Seeking advice on a potential 3995WX "budget" build.

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ghxst

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Hey everyone,

I'm planning out a potential build centered around a Threadripper PRO 3995WX (listed with sWRX8 socket), which I found for ~$1200. I'm looking for advice on the best strategy to fit my budget of $1500-2000 for a CPU, motherboard, and RAM combo. Unfortunately, I missed out on a deal for the ASUS WRX80E-SAGE SE motherboard, and now I’m left weighing my options. Here’s what I’ve found so far for WRX80 motherboards:
  • Dell DMYN9 from a Precision 7865 (link)
    Very cheap but unsure if there's any vendor locks and unsure if I can find a case to put it in.
  • Gigabyte MC62-G40
    At close to ~1000 USD these are a bit out of my budget.
  • ASUS Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE
    A bit hard to find good deals on, they aren't listed often.
  • Supermicro MBD-M12SWA-TF-O (link)
    Newegg seems to have a deal for a bit over ~700 USD which is still a bit outside of my budget.
  • Asrock WRX80D8-2T (link)
    These seem to have good availability, and priced within my budget at just over ~400 USD.
I’m leaning towards the Asrock unless I can find another deal on the ASUS or Supermicro boards. I don’t want to take a risk on the Dell board since I’m unsure about the case compatibility and potential vendor locks.

A bit about my use case: I compile large codebases (e.g., Chromium), run multiple VMs and containers, and require high uptime on some of these workloads. I’ve also got some Optane drives I’d like to use, so PCIe lanes are a factor.
I considered EPYC CPUs due to affordability, but the higher single-core performance on the Threadripper seems better for linking speed based on my experience comparing the 7950X3D with an EPYC 9454P for CI/CD pipelines on Hetzner.

I’d really appreciate any advice on whether the Asrock is my best bet or if there are other alternatives to consider with my budget.
Should I continue looking at Threadripper, or would another platform be a better investment?
Besides the deal on the 3995WX time is on my side so I'm able to wait for better options to become available board wise, I'm also able to just wait for other CPUs to be available but the 3995WX is on a clearance sale in a local shop so figured it worth investigating.
 

ghxst

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Oct 2, 2024
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I've also read mixed reports on sp3 boards being able to work with Threadripper PRO, but there's very little accurate information on that, if someone could verify that sp3 boards work with the 3995WX that would give me a lot more options such as:
  • Gigabyte MZ31-AR0
    I found a local seller with a sale on these for around ~450 USD.
  • ASUS KRPA-U16
    These seem to occasionally get listed in the 300-400 USD range.
There's also listings for the Supermicro board I linked earlier:
  • Supermicro MBD-M12SWA-TF-O (link)
    Listing title seems to suggest that the board supports both sWRX8 and SP3.
 

RolloZ170

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I've also read mixed reports on sp3 boards being able to work with Threadripper PRO, but there's very little accurate information on that, if someone could verify that sp3 boards work with the 3995WX that would give me a lot more options such as:
may work in theory, any bIOS update can stop the fun. the lack of chipset funtionality should be clear. not recommended.
there is a ebay listing for MZ31-AR0 and TR Pro 3995WX but no other TR or the MZ32 e.g.
 
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ghxst

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may work in theory, any bIOS update can stop the fun. the lack of chipset funtionality should be clear. not recommended.
there is a ebay listing for MZ31-AR0 and TR Pro 3995WX but no other TR or the MZ32 e.g.
Thanks so much for your input, I will continue my search for a sWRX8 socket board then. Do you have any opinion on the Asrock WRX80D8-2T board?
 
Sep 30, 2024
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From comparing the pictures of the Dell, the Supermicro nd the Asrock boards, it seems to me that what seem to be the power connectors are different for Dell. I wouldn't be surprised if Dell did their own things with this board.

Is Threadripper a good idea? It's unusual hardware which likely didn't receive as much testing and bug fixing as common hardware, and they are particularly expensive. Can you use something like distcc at all?
 
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RolloZ170

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From comparing the pictures of the Dell, the Supermicro nd the Asrock boards, it seems to me that what seem to be the power connectors are different for Dell. I wouldn't be surprised if Dell did their own things with this board.
DELL = proprietary. e.g. the 24pin on 7820/7920 are not ATX.
 
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ghxst

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From comparing the pictures of the Dell, the Supermicro nd the Asrock boards, it seems to me that what seem to be the power connectors are different for Dell. I wouldn't be surprised if Dell did their own things with this board.

Is Threadripper a good idea? It's unusual hardware which likely didn't receive as much testing and bug fixing as common hardware, and they are particularly expensive. Can you use something like distcc at all?
I have a colleague with some experience using icecc (aka icecream), I'm definitely considering it as an option, but I still wouldn't mind an upgrade of my main workstation. Could you elaborate on what you mean with "unusual hardware"?
You could just buy the 7920 power distribution board (PN 6DM0F) and PSU (PN 2CTMC).
Oo this looks interesting! Do you happen to know the part number I could look for when it comes to the case that's compatible with the DMYN9 motherboard? I believe it's a Precision 7865 but I haven't been able to find just the case for it or any other options that would be compatible.

Edit:
In other news, I found the ASUS PRO WS WRX80E-SAGE SE on sale at a local shop for about $600 because it was returned due to "damage to the top PCIe slot" it's still functioning though, I'm considering getting it while the 3995wx is still on sale. Any thoughts?
 
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RolloZ170

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Oo this looks interesting! Do you happen to know the part number I could look for when it comes to the case that's compatible with the DMYN9 motherboard?
proprietary case. you need the front panel also, don't work without.
7865 PSU XYJHT,
the 7865 case looks very similar to the 7820 but i can imagen it will even not fit.
 

ghxst

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Oct 2, 2024
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proprietary case. you need the front panel also, don't work without.
7865 PSU XYJHT,
the 7865 case looks very similar to the 7820 but i can imagen it will even not fit.
Dang ok, yeah I'll put that idea to the side for now lol. For now it seems like my best bet will be the ASUS PRO WS WRX80E-SAGE with a little bit of cosmetic damage. Either that or I will have to rethink what platform I'm going with. I found a guy willing to sell me 2 epyc 7313 CPUs for about ~350 USD but those motherboards are also still expensive :/ I thought maybe I could get a dual socket board and make it work but it turns out that WSL doesn't support dual CPUs so I'm back to the drawing board.
 

RageBone

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Dell also PSB locks CPUs, same with Lenovo.
So, you put the CPU in and from then on, it will only work in that OEMs boards.
 
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So Dell and Lenovo will just have to refund my CPU after rendering it unsellable when I want to sell it ...

At least on German ebay, there are some boards for Epyc CPUs. I don't know about those and at first glance, Epyc CPUs make Threadrippers appear yet again as a particular expensive choice.

Are you sure the damage to the Asus board is only cosmetic? $600 seems like a lot of money for a mainboard, especially for a damaged one.

How time-pressed are you? Yesterday, I bought 64GB RAM for my server, and I never thought I would ever buy 64GB RAM for only EUR 60. And it has 28 cores with a single Xeon which turbo up to 3.6GHz.

If you give me some code I could compile on it, I could let it run and tell you how long it took. Perhaps it's a viable option for you.
 

ghxst

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Oct 2, 2024
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So Dell and Lenovo will just have to refund my CPU after rendering it unsellable when I want to sell it ...

At least on German ebay, there are some boards for Epyc CPUs. I don't know about those and at first glance, Epyc CPUs make Threadrippers appear yet again as a particular expensive choice.

Are you sure the damage to the Asus board is only cosmetic? $600 seems like a lot of money for a mainboard, especially for a damaged one.

How time-pressed are you? Yesterday, I bought 64GB RAM for my server, and I never thought I would ever buy 64GB RAM for only EUR 60. And it has 28 cores with a single Xeon which turbo up to 3.6GHz.

If you give me some code I could compile on it, I could let it run and tell you how long it took. Perhaps it's a viable option for you.
The Asus board is from a real store, they have a return policy etc if it ends up being broken, but they don't tend to lie about that kind of thing and they have a good reputation.

Interesting, which xeon is it? For a benchmark it would probably be best to compile Chromium but the setup can be a little bit complex. Are you on Linux or Windows?

Thanks for your response I appreciate it.

Dell also PSB locks CPUs, same with Lenovo.

So, you put the CPU in and from then on, it will only work in that OEMs boards.
Wow ok I did not know that .. thank you for letting me know. Is it like an e-fuse that you can simply not repair?
 

RageBone

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The Asus board is from a real store, they have a return policy etc if it ends up being broken, but they don't tend to lie about that kind of thing and they have a good reputation.

Wow ok I did not know that .. thank you for letting me know. Is it like an e-fuse that you can simply not repair?
You are welcome.
Patrick and LTT have a video on PSB.
Pretty much a fuse being burned, yes.
No getting around it.

Another detail of the Asus Sage, Wendel of Level1techs claimed the pcie redrivers to not be configurable on the Sage V1.
That is supposed to allow for wonkyness on the bottom slots.
If pcie 4.0 on all slots is important to you, have a further look.
 
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The Asus board is from a real store, they have a return policy etc if it ends up being broken, but they don't tend to lie about that kind of thing and they have a good reputation.
Sounds like a safe bet then if the damage doesn't bother you.

Interesting, which xeon is it? For a benchmark it would probably be best to compile Chromium but the setup can be a little bit complex. Are you on Linux or Windows?
It's an E5-2697 v3. I have also two E5-2637 v4 in my workstation I could test on. You could go for a dual socket machine with two E5-2697 v4 CPUs with 128GB RAM and 64 cores. That'll cost you about EUR 600 for the complete machine, see [0].

I had the v3s in my workstation at first and then switched for the v4s to get better single thread performance for games. The v4s are a tiny bit faster for games while the v3s will certainly outperform them greatly due the number of cores.

It's really old hardware but I like this generation a lot. Power consumption is good, it's utterly solid and pretty fast, and the hardware is cheap (except for the mainboards; you're better off buying a complete server than an empty board). If I retire my workstation some time I can just plug the RAM into the server if I want to, or I can flip CPUs between them should feel I need more cores, or get some more CPUs to play with.

I'm using Fedora. It seems the instructions for compiling Chromium[1] are for Ubuntu, and the infos for Fedora may be out of date. However, Chromium is in the repos, so I should at least be able to compile it from a source rpm package.

Perhaps it's easier to use some compilation benchmark instead?


[0]: DELL PowerEdge R730 8LFF Server, CTO | eBay

Make sure the disk trays are included.





[1]: Chromium Docs - Checking out and building Chromium on Linux

Thanks for your response I appreciate it.
My pleasure :)
 
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ghxst

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Sounds like a safe bet then if the damage doesn't bother you.



It's an E5-2697 v3. I have also two E5-2637 v4 in my workstation I could test on. You could go for a dual socket machine with two E5-2697 v4 CPUs with 128GB RAM and 64 cores. That'll cost you about EUR 600 for the complete machine, see [0].

I had the v3s in my workstation at first and then switched for the v4s to get better single thread performance for games. The v4s are a tiny bit faster for games while the v3s will certainly outperform them greatly due the number of cores.

It's really old hardware but I like this generation a lot. Power consumption is good, it's utterly solid and pretty fast, and the hardware is cheap (except for the mainboards; you're better off buying a complete server than an empty board). If I retire my workstation some time I can just plug the RAM into the server if I want to, or I can flip CPUs between them should feel I need more cores, or get some more CPUs to play with.

I'm using Fedora. It seems the instructions for compiling Chromium[1] are for Ubuntu, and the infos for Fedora may be out of date. However, Chromium is in the repos, so I should at least be able to compile it from a source rpm package.

Perhaps it's easier to use some compilation benchmark instead?


[0]: DELL PowerEdge R730 8LFF Server, CTO | eBay

Make sure the disk trays are included.





[1]: Chromium Docs - Checking out and building Chromium on Linux



My pleasure :)
I think that combination might be similar to the performance I have now, maybe a bit better, though my biggest issue is that WSL doesn't seem to play well with dual CPUs :(

For the price that setup is really good though, I will keep it in mind if I want to setup some machines for distcc / icecc.

I did some more looking around and I noticed that at least looking at passmark benchmark results the epyc 7713 (or 7C13 ?) seems to get about the same performance as a 3995WX at a lower TDP and slightly higher single core performance, I'm wondering how accurate this is in reality, and if I would be able to get it working on EPYCD8-2T boards. If I can grab the CPU from eBay I might be able to get a better deal on it than the threadripper. If anyone has thoughts on the 7713 / 7C13 in combination with a EPYCD8-2T or ROMED-2T board let me know.
 
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I think that combination might be similar to the performance I have now, maybe a bit better, though my biggest issue is that WSL doesn't seem to play well with dual CPUs :(
What's WSL? Maybe it works when you limit it to use only one CPU?

How about support for ECC RAM? Maybe it's not too relevant for compiling stuff, but I'd always go with ECC rather than without. I guess Epyc CPUs need to support it well; on Threadrippers it may be merely an afterthought.
 
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RageBone

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I did some more looking around and I noticed that at least looking at passmark benchmark results the epyc 7713 (or 7C13 ?) seems to get about the same performance as a 3995WX at a lower TDP and slightly higher single core performance, I'm wondering how accurate this is in reality, and if I would be able to get it working on EPYCD8-2T boards. If I can grab the CPU from eBay I might be able to get a better deal on it than the threadripper. If anyone has thoughts on the 7713 / 7C13 in combination with a EPYCD8-2T or ROMED-2T board let me know.

Excuse me but who of those has better "single core" perf in passmark? I am not sure from the way you write.

The 3 at the end on the Epyc SKU number denotes the generation, this being Milan based on Zen3.

Your 3995WX is 3ed gen Ryzen which is Zen2 based and basically Epyc Rome on a different platform with a PCH.

5th Gen TR Pro would be generationally Milan.

Those things aside.
The Asrock Rack EpycD8 only supports Epyc 7001 and 7002 CPUs.
Not the 7003, which the 7713 and 7C13 both are.
For that you would need the Asrock Rack RomeD8 which funnily enough supports all 3 depending on the Bios.

Have you looked into what you are getting with Zen2 vs Zen3 based CPUs?

Have you considered that Epyc Servers usually lack the ability to sleep and suspend?

Or what about the fancy new features of Zen4 and Zen5?
Why not a 9th gen AM5 setup?

How much do you value single core performance?
 
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