WhiteSites Blog
WhiteSites Blog
Its been a long time coming. Finally building a new workstation. I have done the whole wait and see for years now, and finally I feel like a CPU that won't be replaced any time soon is here. I have jumped both feet in with AMD's new Threadripper CPU with a monster build.
Building a new computer is always a exciting / depressing time. Technology's capacity / speed tends to double every 18 months ( moores law ). Making whatever Super Computer you build today a relic within a couple years. For years I would get my hopes up on the performance improvements from the latest generation of CPUs, only to hear that the next generation would be even better, resulting in me holding off on any purchases.
A couple things. Ever since windows 10 came out my system has been lagging. AMD still to this day has not released a proper windows 10 driver for my Radeon HD 5000 or Radeon HD 7900 graphics cards. The result is everything lags. a few months ago I upgraded my camera hardware in which all videos I shoot are in 4K. The problem is even trying to edit 4K is sluggish.
The system I build back in 2008 ( yeah its that old ), has a first generation intel i7 CPU ( 920 model ) which clocks at 2.6 Ghz with quad cores and hyperthreading. Over the years I have done some small upgrades which included adding a samsung 840 SSD drive, more memory (12GB) , upgrading my motherboard to something with USB 3.0 ports. and even upgraded my CPU cooler allowing me to overclock my CPU to 3.8 Ghz. All these upgrades and tweaks helped me stave off building a new computer. Its served me well, and didn't miss a beat until I upgraded to windows 10. After that performance has slowly gone down hill. Of course I can't expect a nearly 10 year old computer to run the latest OS from Microsoft.
Sure the intel 18 core monster that is set to release sometime in september will be faster than Threadripper, but not at 2x the cost. I have looked at the specs for both chips, and feel the threadripper with its large die size will be more efficient for overclocking. Plus the 64 PCI-E lanes are also an attractive feature. The only thing that gave me hessitation on threadripper was the x399 chipset. They do not support RAID 5 ( only 0, 1, and 10 ). Not a huge deal as I already use a dedicated RAID card for my array. Another let down was the lack of RAID on the NVME slots. It would be great to take 3 NVME Samsung 960s and RAID 0 them for fast disk access. Supposively the motherboard manufacturers are considering adding this feature with a firmware update in the near future. I am sure I can live with a single NVME drive.
A combination of price, value, and the fact that I feel Intel has been increasing prices, more than it has been increasing performance, all pushed me towards Threadripper.
I put in the order on 8/9/2017.
In addition to what is listed above I will be reusing my HighPoint RocketRaid 640L raid card.
Plus I have also bought a Dell 43" 4K monitor from another website. That will replace the 30" samsung as my primary. I am also keepin the 4 x Dell U2412mb 24" LED monitors ( 2 on each side of my primary ). I might have to cut that down to only 1 on each side if the primary is too wide.
I am hoping most of the parts will arrive within the next week. I will post another blog during the build process, and another with performance reviews.
