Ryzen

LunarMist

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If I could justify the cost the Mac-Pro is making more sense every year.
 

Stereodude

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I wonder whether some of these issues relate to "binning". I remember reading about the old "pencil trick" for AMD CPUs.
I'm sure binning is a factor. They're likely on the edge of the manufacturing process with the 3950X. They probably can get enough to satisfy the demand over time, but demand will exceed the supply for a while.
 

LunarMist

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The old truncation bug is at it again.
I'm just a bit frustrated at the lack of availability of parts.
I ran into the second failed installation of software this month, a simple firmware installer. 7 is dead. 🍁
 

LunarMist

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Could it be a keyboard defect? I was planning to replace it on the New Year.
 
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LunarMist

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I'd replace it anyway, so maybe one can get lucky with that. Of course by the time the Rhyzome is actually available, the source may be identified as something else. I don't know how it can be confirmed that I am using the post reply during the edit window. Maybe that is also better with Windows 10.
 

Handruin

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I was able secure a pre-order through Amazon for a 3950X tonight. Their ETA won't have it arrive until Jan 18th though. I watch every day and the supply is still very limited at MSRP.
 

Stereodude

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I was able secure a pre-order through Amazon for a 3950X tonight. Their ETA won't have it arrive until Jan 18th though. I watch every day and the supply is still very limited at MSRP.
I didn't realize Amazon was basically allowing people to backorder/pre-order them now. Your comment left me with the impression that the pre-orders at Amazon come and go. It seems like Amazon is continually allowing pre-orders since 12/26 (per nowinstock).
 

Handruin

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I was going to say that the night I got one, the pre-order went away maybe a minute later.
 

Handruin

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My local Microcenter still has two 3950x in stock since yesterday. Maybe demand is slowing now that the holidays are over and/or production has picked up a bit.
 

Stereodude

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Handruin

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I just checked and they still have two. Another Amazon alert said they have more pre-order that will ship in 1-2 days. Mine arrived earlier this morning ahead of schedule.
 

Handruin

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Will be nice if they can hit their design goals of 17% gain in IPC in Zen 3. They'll keep pushing Intel and we all mostly win in the end. Hopefully they can keep this momentum.
 

Stereodude

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I just checked and they still have two. Another Amazon alert said they have more pre-order that will ship in 1-2 days. Mine arrived earlier this morning ahead of schedule.
How are you getting notified of the Amazon pre-orders going up? At this point I might sit tight until the 4xxx series. I spent a lot of money in the past month or two on stuff not PC related. I could still get a new system, I not broke but tapping the brakes might not be a bad thing... Also, big FP improvements (up to 50%) in Zen 3 would favor my workloads. It will be interesting to see what AMD demos at CES.
 

Handruin

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I just can't help my self and checked frequently. The NowInStock website was always left open in a tab with audible alerts and a popup that also helped. For Microcenter I just kept running my Python script to alert me.

I have no doubt that Zen3 4000 series will be evolutionary and better. I'm a bit past the 5 year mark on my current Intel-based 4790K and would like a new system that can also take advantage of a m.2 NVMe at PCIe 3 (or higher). It's always going to be better to wait but I'm ready now. I feel the same about waiting on buying a new GPU. Even though the nvidia 2080 super isn't a great economical value it's still a pretty decent GPU for gaming. If the timing was better and I could have some restraints to wait for AMD to release their new GPU it might help reduce the price on a 2080 super making it more of a sane purchase (or buying the new AMD GPU assuming the price/performance is reasonable.) I don't really want to wait to mid-year though for the next gen GPUs.
 

Stereodude

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I'm still using a E5-2687W v2 that I first built with a v1 e5 CPU just short of 4 years ago when it was already dated tech but the CPUs and RAM were coming from off lease enterprise systems and were pretty cheap for the performance at the time compared to the desktop products. It has no NVMe support, it doesn't even have native USB 3.0 (add on chip). Aside from x265 compression, which I'm doing very little of lately, I rarely find it lacking. By the time I have a bit more spending money Zen 3 might be right around the corner.

I'll see what happens since I'm for sure not buying in the next few weeks. That will get me past CES where AMD may preview something promising like they did last year.
 
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Stereodude

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It looks like the 3950X is now fairly widely available. The local Microcenter has a bunch in stock, Amazon, B&H, Newegg, etc. have them in stock at $750 or really close to that price point.
 

Handruin

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The build turned out fine. I ended up with the following:

Asrock Taichi X570
AMD R9 3950X
2 x 16GB Trident Z Neo CL16 (16-19-19-39)
Noctua NH-D15 chromax.Black
EVGA RTX2080 SUPER FTW3 ULTRA
Fractal Design Define R6
Seasonic 1000W 80plus titanium (repurposed from my mining rig from 2013)
Samsung 970 Evo (I had this from over a year ago and never used it until now)
HGST 4TB NAS HDD (from previous system)
2 x HGST 6TB NAS HDD (from previous system)
1 x Bluray drive internal (from previous system)
1 x Bluray drive in USB 3 external enclosure (from previous system)


I kept the config pretty simple for a few weeks and only had the NVMe boot drive in it and left all my personal data on my previous system while I stress tested the new build. I only moved the rest of the parts over a couple nights ago now that I feel the system has been very stable. When I first started stress testing it, I found the GPU would occasionally go blank during gaming and the monitor would turn off. The fans on the GPU would ramp up to 100%, but I knew the system didn't BSOD or crash because I could still chat on Discord.

Turns out, my 8-pin power cables are of the split kind (6 + 2 pin) and the 2-pin segment on one of the power ports wasn't pushed in all the way so I basically had one full 8-pin and 6-pin to power the GPU. The behavior was really odd because the GPU worked fine in games as long as I wasn't gaming in 4K. Once I changed the display to 4K I'd get about 10 min of gaming and it would go dark. Anyway, that problem was fixed after I went in to reseat everything and noticed the power pins were slightly out of the socket.

One thing that's slightly dissapointing is I can hear the fan on the motherboard more than I thought I'd be able to. I know some reviews said it was loud but I didn't think it would have the audible drone signature it has. I may look into ways to mod it with a bigger quieter fan down the road. I also find that the fan noise from the Noctua NH-D15 can drone a bit during high workloads. The CPU temps can get to about 71C after extended workloads and the fans will push up to about 80%...but they bounce around which is distracting sometimes. I likely just need to spend more tie with the fan speed software to find a sweet spot.

The upgrade to the 3950X wasn't that dramatic of a change from my 5 year old Intel i7-4790K in terms of just basic usage feel. The performance does show when using handbrake on movie files when compared to my existing system and even my servers in the basement. Unsurprisingly the biggest performance difference I do notice are the storage performance (NVMe) for most day to day things and the GPU performance in both gaming, video rendering via Handbrake NVenc, and other things like Hashcat. Benchmarks obviously show a significant performance improvement in the CPU but the day to day usage doesn't feel like it's significant.

A side note is that the software used to manage the RAM RGB lights does often get flagged with my games as a hack and kills the game right after starting. This is a known issue because people have previously used this type of software to exploit hacks in games and people like myself get to be inconvenienced by the anti-cheat software stacks.

Overall I'm happy with the setup. I'm still reluctant to make a call saying the 3950X was worth waiting and paying for over say a 3800X (which was on sale for a crazy low $280 at Microcenter today). Maybe as time goes on I'll gain more appreciation for the numerous cores for various projects, etc where the performance will shine.
 

Stereodude

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I'm thinking to use these parts: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yyjGb8

With my existing GTX 1080 + optical drive. Probably get some WD Ultrastar H530 SATA drives for RAID-1 storage (undecided on size). Some 1TB NVMe drive using the Phison E12 controller.

I see Microcenter has the 3950X at $699 now.
 

Stereodude

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Updated parts list... I will go to Microcenter later today to get the parts (except the cooler and case).

The Aorus Elite Pro has an 8pin + 4 pin power connector and the 650W Seasonic doesn't come with the 2 cables to connect them all (only 1) whereas the 750 does for $10 more so I made that change. The WD SSD is a better overall performer for about $5 more (with MC bundling prices) than the Phison E12 powered drives so I went that way.
 

Handruin

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My power supply also doesn't have the 8pin + 4 pin for power but my motherboard doesn't require it so I didn't bother. I don't know if the Aorus Elite Pro also has the option to not connect it if you want to go that route. I'm not a heavy OC'er so I wasn't too concerned.
 

Stereodude

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My power supply also doesn't have the 8pin + 4 pin for power but my motherboard doesn't require it so I didn't bother. I don't know if the Aorus Elite Pro also has the option to not connect it if you want to go that route. I'm not a heavy OC'er so I wasn't too concerned.
My understanding is that it will work without it connected based on comments I've seen online, but for $10 extra I'll just get a PS that lets me connect it. I'm not sure if I will do any OC'ing. There doesn't seem to be a lot of headroom in any of these new high-end chips from Intel or AMD. So you end up pushing power consumption quite a bit with very little performance boost.

I am pretty excited about this. It looks like I should get a nearly 4x performance increase from my E5-2687W v2 in x265 encoding.

Of course when I ordered the Scythe Fuma 2 this morning Amazon told me I would get it today. Now they're telling me I won't get it until tomorrow. :mad:

First world problems. 🤣 Of course I don't have the case yet either. Amazon says 1-4 weeks...
 

Handruin

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I'll be curious to get your feedback on the Scythe Fuma 2 when you're done your build and test it for a while. This CPU has a decent amount of heat to get ride of and I wanted to keep it reasonably quiet without dealing with AIO water coolers.

I've been experimenting with the H.265 NVenc on my 2080 Super to see if the quality is at all relatable to CPU encoding in Handbrake. The H.265 NVenc is probably 5-6X faster than my 3950X and uses a lot less power around 60W draw during encoding. Some of the tests I've done look fairly decent but I need to spend more time making samples.

What utility/settings do you use when you encode? I see newer Handbrake versions now offers x265/x265 10-bit/x265 12-bit for options. I've still been encoding everything in x264 for most of my stuff.
 
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