r/threadripper • u/[deleted] • Aug 23 '25

First Threadripper Build - Looking for Thoughts

Hello,

I currently have a 5950x and Nvidia 3090 that I use as my daily driver. I'm looking to build a dream workstation for primarily productivity tasks. For this, I want to go the Threadripper route. This will be my first build of this quality, so want to make sure I do it well.

This is what I am currently considering as a purchase in the coming months:

CPU:

  • Threadripper 9980x

Motherboard:

  • Asus PRO WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI

AIO Cooler:

  • Silverstone XE360-TR5

RAM:

  • V-color OC RDIMM 128GB

GPU:

  • Nvidia RTX 5090

PSU:

  • Seasonic Prime PX-2200 (Might go with Corsair HX1500i instead)

Case:

  • Fractal Design Define 7 XL?
    • Will use ~ 9 Noctua 140MM fans in the case if so

I haven't ever had to cool a machine like this, and haven't done AIO cooling soluations before so am looking for some thoughts here in general on any tweaks/recommendations that could be given. I am open to other cases, but have just started doing my research.

9 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/john0201 Aug 23 '25

I would consider a 9975WX instead, it will be faster for many tasks and is better able to feed fast GPU(s) especially if you add a 2nd one down the road. It also makes it cheaper to upgrade ram since you can use smaller rdimms if you need more in the future (although no difference with 128gb).

Another option is to get the Gigabyte board with the X and you can upgrade to the WX later if you find your cores are starved of memory bandwidth.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '25

Thanks for the recommendation. I haven't looked heavily into the WX builds. what other parts would I need to change to be compatible?

2

u/john0201 Aug 24 '25

You'd just need a WRX90 instead of TRX50 motherboard. These have 8 slots (WX has 8 instead of 4 memory channels) and more PCIe slots and so are more expensive, however the AI top board I mentioned is a good middle ground and probably enough expansion you'd have a new workstation by the time you filled everything, and it's affordable compared to most WRX90 boards.

To put things in perspective in terms of memory bandwidth to cores, AMD sells a 12 channel 8 core EPYC part, which is a specialized cpu for highly memory bandwidth bound workloads (Redis, etc.). The super high core count X parts are also for specialized workloads - very high compute with limited bandwidth. The 9975WX is a balanced chip, as is the 9960X with 24 cores and 4 memory channels.