New chess rig

[mwyoung]

I'm considering building a new chess rig built around either the AMD Threadripper 3960X 3.7 GHz 24-Core Processor or
AMD Threadripper 3970X 3.7 GHz 32-Core Processor. Here is a first cut at other components and would appreciate advice from the expert builders.

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3

Mobo: ASUS AMD AM4 ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi) ATX

Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 128 GB (8 x 32 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16

2 X Intel 660p Series 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME SSD

Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1650 4 GB Phoenix OC

Since I am expecting game changing GPUs from AMD in the near future, there is no high end GPU in the system.

Can I do with slower RAM than the very expensive G.Skill 128 GB kit?

What about the mobo for high end TR chip?

Thanks in advance, CMA

As a computer builder. I would not use a air cooler with TR. You will be sorry! You need a 500+ Watt AIO or better.

[M ANSARI]

It really sucks when you are building a system and it doesn't boot. Some things to check from experience are the following
1. Take mother board out of the box again and make sure no screws are loose under and maybe shorting something and re seat it making sure it goes in properly. Look at any marks you could have done by accidentally slipping a screw driver and damage a trace (has happened to me) or maybe some screw is stuck and causing a short underneath. Or even possible the motherboard mating screw pattern does not match your case and some metal from the case is shorting out something. Try booting up your system outside the case where you have non conducting surface under the motherboard.
2. Short out the CMOS to reset it (sometimes there is a button for that)
3. Make sure you have correctly installed the PSU wires onto your motherboard and are seated properly. Some CPU's require additional voltage connectors to the motherboard
4. Make sure you install the memory correctly and it clicks into place and no dust trapped (if you are migrating to an old case) ... use the minimum sticks required to boot up and look at the manual to make sure you are populating the correct slots. If a pair of memory do not work switch them with another pair and see if that works ... it possible to have bad memory sticks or they could have been some damage to trace wires in installation
5. Check your VGA card and again make sure you have the correct PSU wiring ... some cards need more than one PSU connection and those connections can be different even though the incorrect one can fit
6. When booting up look at what is lighting up ... does the mouse light up and then no boot ... you need to try and find out how far the boot goes to narrow down what is causing the problem. Some motherboards have a display that gives a code which can allow you to hunt down the problem

By the way, Gigabyte and MSI are two of my favorite motherboards and I must have built over a hundred computers using those motherboards without a single hitch. The only motherboard that used to give me fits are Asus motherboards for some reason. Asus used to always send out motherboards that would need many BIOS upgrades to get things going and on several occasions I had motherboards that simply would not work and had to be sent back. It is always possible that you have a defective motherboard ... but today I would think that is highly unlikely. More likely it could have been damaged in transit or by you during installation. All it takes is to damage one trace wire on the motherboard and that can easily happen if your screw driver slips as you are screwing in the screws to the motherboard.

[Dann Corbit]

My one great mistake in doing a build was cheap RAM.
Never again. If there is one key place to save money, this isn't it.

What ram did you put in it?

Some kind I never even heard the name of before.
And it wasn't even saving much money.
I had to send my whole machine back to the manufacturer (did not yet know the intermittent problems were due to RAM)
I still have the sticks, lying around somewhere

When I bought my ram I had little choice. All of the kits I wanted were out of stock and I had already waited more than two weeks trying to find "good" RAM. I eventually settled on some SO-SO Corsair 128Gb 3200Mhz RAM (Hynix chips) with reasonable timings. I wanted 256Gb of 3600Mhz (Samsung B-die chips) with fast timings. I'm currently considering buying the RAM I originally wanted and selling the 128GB I have as two 64GB sets since that's the way it was packaged. I figure most people can't use 8 dimms and don't want that much RAM in there system.

The other component that's important is the power supply. I won't buy a cheap power supply regardless of how much money I could save. Even some of the "name" brand PSU have sub-standard components in them, or bad designs, or just sloppy workmanship. You almost never have problems with routers or servers because of the quality of the PSU used. The PSUs used in most PC are thrash by comparison.

Regards,

Zenmastur

I do the same on the power supply. Having two times bought machines with a PS that was underpowered, I now buy one with a good rating and plenty of headroom. The one in my new box is 1600 Watts

[cma6]

As a computer builder. I would not use a air cooler with TR. You will be sorry! You need a 500+ Watt AIO or better.
[/quote]

MW, I was hoping you would contribute to this discussion. Your knowledgeable thoughts on the cooler issue reflect where I have arrive since I first posted.

"When a CPU (especially if O/C) is dealing with extended load, heat generated can overwhelm an HSF cooler eventually. Since water can absorb a lot more heat before its temperature rises significantly, an AIO allows the processor to run longer overclocked. Also AIO coolers, unlike HSF coolers, do not have clearance issues with RAM slots and the first PCI-E slot."

But there is a fly in the ointment. While HSF coolers come with extended base plates to ensure maximum contact with the CPU's IHS, most AIO coolers do not have extended base plates, using circular cold plates that leave the edges of the IHS exposed. Therefore, AIO coolers available for Threadripper CPUs aren’t cooling as efficiently as they could, allowing the HSF coolers to match (and even exceed) AIO performance.

MW, can you recommend a 500+ Watt AIO cooler or one that is expected in the coming months, one with an extended base plate?

[jstanback]

When I put together my Ryzen 3950x with Asus Prime X570 MB last winter it didn't POST. Bummer! I tried re-doing all MB connections, one stick of RAM, but no go. Then I removed the M2 SSD and connected an old 2.5" SATA SSD and it worked. It turned out that after a BIOS update it worked fine with the NVME SSD. So maybe try a BIOS update if you haven't already?

John

[syzygy]

As a computer builder. I would not use a air cooler with TR. You will be sorry! You need a 500+ Watt AIO or better.

MW, I was hoping you would contribute to this discussion. Your knowledgeable thoughts on the cooler issue reflect where I have arrive since I first posted.

"When a CPU (especially if O/C) is dealing with extended load, heat generated can overwhelm an HSF cooler eventually. Since water can absorb a lot more heat before its temperature rises significantly, an AIO allows the processor to run longer overclocked. Also AIO coolers, unlike HSF coolers, do not have clearance issues with RAM slots and the first PCI-E slot."

But there is a fly in the ointment. While HSF coolers come with extended base plates to ensure maximum contact with the CPU's IHS, most AIO coolers do not have extended base plates, using circular cold plates that leave the edges of the IHS exposed. Therefore, AIO coolers available for Threadripper CPUs aren’t cooling as efficiently as they could, allowing the HSF coolers to match (and even exceed) AIO performance.

MW, can you recommend a 500+ Watt AIO cooler or one that is expected in the coming months, one with an extended base plate?

If you want to run your overclocked system at full load for longer than a few minutes at a time (as in: serious chess usage), this advantage of AIOs becomes meaningless. You will just need a cooling solution that can dissipate the heat at the rate at which it is created.

I'm not sure what I would choose for a Threadripper system (unless there are still no AIOs that properly fit the TR's IHS). AIOs aren't as colossal, but they are inherently less reliable. And the pump of an AIO can be very noisy at higher settings, so in practice you'll probably be running it at the lowest setting. At least my h100i - still working since 2012 - gets very annoyingly loud at setting 2/3 and anyway hardly cools better at that setting. (I am still happy with my choice for the h100i back then but I may have been lucky that it has lasted as long.)

[Joost Buijs]

Does anyone actually own a TRX40 mobo? How does it O/C? Any issues?
Thanks, CMA

Three months ago I build a system with a TR-3970X that uses an Asus Prime TRX40 Pro main-board, so far I didn't encounter any issues with it and it works flawlessly.

The total system consists of:

AMD TR-3970X
Asus Prime TRX40 Pro main-board.
128 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX (2x CMK64GX4M4B3200C16, Nanya chips), just added the second 64 GB this week.
1x Samsung 970 EVO 1TB and 1x Samsung 970 EVO 2TB. plus a 4TB WD Red for bulk storage.
1x Asus RTX-2060 super turbo (waiting for a better card to arrive by the end of this year).
Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 CPU cooler with a second NF-A15 fan in push-pull configuration.
Seasonic Prime TX 850 power-supply (one of the best).
Fractal Design R6 computer case.

The TR-3970X is not very suitable for overclocking because it runs very hot if you do, even with water-cooling.
I use standard settings without PBO, 3700 MHz. base and 4500 MHz. PB, XMP memory setting at 3200 MHz., at these settings the processor draws > 300W with all cores loaded and already gets 80 deg. C.

Memory speed is not very important, the difference in speed I measured between 2133 MT/s and 3200 MT/s memory is at max. 5%, buying very expensive G.Skill memory with low latency to gain maybe 1 or 2% is IMHO complete nonsense.

[Cornfed]

I have a 10% overclock on my system, but I don't think it is wise to do big overclocks on threadrippers.
I know people have done it, but I run my system around the clock at full tilt, and so I think big OC would mean trouble eventually.

10%...okay, not so much.
But why would anyone even want to overclock anything that runs as hot as some end up doing? Just sounds like 'ego' talking or someone trying to get a little better from an engine than is really even needed.

[cma6]

Does anyone actually own a TRX40 mobo? How does it O/C? Any issues?
Thanks, CMA

Three months ago I build a system with a TR-3970X that uses an Asus Prime TRX40 Pro main-board, so far I didn't encounter any issues with it and it works flawlessly.

The total system consists of:

AMD TR-3970X
Asus Prime TRX40 Pro main-board.
128 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX (2x CMK64GX4M4B3200C16, Nanya chips), just added the second 64 GB this week.
1x Samsung 970 EVO 1TB and 1x Samsung 970 EVO 2TB. plus a 4TB WD Red for bulk storage.
1x Asus RTX-2060 super turbo (waiting for a better card to arrive by the end of this year).
Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 CPU cooler with a second NF-A15 fan in push-pull configuration.
Seasonic Prime TX 850 power-supply (one of the best).
Fractal Design R6 computer case.

The TR-3970X is not very suitable for overclocking because it runs very hot if you do, even with water-cooling.
I use standard settings without PBO, 3700 MHz. base and 4500 MHz. PB, XMP memory setting at 3200 MHz., at these settings the processor draws > 300W with all cores loaded and already gets 80 deg. C.

Memory speed is not very important, the difference in speed I measured between 2133 MT/s and 3200 MT/s memory is at max. 5%, buying very expensive G.Skill memory with low latency to gain maybe 1 or 2% is IMHO complete nonsense.

Joost,
Thanks for the info. So I could buy slower RAM than 3200 MT/s for the TR-3970X?
But if you are running at 80C with Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 CPU cooler, that is supposed to be too hot. I believe that AMD's recommendation for long runs is 68C.

[Joost Buijs]

Does anyone actually own a TRX40 mobo? How does it O/C? Any issues?
Thanks, CMA

Three months ago I build a system with a TR-3970X that uses an Asus Prime TRX40 Pro main-board, so far I didn't encounter any issues with it and it works flawlessly.

The total system consists of:

AMD TR-3970X
Asus Prime TRX40 Pro main-board.
128 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX (2x CMK64GX4M4B3200C16, Nanya chips), just added the second 64 GB this week.
1x Samsung 970 EVO 1TB and 1x Samsung 970 EVO 2TB. plus a 4TB WD Red for bulk storage.
1x Asus RTX-2060 super turbo (waiting for a better card to arrive by the end of this year).
Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 CPU cooler with a second NF-A15 fan in push-pull configuration.
Seasonic Prime TX 850 power-supply (one of the best).
Fractal Design R6 computer case.

The TR-3970X is not very suitable for overclocking because it runs very hot if you do, even with water-cooling.
I use standard settings without PBO, 3700 MHz. base and 4500 MHz. PB, XMP memory setting at 3200 MHz., at these settings the processor draws > 300W with all cores loaded and already gets 80 deg. C.

Memory speed is not very important, the difference in speed I measured between 2133 MT/s and 3200 MT/s memory is at max. 5%, buying very expensive G.Skill memory with low latency to gain maybe 1 or 2% is IMHO complete nonsense.

Joost,
Thanks for the info. So I could buy slower RAM than 3200 MT/s for the TR-3970X?
But if you are running at 80C with Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 CPU cooler, that is supposed to be too hot. I believe that AMD's recommendation for long runs is 68C.

What I actually meant to say is that the performance of the TR-3970X doesn't depend much upon main-memory speed because it has very large caches, so I would buy standard 3200 MT/s memory with a latency of 10 ns. If you want to have utmost performance (and you have deep pockets) you can buy very expensive G.Skill memory with lower latency, but in practice you won't notice much difference.

Underneath the Noctua NH-U14S TR3-SP4 cooler there is not much room, with this cooler you need low-profile memory, that's why I use Corsair Vengeance LPX. DDR4 DRAM is very cheap at the moment, 128 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 MT/s costs < 600 euro.

I don't like the high temperature of 80 C. too, and I don't want to go for a noisy water-cooling solution, in practice I turn PB off and let the system run at 3700 MHz. max. which keeps the temperature below 65 C. at full load, the performance of the TR-3970X at 3700 MHz. is still amazing. For an occasional tournament or when I need max. performance I turn PB on.