Zen 2 for Distributed Computing: Any interest?

[biodoc]

@Howdy , I've had bad luck with MBs this last year so I'm the last person you should look to for advice. For my second 2700X build, I bought an Taichi X470 and it was DOA. I replaced it with an Asus X470 board and it failed after 3 months. I replaced that with a 3700X/X570 Gigabyte AORUS PRO WIFI and that's been working ok for the last few months. So for my 3900X build I'm thinking Gigabyte again. See, no logical train of thought.

 

[Howdy]

@Howdy , I've had bad luck with MBs this last year so I'm the last person you should look to for advice. For my second 2700X build, I bought an Taichi X470 and it was DOA. I replaced it with an Asus X470 board and it failed after 3 months. I replaced that with a 3700X/X570 Gigabyte AORUS PRO WIFI and that's been working ok for the last few months. So for my 3900X build I'm thinking Gigabyte again. See, no logical train of thought.

Your issues have basically represented all the reviews I have been reading (unfortunately in your case) The board I was actually steering towards you actually have, the Gigabyte Aorus Master.

 

[TennesseeTony]

I got a used ASRock X370 Gaming K4 FATAL1TY from eeeeew-bay for $92 shipped. 3800X arrived today. I guess it's time to rip the CPU (Ryzen 1700) from one of the working systems, update the BIOS for the 3-series, then toss in the 3800X and see what happens.

 

[Markfw]

@Howdy , I've had bad luck with MBs this last year so I'm the last person you should look to for advice. For my second 2700X build, I bought an Taichi X470 and it was DOA. I replaced it with an Asus X470 board and it failed after 3 months. I replaced that with a 3700X/X570 Gigabyte AORUS PRO WIFI and that's been working ok for the last few months. So for my 3900X build I'm thinking Gigabyte again. See, no logical train of thought.

And thats odd.... Right now I have 3 3900x's, one on an X370 Taichi, one on a X470 Taichi, and one on an ASUS X470 prime pro. All 3 run 24/7 flawlessly.

Edit: and an X570 ASUS TUF waiting for its CPU, a 3950x. It did work with a 3900x for a while, but then I put that in the X370 Taichi !

 

[TennesseeTony]

I got a used ASRock X370 Gaming K4 FATAL1TY from eeeeew-bay for $92 shipped. 3800X arrived today. I guess it's time to rip the CPU (Ryzen 1700) from one of the working systems, update the BIOS for the 3-series, then toss in the 3800X and see what happens.

Goodness. BIOS updating isn't what it used to be.

1. The included BIOS was the original, v3.3.
2. The 'newest' BIOS is ONLY for 3-series CPU and only is to support one game, skip this one...
3. 2nd newest BIOS adds support for 3-series, but whoa, hold on there partner, this is v4.4, you can't install this directly, you need 4.1 first................uhm, ok......
4. v4.1 whoa whoa whoa! Who do you think you are? You can't just 'update the BIOS', you need a 'bridge BIOS' first, v 3.5 needs to be installed (update from 3.3)
5. Remove the 1700, swap in the 3800X, fingers crossed, and.........voila!

Whew. Maybe I can finally start playing with my new toys now....maybe.

 

[Markfw]

Goodness. BIOS updating isn't what it used to be.

1. The included BIOS was the original, v3.3.
2. The 'newest' BIOS is ONLY for 3-series CPU and only is to support one game, skip this one...
3. 2nd newest BIOS adds support for 3-series, but whoa, hold on there partner, this is v4.4, you can't install this directly, you need 4.1 first................uhm, ok......
4. v4.1 whoa whoa whoa! Who do you think you are? You can't just 'update the BIOS', you need a 'bridge BIOS' first, v 3.5 needs to be installed (update from 3.3)
5. Remove the 1700, swap in the 3800X, fingers crossed, and.........voila!

Whew. Maybe I can finally start playing with my new toys now....maybe.

Yep. Thats why after I sold all my 1st and 2nd gen Ryzens, and tried the 3900x on it, I had to buy a 1600 just to flash it. Thanks goodness Virtuallarry bout that off of me !

And 5 bios versions later.... I have my 3 3900x's running.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks goodness Virtuallarry bout that off of me !

Well, you bought my 2700X + mobo off of me, when I couldn't afford it, so thank you, and I was returning the favor. (Not that you couldn't afford the 1600, but I knew that you didn't want to keep it long-term. I can always find a use for them, I think.)

 

[TennesseeTony]

You're a good wo-------errr, man, Larry.

 

[Howdy]

@TennesseeTony and @biodoc

AIO/water or air cooled?

 

[TennesseeTony]

Noctua (air) if the included cooler is insufficient. My 3800X is running 80C on the Wraith cooler. Fan vibration is an issue, noticeable at 3100 rpm, unbearable at 3900 rpm (the cooler has a built-in hi/lo switch).

 

[Howdy]

Noctua (air) if the included cooler is insufficient. My 3800X is running 80C on the Wraith cooler. Fan vibration is an issue, noticeable at 3100 rpm, unbearable at 3900 rpm (the cooler has a built-in hi/lo switch).

Running any OC at all?

 

[TennesseeTony]

Nope. It's a pretty big cooler, and works well I suppose for normal usage, but I don't think it's going to be sufficient for 100% loads, unless I UNDERclock it.

 

[biodoc]

AIO/water or air cooled?

I run my Zen 2's at base clock with wraith spire cooler. I disable CPB and set the multiplier to obtain base clock speed and then adjust the vCore at the lowest to obtain stability as tested with prime torture test for a couple of hours. Right now I have vCore on the 3900X at 1.2 volts. I might be able to go lower but haven't had time to do the torture tests at lower voltages. My 3700X's have vCore set at 1.1 and 1.15 volts.

 

[Howdy]

I run my Zen 2's at base clock with wraith spire cooler. I disable CPB and set the multiplier to obtain base clock speed and then adjust the vCore at the lowest to obtain stability as tested with prime torture test for a couple of hours. Right now I have vCore on the 3900X at 1.2 volts. I might be able to go lower but haven't had time to do the torture tests at lower voltages. My 3700X's have vCore set at 1.1 and 1.15 volts.

Temperatures are with in reason then?

The reason I ask is I have been switching from AIO to Noctua coolers. I have been leery of possible pump failures (knock on wood I have never had one) thus the switch to air coolers- My thought is there would be some passive at least on air if the fan/s stopped for some reason vs a pump failure

 

[StefanR5R]

Re cooler requirements (speaking from the theoretical POV, as I am still not a Zen2 owner yet):

AMDs processors are strict about the sustained power usage. Normally sized coolers should have little trouble at constant 100 % use at stock (unless the BIOS vendor applies an overvolting by default).

Of course the tiny 7nm transistors will cause higher peak temperatures than on comparable 14 nm processors. But that's just a sign of higher heat flux density, not of higher power use.

Oversizing the cooler a lot may help a little with sustained throughput though, as the processor will be able to crank up the clocks a little more.

Temperatures are with in reason then?

The Ryzen 3000 processors are specified for 95 °C operating temperature.

The reason I ask is I have been switching from AIO to Noctua coolers. I have been leery of possible pump failures (knock on wood I have never had one) thus the switch to air coolers- My thought is there would be some passive at least on air if the fan/s stopped for some reason vs a pump failure

If the cooler fan fails, the processor will continue to work at much reduced clocks.

The internet is all abuzz due to a test of a Youtube celebrity without any cooler at all, in which an Intel system kept working at low clock but an AMD system shut down. But this mode of operation is not representative of systems with a passive cooler mounted.

 

[TennesseeTony]

The Ryzen 3000 processors are specified for 95 °C operating temperature.

I am not as bad as Howdy, who freaks when his GPU's go over 55C, but, uh, nope, I'm not ever going to remain calm with a 95 C reading on my processor.

 

[StefanR5R]

And yet the manufacturer's 95 °C degrees spec is conservative.

Remember, Ryzens are sprinkled with a huge number of internal sensors. They pick up the tiniest of peak temperature spots and report this to monitoring software.

 

[Howdy]

I am not as bad as Howdy, who freaks when his GPU's go over 55C, but, uh, nope, I'm not ever going to remain calm with a 95 C reading on my processor.

That would be a VERY true statement!!! LOL

TR is running 61*C I'm not liking it at all!!! (according to the software)

 

[biodoc]

Temperatures are with in reason then?

The 3700X's are on linux so the MB's I have do not report temps or voltages. I do run the wraiths at full speed even though the procs are a base freq so I'm assuming they are fine. The 3900X is running a fresh install of linux mint on an NVME drive and after I was convinced the system was stable, I shut down the computer and plugged in the SSD drive and booted into Win 10 fully expecting sparks to fly but it booted up fine. I ran a few system updates and installed the AMD sys monitoring software and started running a few cosmo tasks. The temps seemed fine but I don't remember the exact temp. I can do a bit more of this later though.

 

[Markfw]

My 3900x is running 72c on a 240mm AIO @ 1.1 vcore and OC'ed to 4100 all core. Runs 24/7 100^ as you know.

My other 2 3900x's are on linux, so I only remember that is testing that were 70ish something. They are all on 240mm AIO's

Edit: Here is my Ryzen master WCG on 22 threads with 2 left for the GPU@100% Task manager says overall load 99%

 

[biodoc]

Here's a prime95 torture test (small FFT) with clock at 3.8GHz (CPB disabled) and wraith running full speed on my 3900X. Average vcore is 1.13.

EDIT: AVX2 is enabled in this test

The Ryzen Master application features to monitor for CPU

• Temperature (in Celsius)
• CPU Peak Speed (in MHz)
• PPT (CPU) - Total socket power (value in % of Max. Limit)
• TDC (CPU) - Sustained Current Limit CPU (value in % of Max. Limit)
• EDC (CPU) - Peak Current Limit CPU (value in % of Max. Limit)

 

[biodoc]

Here's mine on WCG full load.

PPT is at 99.4 W whereas on Prime95 AVX2 torture test PPT is at 126 W.

 

[Howdy]

Did you see this?

AMD Custom Power Plan Boosts Turbo Speeds Of Ryzen 3000 CPUs By 250MHz, Up To 4.6GHz Now Possible On Ryzen 9 3900X!

Here is something you don't see every day: 1usmus, an AMD Ryzen developer and author of DRAM Calculator for Ryzen, has revealed a new power plan that nets an average increase of 200-250MHz on AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors (including the upcoming Threadripper 3000 series based on the sRTX4...

wccftech.com

 

[StefanR5R]

Did you see this?
https://wccftech.com/amd-custom-pow...z-up-to-4-6ghz-now-possible-on-ryzen-9-3900x/

TPU have an article in which they cover the background, usage, and results very well. I understand that this specifically improves low-load situations. I haven't seen discussions of many-core loads with it; maybe I missed something but I think there is no influence on those.

This power plan addresses weaknesses of Windows' process scheduler + processor power management, which don't exist in this form on Linux. However, while reasonably recent Linux kernels support the notion of preferred cores, I am not up to date whether this is already implemented for Zen 2.

 

[StefanR5R]

Until then, does anybody know

• whether the usual Ryzen BIOSes have options to set a cTDP such that the processor firmware runs them at similar voltage/frequency levels as the server siblings?

The eco-mode = cTDP-down mode looks to be a convenient way to run Ryzen at ≈2/3rd of stock power while getting ≈3/4 of the computing throughput out of it. On Windows it is available to everybody through Ryzen Master; whether it will be directly accessible in all BIOSes too remains to be seen.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15062/amds-2019-fall-update/2