96,2x48 or 128,2x64), even if slower than the G.Skill. That's especially true if you're sticking with the X3D, because they suffer a lot less from running slow memory.

What cooler do you have on your Threadripper? Is there a possibility you could get a mounting kit (especially if a Noctua).

Depending on how many cores you need and the games you play, I suspect the overall performance at 1440p would be much better in games with the 9800X3D (or even a 7800X3D) and a 9070 or 9070 XT. By the way, I assume your VM software (or other software) doesn't care about using AMD GPU instead of nvidia?

 

[Minstadave]

Not a fan of the 9900X3D. Only has 6 cores with vcache rather than 8 on the 9800X3D and 9950X3D.

If you're an infrequent upgrader its likely that will become a bottleneck at some point. Pay the extra £90 for the 9950X3D if you do heavy MT workloads or just get the 9800X3D if primarily gaming.

 

[BongoHunter]

Thanks for the advice everyone

Ended up with a Ryzen 9800X3D after running a few tests on my TR system, I realised that I could get away with less cores as the newer Ryzen chips have massive amounts more performance per core, might live to regret it but will run some benchmarks for my workloads and see.

Also changed following from my OP:
- CPU cooler to a Noctua (as they're in all my other systems and work well)
- Changed to 64GB of Corsair Vengeance as it was cheaper than the G.Skill in the OP
- Went for the Samsung 990 Pro in PCIE gen 4 after doing a bit of reading

I'm deffo going to miss all the PCIE lanes on my TR system, just got the single new drive in the system at the mo, but as I can't RAID together all my old drives like I used to I might just retire them to my NAS and server until they wear out. Just got a pair of 500GB MX500 SATA drives to swap to the new build tomorrow. I added a 10GB NIC in the PCIEx4 slot so have room for a single NVME left - I might use a M2 to U.2 adapter and try and pickup an enterprise NVME drive.

Best thing about this so far is the noise - I had to double check that it was actually on, it's so quiet compared to my TR system!

Cheers everyone!