Best value sub $1000 workstation CPU? X399 Boards?

[IamSpartacus]

Is there anything on the Intel side that revil's the TR 1950x in terms of value? I need a new workstation CPU that has lots of threads for VMs, can do some decent gaming (doesn't have to be top of the line), and is under $1000.

The Core i9 looks like a complete waste of money IMO so the only question is are there any Xeon's that will rival the 1950x that you can do some decent gaming on?

 

[alex_stief]

I don't think so. From a price/performance perspective, the Xeons are worse than their I7 and I9 counterparts. The ones with a sub-1000$ price tag all have low clock speeds and thus suck for gaming. You pay extra for the professional features without getting better performance for your money. If you do not consider I9 worth their money, any current gen Xeon CPU will be even worse.
What you could do to improve the bang/buck ratio is buying a used v3 Xeon and overclock it. Dont't know if that is something you would consider.

 

[IamSpartacus]

I don't think so. From a price/performance perspective, the Xeons are worse than their I7 and I9 counterparts. The ones with a sub-1000$ price tag all have low clock speeds and thus suck for gaming. You pay extra for the professional features without getting better performance for your money. If you do not consider I9 worth their money, any current gen Xeon CPU will be even worse.
What you could do to improve the bang/buck ratio is buying a used v3 Xeon and overclock it. Dont't know if that is something you would consider.

Well the only i9 comparable in price is the 7900x. It's only 10core and has a 3.3Ghz clock speed compared to the TR 1950x at 3.4Ghz. I could probably swing at most the 7920x but that's 12-core at 2.9Ghz. I'm not adverse to going with a used E5v3 but what would compare in my price range?

I'm not familiar with the i9's btw. Are there any key differences between the TR and the i9? I assume the i9's can OC higher but they probably have much higher thermals. I'll be Watercooling this workstation so that may not be a huge deal.

 

[alex_stief]

In order to get a really high overclock (say 4.5GHz+) out if the I9 CPUs, you would need to delid it and replace Intels cheap thermal compound with liquid metal. Or you buy it pre-delidded from companies like silicon lottery or caseking.
In my opinion the most important difference between TR and I9 is AMDs modular architecture. Something you need to be aware of for tasks like gaming. Not all software is NUMA-aware and may not perform as intended on a Threadripper CPU. That's why AMD implemented a "gaming mode" that AFAIK only uses one of the two dies. But then of course all you have is the performance of a Ryzen 7 CPU.

 

[IamSpartacus]

Honestly I only game maybe 5% of the time so it's low down on the priority list. However, I don't want it to suck those few times a month I do game.

And yes, I always have delidded my Intel CPU's when watercooling. I've been building custom loops since the early 2000's so I've been through it all.

 

[alex_stief]

I don't see a compelling reason against the TR 1950x then. While it may not be the best CPU for gaming, it gets the job done unless you are playing one of those single-core limited games.
And for many other workloads it does indeed provide a better value than any Intel CPU currently available. Especially because the price dropped significantly since it was released.

 

[msvirtualguy]

In order to get a really high overclock (say 4.5GHz+) out if the I9 CPUs, you would need to delid it and replace Intels cheap thermal compound with liquid metal. Or you buy it pre-delidded from companies like silicon lottery or caseking.

That's not necessarily true..i've been running my 7900x at 4.6GHz since day 1 with zero issues and great thermals. The real concern is the VRM cooling but that's not limited to just x299 it's also rearing it's head on z370 as well. Since, there have been MB manuafactures putting active cooling solutions on the VRM to keep temps down.

Generally, the Skylake CPU's perform better on a per clock basis, you can see that in the testing, that's just the limit of the lower clocks that can be achieved on the Zen architecture and die size, which they are addressing in Ryzen 2 and Threadripper 2 which is why i'm waiting to build my next workstation.

I'm more pissed at Intel from their shady dealings with Meltdown and Spectre, first deny, then release a workaround, then the CIO sells their stock fully aware of this issue only for them to have the f#king audacity to say that the stock is a good buy now since the security issues, but that's just my opinion.

 

[alex_stief]

I see I should not have given a ballpark figure

 

[IamSpartacus]

@msvirtualguy I'm starting to give more consideration to the 7900x myself for my new build. What board did you use with yours and are you air or watercooling?

 

[msvirtualguy]

I use the Asrock Fatalyty X299 Gaming I9. Chose this over the Taichi for the integrated 10Gb. Asrock has really come far quality and BIOS...exponentially so. I have all Asrock boards at home at this time, z370 Taichi for my 8600K, and a X370 ITX for my Ryzen 1600 build. All rock solid. I think they have V2 of that board now with active VRM cooling.

Personally, I wouldn't build a Intel workstation at this time but those are for the reasons I stated. I'm just waiting on Zen 2 architecture to build the next one as the 7900x is working fine but I use Adobe Premiere and it's great for that. If I were in your shoes and you couldn't wait..i'd be all over the 1950x.

 

[IamSpartacus]

I'm definitely still considering the 1950x but I'm a little concerned about the infinity overhead / latency.

The CPU I choose is getting paired with dual 1080 Ti's so higher clocks for gaming is also something I'm after. I haven't seen many TR 1950x's get past 4.0Ghz OC'd so that too is a concern.

 

[msvirtualguy]

Here's the thing though, if you're gaming with 2 x 1080Ti's in SLI then my guess is your shooting for 4k. At that point, even with 2 x 1080Ti's in SLI, you're GPU limited. SLI doesn't really have the impact as it used too even at 4k. You may get better minimum frame rates but overall only a few FPS advantage over the 1950x. Even a 8700k only bests the 1950x at 4k with SLI by a few frames. If 1440p is where you're at then the gap widens and Intel is the clear winner here.

If overclock is your thing then certainly on a clock per clock basis the 7900x is awesome, but again, I have other gripes with Intel.

 

[wildpig1234]

If you want both good single and multithread performance 1950tr is hard to beat valuewise.

But if you just need good multithread performance I recomend dual 2680 v2 ($340 for 2 10 core cpu) .... get 80+ % performance of 1950tr for about 30+% of the price... additional benefit of dirt cheap ddr3 ecc price conpared to ddr4

 

[IamSpartacus]

I've decided to to go TR 1950x. Now I'm trying g to settle on a board. I need onboard USB 3.1 from the panel header and ideally 10Gb (though not a deal breaker). Not finding any options other then the Asus Zenith Extreme which I've been seeing very poor feedback on.

 

[pyro_]

Only other option which will have 10gb is the asrock fatality it has built in 10gb on it. The asrock would actually be my choice of board if I was going to build an X399 machine today

 

[IamSpartacus]

Only other option which will have 10gb is the asrock fatality it has built in 10gb on it. The asrock would actually be my choice of board if I was going to build an X399 machine today

That was my first choice but I don't think it has a USB 3.1 header on the board.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Don't own it myself but was musing an X399 build a few months back (but decided to wait and see how my raven ridge HTPC pans out) and the ASRock Taichi came top of my list - if I wanted 10Gb it'd likely be in the form of SFP which'd mean a PCIe card anyway - and certainly no shortage of I/O on TR boards. The Aquantia chips is, I think, still something of an unknown quantity as not many canaries have been down that coal mine yet, especially for those of us using linux.

<derail>IMHO ASRock boards have been consistently excellent in power efficiency ratings and their BIOSes seem to have the least amount of flakiness of all the motherboards vendors (I first started using them because they were the first boards I used under linux that always and without fail worked with things like S3 suspend). They've come a long, long way since their somewhat dodgy beginnings. Not a paid shill, my £0.02, YMMV, may cause impotence or death, etc etc, just a satisfied customer.</derail>

 

[pyro_]

That was my first choice but I don't think it has a USB 3.1 header on the board.

According to the asrock spec sheet on their website
2 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Headers (Support 4 USB 3.1 Gen1 ports

 

[IamSpartacus]

According to the asrock spec sheet on their website
2 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Headers (Support 4 USB 3.1 Gen1 ports

I saw that too but I looked in the manual and don't see any reference to the motherboard header.

 

[pyro_]

This review on tweaktown shows them on page 2 ASRock X399 Professional Gaming Motherboard Review