Is the head dead yet?

"ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com" (ita97)
04/14/2020 at 22:40 • Filed to: Intel who?

Gunther got a transplant tonight, as Amazon brought me a new toy today in the form of an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X. This replaces the 7 1700 that I had been rocking for the last 3ish years.

That 1700 originally came in Gus, my Dell gaming PC that I picked up cheap and got me back into performance computing (and sim racing) after many, many years away. Gus’s heart got transplanted into Gunther, my X470 current rig. Paired with a robust power solution on an MSI X470 gaming M7 AC board and an EVGA CLC 280mm aio, Gus’s old heart proved his mettle running rock solid ever since on a 3.8gz all- core o ver clock.

With the advent of competitive folding w/Oppo, combined with Uncle Sam’s bonus, I decided to move up the planned upgrade to a 3800x for my birthday in a month or two. Poking around Amazon revealed processors have dropped considerably since the last time I looked, so I upped the ante and clicked on the 3900x option.

How is it? Holy shit is this thing fast. Completely stock BIOS settings and letting the PBO do its thing have it running ~4.1-4.2 ghz on all 12 cores under load at reasonable 68 degrees. In terms of performance, it folds a CPU work unit that took my significantly overclocked Ryzen 7 1700 about an hour and half to two hours to complete, and does it in about 30 minutes pulling about 145 watts at the socket. With 70MB of cache, this is thing is snappy at everything I ask it to do.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, I feel no need to overclock this thing. I’m probably just going to leave things on auto and enjoy life without the need to upgrade my CPU for some time to come.

Safety Third.

Buying a more expensive board with a robust power solution now pays off.

The cooler works even better and gets off minimum fan and pump speeds when I remember to plug the aio USB cable back in after a fresh dot of Artic MX-4.

It also came with a fairly beefy looking wraith cooler. I’m not running it, but it might come in handy depending on what I decided to do with the old 1700.

DISCUSSION (16)

CB > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/14/2020 at 22:51

Damn, nice upgrade!

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > CB
04/14/2020 at 22:58

Once I saw that Amazon has the 3900X for not too much more than 3800X were selling for 4-5 months ago, I exercised the theory of no half measures.

jminer > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/14/2020 at 22:59

I love 3rd gen Ryzen. I’ve got the 5 3600 in my workstation and had been contemplating an upgrade as well.

I run that 390 0 cooler on mine since a friend watercooled the 3900 he bought.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > jminer
04/14/2020 at 23:04

It looks like a robust cooler. Based on this, 3rd gen Ryzen strikes me as impressive as 1st gen Ryzen did when it came out. It is a big jump forward. My Corsair LPX-3200mhz ram is now the native speed for the cpu, too.

PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120 > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/14/2020 at 23:06

Dude, that’s going to be a solid CPU for a while, cheers!

facw > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/14/2020 at 23:33

You know, when I got my i7-8700k a couple years ago, 6 cores/12 threads seemed pretty nice, but I got to say anytime I’m seeing new Ryzen builds it feels very antiquated. Of course for games and such, it’s probably still doing well, but for things that can actually take advantage of all those cores...

In any event, unless my flaky motherboard flakes out on me more than it is doing now (at the moment I need to find out why it takes ~20 minutes to get into the BIOS or Windows), a CPU upgrade is probably a ways off, but I think a new video card is quite possible once new cards from AMD and Nvidia hit. 1070 has done well for me, but seems like we are finally getting to the point where a upgrade may be in order.

Nephron 99 > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/14/2020 at 23:57

Umm you don’t run racing simulators with that shitty little graphics card do you? It's quite pathetic

jminer > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/15/2020 at 00:11

They do love that 3200 mhz ram!

Grindintosecond > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/15/2020 at 07:22

Having run my 3700x under water cooling, I can safely proclaim the only thing better than aftermarket air cooling is a custom loop. Air cooling is that good now an AIO is about equal. Seriously thinking of selling the h115rgb aio setup for a bequiet dark rock. Better noise..

Jason > jminer
04/15/2020 at 07:26

Lol. I just “upgraded” to that 3600. It’s been a while since I built a computer. So what’s the deal with ram, why have I just spent, what feels like my entire quarantine, trying to just get this thing to work with it’s advertised speed?!??

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/15/2020 at 09:55

Now, for a secondhand GPU and TWO machines folding... Give jminer a run for his money...

Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/15/2020 at 09:57

Lately I’ve been doing more gaming and streaming on Twitch and I’ve been pretty tempted to upgrade my main box, which is from 2016. I don’t really want to spend the money, but the performance coming out of those Ryzen processors is insane...

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
04/15/2020 at 10:12

They're impressive pieces of hardware. As impressive as my 1700 was when 1st Gen Ryzen came out, the jump to 3rd gen feels just as big.

MaineAssassin > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/15/2020 at 11:31

I didn’t know you guys were folding too. I’ve been on GamersNexus for a couple of weeks now. My 5700XT is what really brings the points in netting about 1.25 million /day if I can stay consistent with getting work units. I limited my 2700X to 8 cores when folding so i can still use the machine for light email and work.

I am getting 4.25ghz all core out of the 2700X with 3200 mhz Samsung b-die and a asus crosshair vii x470 board. I'd love to upgrade to a 3rd gen Ryzen though.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/15/2020 at 12:35

I love my 3900x. Its an absolute beast of a processor.

Stragak > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
04/15/2020 at 12:59

Got the same cpu when my motherboard died folding on a 4770k. Night and day difference.