Ryzen

[LunarMist]

Anything needing Explorer hangs for 30 seconds or a minute when a network device is not available. I experience that every day.

I don't under that stuff Merc mentioned. If it is set up on one computer, can the SSDs be moved to a completely different one and the data on the "array" of three drives still be accessed?

 

[Mercutio]

Losing hardware doesn't help when I'd be out my workstation for however long it takes for them to get around to replacing it, plus having to fight over whether it was installed correctly in the first place. Which I assure you they will do.

I'd be more than a little out of sorts to lose a $2000 CPU, $500 in RAM and a $700 motherboard + whatever my GPUs are because whatever sealed water cooler decided to piddle out a little coolant.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't under that stuff Merc mentioned. If it is set up on one computer, can the SSDs be moved to a completely different one and the data on the "array" of three drives still be accessed?

Here's an example:

I have four top level "Pictures" folders.

Pictures\
Photos
Inputs
Internet
Outputs

Photos are personal images that I've downloaded or saved from elsewhere.
Inputs are where SDcards go when they're imported, plus temp folders for TIFFs and other working space.
Internet is just random crap I've saved from the web or something.
Outputs are where things go after they've been processed from Inputs.

Photos and Internet actually live on D:\data\Pictures. And that's fine and good and normal. You can just relocate that folder in Windows in the normal way.
Inputs and Outputs live on their own storage volumes, which I create like this:

mklink -d d:\data\Pictures\Inputs \\?\Volume{some-windows-guid}\Inputs

... using the GUID because I'm too lazy to assign some of my storage its own drive letter.

What this means, from a functional standpoint, is that Outputs sits on a 2TB drive of its own, and Inputs sits on a 4TB RAID0, and both are presented to my desktop as part of the regular Pictures Library, along with the "Pictures" Data folder that sits on my NAS.

There's a process that ensures that anything that's on Outputs gets mirrored on my NAS. The assumption I make about Inputs is that they can be regenerated from the original SD card if I care that much, but I do mirror a potion of it, the "picks" that get imported for editing, as well as the actual Capture One libraries I use, which have their own, separate directory structure.

How does all this work with Libraries?

When I open Pictures, I see the massive list of personal photos that live on my NAS, the personal photos I've saved relatively recently and all the stuff that lives on those two independent volumes (disks). For the most part, between volumes and Libraries, I don't have to think about where my data actually is. I either want to see it all in one place, or I can treat it like it's all the same thing. That's why those things working together are so useful.

 

[LunarMist]

I understand you can assign folders to different and multiple places, but what is the RAID 0, a Windows tool or something else?
I have tried the JBOD for multiple drives, but like HDDS, SSDs do not like being nearly full.

 

[LunarMist]

Those directory redirectors are why I have my data stored on my NAS and it's seamless. Though Windows does like to freak out a little when I don't have a network connection, so I'm assuming I might have just done something slightly wrong. It's a situation that happens so minimally often that I don't really mind when it does, especially now that I'm working on a project laptop I can daily instead of firing up my main desktop and sucking up 150W at idle just to browse the web. Since my main doesn't really perform any server functions anymore I can get away with only turning it on when I really need it.

Back to the topic at hand, yeah, consumer hardware makes those assumptions and usually they're right. It also, as a bonus, lets them budget-segment the hell out of professional hardware that provides the IO people who actually use it really need. U.2/U.3 is a standard that never really made it into the consumer space because at the sizes consumers use, m.2 was plenty sufficient.

On the subject of cooling, liquid cooling has come a long way since I tossed my MasterLiquid Lite 240 for the pump noise. You can get reasonably safe coolers that barely make any noise at all. The companies that make AIOs typically have warranty programs in place that I believe will replace any hardware you had that would have been killed by a leak, but these days I'm pretty sure they're using something that won't kill your hardware as a coolant anyway. I still personally will never choose to do it again, but if a platform all but requires it, it's no longer a reason for me to not consider that platform anymore.

NAS is fine for bulk storage, but slow for working a drive with lots of reading/writing.

Warranties for liability of anything beyond the defective part are dicey at best. Ask anyone who has tried to make a claim for $100K against their UPS or power strip failing.

 

[Mercutio]

I understand you can assign folders to different and multiple places, but what is the RAID 0, a Windows tool or something else?
I have tried the JBOD for multiple drives, but like HDDS, SSDs do not like being nearly full.

It's a volume I created with the X399 firmware. It doesn't NEED to be RAID0 because it'll never be running so fast that I need 5GB/s+ transfer rates, but I did want the single volume to be large enough to not have to worry about capacity. If that volume craps out, it's not the end of the world; the data all exists in other places or can be easily recreated.

 

[sedrosken]

Losing hardware doesn't help when I'd be out my workstation for however long it takes for them to get around to replacing it, plus having to fight over whether it was installed correctly in the first place. Which I assure you they will do.

I'd be more than a little out of sorts to lose a $2000 CPU, $500 in RAM and a $700 motherboard + whatever my GPUs are because whatever sealed water cooler decided to piddle out a little coolant.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer air cooling myself as well, and all else equal I will obviously use it over liquid cooling. I'm just saying that platforms that need it are no longer completely out of the running just because they need it in my mind. Granted, they're usually out of consideration for power concerns long before you reach the point where liquid cooling makes sense.

 

[Mercutio]

Just a fun reminder to toss in that Intel expects 13th gen i7s to draw 250W.

 

[LunarMist]

It's a volume I created with the X399 firmware. It doesn't NEED to be RAID0 because it'll never be running so fast that I need 5GB/s+ transfer rates, but I did want the single volume to be large enough to not have to worry about capacity. If that volume craps out, it's not the end of the world; the data all exists in other places or can be easily recreated.

It must be RAID 0, JBOD, or individual no? I'm trying to understand where all those bytes go. What you don't want is one drive filling up while the others are mostly empty. You barely get 1500 MB/sec. with a decent M.2 drive after the SLC buffer is filled and worse when it is close to full.

 

[Mercutio]

The impact of it being JBOD or RAID0 is functionally the same. I just used the hardware to make a volume instead of using storage spaces or LVM within the OS in order to have a large enough space to work in. I wouldn't have bothered if 4TB consumer drives were affordable.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm thinking of building a system with the 7950x if possible, but the RAMs are confusing. I can live with 64GB for now. Is it correct that four modules are worse than two in speed due to some BS with the chipset? Which RAMs will work with the AMD and be best in 32x2GB configuration?

 

[sedrosken]

From what I understand the issue with more than two DDR5 modules on AM5 is more a latency thing and isn't even that big a deal, but if it's important to you then definitely work around it. I haven't heard anything about RAM incompatibilities like early 1st-gen Ryzen where you essentially used Samsung B-die or nothing, so use what's the best deal from a reputable manufacturer on your end, I don't think it matters.

 

[sedrosken]

Okay, I was very wrong. Apparently for everything after 2 dual-rank DIMMs the max clock (not latency) goes down to 3600. Not great especially since Zen4 still uses the DRAM clock to derive infinity fabric speeds so you definitely want 5200MHz or better on the DRAM.

 

[LunarMist]

Are 32GB modules always of 2nd rank design? I was hoping to have 128GB sometime in my life, but this latest performance failure by the AMD is not conducive. OTOH, Intel sucks too much power for airy coolers.

I cannot find anything on the AMD site for which RAM is the baseline frequency. 4800 seems to the standard for 32GB modules, but the 16GB are 5200 or even 6000. However, 4x16 will suck even more than 4800 due to the crappy chipsets. Most "tech" websites only care about slaughter games and use minimal amounts of RAM. The pros are all buying Macs (no RAM allowed). It was a lot easier years ago with DDR4 and others before then.

 

[Mercutio]

There are purportedly real benefits in holding out for higher bandwidth RAM on AMD's architecture. I have DDR4 3600 CL18 RAM in my workstation and I've never used anything else with it. I believe DDR5-7200 is the highest speed RAM currently approved by JEDEC, so that's probably the stuff you're looking for on your next AMD system. The RAM itself is different, but you're getting the workstationy goodness of ECC out of it, which is probably worth the a minute trade-off in latency anyway.

If nothing else, remember that you'll be able to double or quadruple your RAM over the life of your system. Buying that Mac Studio means a $6000 computer and learning to love external drives and shoving most of the storage on some giant, stupid NAS.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm not seeing any 32GB actually qualified very high. It seems most are 4000 or 4800 SPD and OC to 5600 with Intel XMP. With four modules they are slower. Very few support the EXPO, which apparently is needed (AMD doesn't like XMP?). The X670E mainboards indicate 128GB max (4x slow modules), so how am I going to have more RAM in the future?

 

[LunarMist]

Most of my storage is on several giant NAS.
In order to minimize the effort and costs, I may just add another 2TB M.2 and run 3x2 TB in RIAD 0 as WIP storage since the X670E boards have four M.2 slots.

 

[LunarMist]

Are there any more recent thoughts on the Ryzens 4? Is there anything that should make me reconsider?
The plan would be this, utilizing as much as I can from the current system.

X670E Motherboard w/3x long PCIe slots and 4x M.2 slots
7950X and Nocturnal D15
2x32GB RAM (Crucial or ?)
3060Ti (old) Upgrade later.
LSI RAID controller (old)
Intel X520-DA2 (old) for NAS units
970 Pro (old) for boot
2x 2TB 970 EVO Plus (1st gen, old) WIP data

Add another 2TB NVMe in RAID 0 to make 6TB (WD SN750 or 980 Pro?)​

Corvair RM850x PS (old) Is this adequate?
Current case and accessories

 

[sedrosken]

Right now I honestly think the move, if you're building new, is to buy Intel. I say this as an AMD fan -- the value's just not there yet for Zen4, I don't think. If you're near (or can bully someone who is into buying on your behalf) a Microcenter, they're still doing really good combo deals for the 12700K and 12900K if I'm recalling correctly. No, it's not the 13th gen, but the value aspect is fantastic.

But, if you've got your heart set on it, that doesn't look like a bad plan at all. Only thing I'd look at is perhaps changing your power supply if you're going for a newer, higher end more power hungry nVidia card in the future -- the transients from their higher end chips brought even good 1kW PSUs to their knees and with that new 12-pin disaster I'm thinking it'd be better to buy a supply that has the port natively instead of relying on the adapters that will come with the cards.

 

[Mercutio]

There's some grumbling that content creation applications are better optimized for Intel, still, but the waters are muddy enough between the two to shrug and pick whichever. Most of the advice about what to buy right now is aimed at gamers and their needs are different regardless.

In general that seems like a really solid build plan to me. AMD made the move to DDR5 and has a long history of supporting CPU sockets for several generations, so you'll be in a good place to bump up to your CPU in another year if you feel like it.

Your PSU is probably overkill so that'll be fine too.

 

[LunarMist]

Right now I honestly think the move, if you're building new, is to buy Intel. I say this as an AMD fan -- the value's just not there yet for Zen4, I don't think. If you're near (or can bully someone who is into buying on your behalf) a Microcenter, they're still doing really good combo deals for the 12700K and 12900K if I'm recalling correctly. No, it's not the 13th gen, but the value aspect is fantastic.

But, if you've got your heart set on it, that doesn't look like a bad plan at all. Only thing I'd look at is perhaps changing your power supply if you're going for a newer, higher end more power hungry nVidia card in the future -- the transients from their higher end chips brought even good 1kW PSUs to their knees and with that new 12-pin disaster I'm thinking it'd be better to buy a supply that has the port natively instead of relying on the adapters that will come with the cards.

The main reason for AMD is that I'd really like to stay with Windows 10 for another 2.5 years and Intel uses more power. I'm not going to use liquid cooling, ever. If I have to do a clean installation of 11, then we are looking at 2024 when the 14th gen Intel arrives which supposedly is more efficient. But I am not young and don't have time to wait too long for the next best thing. I am also in a bind with storage space since my WIP is larger than 4TB and I can only use 2 slots.

I can live without what the gamebirds consider a high-powered GPU. The rumours indiocate 285W for the RTX 4070 (85W more than the 3060Ti). Is that really too much for a RM850x? I have many items on the UPS system and that is probably more of a limit than the PSU.

 

[LunarMist]

There's some grumbling that content creation applications are better optimized for Intel, still, but the waters are muddy enough between the two to shrug and pick whichever. Most of the advice about what to buy right now is aimed at gamers and their needs are different regardless.

In general that seems like a really solid build plan to me. AMD made the move to DDR5 and has a long history of supporting CPU sockets for several generations, so you'll be in a good place to bump up to your CPU in another year if you feel like it.

Your PSU is probably overkill so that'll be fine too.

Yes, I notice that everything online is about games. The heavy lifting for photo work is done by MACs since the post Intel era, but I still need to use older programs.

In Windows 10 can I use the same boot drive without a reinstall, update it and then add a new license code afterwards? That would be worth at least $1000 in reduced human suffering.

 

[sedrosken]

You might not even need to enter a new license code, actually. Assuming your drive isn't BitLockered (or of course you have the key) it should be pretty straightforward, Windows should detect and install the new hardware fine. That reasoning for AMD is pretty fair and honestly something I hadn't considered, they aren't messing around with the P/E core arrangement like Intel is so the scheduler on 10 is still competent with it.

That RM850 ought to be fine now that I know what GPU you're targetting -- the 4070 ought to be perfectly fine on an 850W. I was only concerned because I figured with the rest of the system being so high end you might have been targetting a 3090 or 4090 and those do have the aforementioned transient current issue. Just be careful with that dual 8-pin to 12-pin adapter.

 

[Mercutio]

Basically as long as the chipset is from the same family and you're using the same primary disk controller, Windows should be untroubled by a hardware switch. You'll have to reactivate any time you switch a motherboard unless the NIC connected to the internet did not change. Windows 10 and 11 can even go back and forth between AMD and Intel without THAT much of a hassle. Switching discrete GPUs still causes headaches though.

 

[sedrosken]

Basically as long as the chipset is from the same family and you're using the same primary disk controller, Windows should be untroubled by a hardware switch. You'll have to reactivate any time you switch a motherboard unless the NIC connected to the internet did not change. Windows 10 and 11 can even go back and forth between AMD and Intel without THAT much of a hassle. Switching discrete GPUs still causes headaches though.

Yeah, he'll need to reactivate, but I've had success just asking it to do so without changing the code. Not sure how legal that is -- I'm left to assume the answer is not very -- but it's worked in the past. And yes, changing GPUs is a bit of a hassle, but I've never been in so bad a situation that DDU-nuking every video driver from the system and then trying the new drivers for the new GPU didn't do the trick. Here's that if you need it.

 

[LunarMist]

I will keep parts of the old setup as a second system. I have legit Win 7 Pro disks. Don't they still work for 10?

 

[sedrosken]

They do still activate -- hell, they'll still activate 11 -- but I'm concerned as to the dubious legal status of those licenses. Granted, if MS were so fussed by it, I'd imagine they'd stop accepting them.

 

[LunarMist]

Are the 4TB WD SN850x still considered a good level of drive for data (mostly WIP)? Maybe I could RAID 0 a couple of those and then add a third drive later. If I just add 2TB that will be the end of the line and 6TB is a weird amount to back up.

 

[Mercutio]

I want to say that 6TB is no weirder than any other amount but also that 6TB seems like an insane amount of work in progress. But then, so does 4TB. On the other hand, I have a few video projects that have over 100GB worth of associated files and I could see that backlog stacking up pretty easily.

I have not yet had an issue with a WD SSD but, you know, fatwah.

 

[LunarMist]

A concern is that they use two sided boards so I'm not sure about the heat on the bottom. I think the old motherborads don't have two sided cooling, but maybe the new ones do.

 

[Mercutio]

There are heat sink shells you can put around your m.2 drives. Sabrent makes heat sinks that include copper heat pipes. They aren't cheap but they really do help.

 

[LunarMist]

Are there any specifically that you use and can recommend? I tried one once off the Amazon and it did not fit the chips (not square to the PCB) even with the droopy pad.

 

[Mercutio]

I've tried several but I've passed the ones I don't like as well on to builds for other people. I know for sure I have a couple Be Quiet units in my chassis right now.

 

[LunarMist]

In the x570 the drives are hot as hell under loads. The bottom chips are not connected and it is not feasible to use the 3rd party M.2 heatsinks since they are under PCIe cards including the video.

 

[Mercutio]

Every single thing in my chassis is pretty hot and nvme drives are among the hotter elements on a motherboard anyway. I suspect you're going to have to do some amount of trial and error to figure out what works best.

Last time I was running a video encoding session, I think my on-board drives were hovering just under 59C, but at that point both my CPU and one of my GPUs were also running full out. 60C is more or less the best case scenario for an nvme drive under load.

 

[LunarMist]

They are 47-50°C idle and 88-90°C under full write load. After further testing, the highest observed in natural use is about 65, so maybe that is acceptable for now. Some of the new motherboads have thermal pads for both sides.

 

[sedrosken]

Yeah, NVME drives are just kind of hot all around. Most are designed to be able to continue running with no cooling whatsoever(ie. in laptops). I wouldn't worry too much about it, though i did put a small passive heatsink on mine when I installed it a year or so back.

 

[LunarMist]

I am confused about the RAMs. I cannot find the specific part numbers on the mainboard compatibility list at the usual stores. Does it have to be on the list? Normally I buy the Corsairs or Crucials. From what I understand 2x32GB would be operating at 5200 speeds.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't see anything for Gigabyte X670 motherboards that is from Gigabyte itself, but Crucial lists the modules it has qualified itself.

 

[LunarMist]

I was planning on the MSI X670E. The non-E versions of the chipset are inadequate for the onboard PCIe yet many X670E are eATX. I want that bisected PCIe with x8/x8/x4 and the 6 SATA ports.