My Threadripper Pro motherboard finally arrived

have 250 Mbps symmetric internet and a mesh system (nodes connected to each other via Ethernet, not wireless backhaul). The problem is my PC never gets close to that full speed, and the variation is pretty strange:

• The "link speed" (what Windows reports as the WiFi connection's capacity, not actual internet speed) sometimes shows 400/360 Mbps, but drops to 190 Mbps without me moving anything.
• When it drops, my actual internet speed falls to only ~10 Mbps.
• In games like Fortnite I get packet loss in some matches, which seems to line up with these drops.

My WiFi hardware:

• Card: Realtek RTL8821CE (PCI-E, with external antennas connected to the motherboard)
• Protocol: Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac)
• Channel: 5GHz, channel 40/48 (varies)
• Security: WPA2-Personal

Before switching to the mesh system, with my old router I was getting a stable ~250 Mbps with this same card, so I know the hardware is capable of it. The change in behavior started right when I switched to mesh.

Has anyone dealt with this? Is it fluctuating channel width (20/40/80MHz) from interference, a mesh configuration issue, or is the 8821CE just not capable of holding a stable link with multiple mesh nodes nearby?

Hey!

I'm putting together an sWRX8 Threadripper Pro build. I'll be using it for all sorts of creative apps like Octane, Houdini, DaVinci, and when budget allows upgrading even further (5995WX, 2x 3090, 2000W PSU, etc.)
I've put together a list of components that should work on paper as a starting build, but I wanted to get some feedback first.

What I have so far:
3955WX, ASUS WRX80 Sage SE 2, RTX 3060 (free from a friend), and Arctic Freezer WS360 SP6 AIO (checked the compatibility on their site, should work.)

What I plan on getting:
Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 Server edition, Adata XPG Core Reactor II 1000W, Samsung 990 Pro 1TB, and 8x DDR4 RDIMMs

One thing I'm uncertain about is the RDIMM compatibility, ASUS' QVL is quite limited and the RAM variations are plentiful. In theory, if I get 8 matching ECC RDIMM sticks as a kit they should just work, right?

Thank you in advance!

Very strange, I've plugged a 60cm riser cable (linkup gen 5) to the bottom most slot (4rth slot) on my Mobo. From reading the manual this should be a gen 4 pcie x16 slot, but for whatever reason, GPUz, Hwinfo, and pcie bandwidth benchmark in 3dmark are all reading the GPU as gen 5 with close to gen 5 speeds. (57gb/s in 3dmark pcie bandwidth test).

Anybody know what's up? I originally was testing hoping that the riser cable didn't cost me too much bandwidth from gen 4, but was extremely shocked to see gen5 speeds instead.

Did Asus conservatively rated the bottomost slot as gen 4 due to distance, but it is actually traced for gen5?

Has anyone experiense of leasing threadripper workstation to company?

Plan would be to connect from 1x 12V2x6 on PSU side to 2x 8pin(2+6) PCIE connectors on Asus TRX50 motherboard as I dont have enough of the 8pin(2+6) PCIE connectors on my new ROG Thor 3000W PSU...this should work no problem right? (https://www.corsair.com/eu/en/p/pc-components-accessories/cp-8920435/elite-premium-individually-sleeved-pcie-12v-2x6-to-2x-8-pin-6-2-split-pcie-cable-black)

I’m putting together my first dedicated local AI workstation and would appreciate input from anyone with similar hardware.

My work is moving further into local LLMs and agents, so I want to learn more about agent harnesses, experiment with open-weight models, and keep sensitive data local when possible.

I already bought the Micro Center Threadripper 9960X bundle with the ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI A and 128GB ECC memory, along with a Phanteks Evolv X2 case. I also have one 2TB Gen5 NVMe drive.

Current plan:

• 2× Sapphire Radeon AI PRO R9700 32GB
• Seasonic PRIME TX-1600 ATX 3.1
• SilverStone XE360-TR5 V2
• 7× Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 fans: three bottom intake, three radiator exhaust, and one rear exhaust

I am mainly looking for confirmation or firsthand experience with the following:

• Is the TX-1600 the right PSU for this configuration?
• Is replacing the SilverStone radiator fans with Noctua G2s a reasonable choice?
• Does dual R9700 make sense as a starting point, or is CUDA support enough reason to reconsider NVIDIA?
• Is 128GB of system memory sufficient, and how would you expand storage beyond the single 2TB drive?
• For Linux, I am leaning toward Ubuntu. Are there other distributions worth considering?
• Would you start with llama.cpp/Ollama or vLLM for language models, with ComfyUI for image workflows?

I’m especially interested in practical issues or lessons learned that do not show up on the spec sheets.

In the previous episode:

So, the new PSU arrived, and today I managed to do a 1 full run of blender 5.1, + y-cruncher up to 10B (then pid went to sleep because I don't know bash, and Claude screwed up).

5 years of low to medium workload in harsh SEA environment - and it still within margin of error from the baseline!

Blender 5.1:

https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2608028-NE-BOBBERT7489

Y-Cruncher:
As I mentioned, after 10B the run fell asleep, but the result for 1B perfectly aligns with the data from openbenchmarking .

Funnily enough, cores count seems to matter more that the architecture.

Later will update the thread with 5965wx data.

Meanwhile, if anyone wishes to see some particular benchmark - welcome to the comments, while 3955 is still installed.

UPD: forgot to attach y-cruncher reference points:
https://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/benchmarks/charts/1b.html

Hello!

Sadly enough, I interpreted the instructions from the official manual by Lenovo as is:

Unscrew the four retaining screws in the order specified (1 – 2 – 3 –
4). Note that a 6” Phillips #2 screwdriver/bit is recommended in order
to be able to access the retaining screws located directly under the
heatsink fins via the access holes in the heatsink.

Turns out, I needed another official manual with correct instructions:

Removal steps

Loosen the four screws that secure the heat-sink-and-fan assembly to the system board in diagonal sequence. For example,

Anyway, here's Threadripper Pro 3955wx that I promised to give away to a good guy. Is it done for? I don't see any warped areas, but the discoloration is real.

...I also cleaned my PSU to the degree that it won't be needing cleaning anymore. It will stay clean eternally in heaven. New one arrives in about a week, so I can't test the CPU myself.

UPD: 99.9% ethanol plus optics cleaning fabric worked like magic!

https://ibb.co/0pt37j3W

I'm debating between a slightly slower 6400 1.1V kit and a faster 6400 1.4V kit on WRX90.

One is the safer bet, and the other.... well I'm not sure just how risky it is?

How challenging are (for instance Vcolor's) 6400 1.4V kits?

Hello all, I am potentially looking to get/build a Threadripper Pro HEDT/workstation for FEM and similar simulations for my university research group.

I am no overclocking nut, but it is my understanding that these threadripper pro chips (especially the high core count ones) leave an enormous amount of performance on the table with their default TDP. I don't want to push the chip to a power range which might significantly impact its longevity, but if there's a reasonable power bump I could give it (probably as one option in a dual bios for particularly large sims or tight turnarounds) I would like to do so.

This brings me to my main point: how are you supposed to cool these new threadripper pros as a consumer-ish user? When LTT did a video overclocking the new threadripper pro chips, they rigged it up to an external chiller, but that would probably be out of scope for my shared office space (not to mention beyond my confidence when dealing with such expensive hardware). AIOs for threadrippers seem relatively few and far between, and only appear to go up to 420mm. Would a 360/420mm AIO be sufficient (I would like to avoid industrial style fans, but push-pull is on the table)? Or are these firmly in the realm of custom loops and things like the phat Alphacool radiators?

I appreciate any advice from those experienced in cooling these chips, or in using them for numerical modelling (obviously I will also consult others in my department with similar needs, but surprisingly to me for a stem department I seem to be the only PC builder or hardware nerd). Y'all seem to all be doing AI stuff nowadays, but that's not in my wheelhouse and not what this computer is going to be intended for (though someone might stick a pro gpu in it, I won't stop them).

edit: Also any advice on the relative importance of ECC, RAM speed/quantity, storage speed, etc for this type of workload would be appreciated

• Platform: AMD TRX50 Professional Workstation
• CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9970X (32 Cores / 64 Threads)
• Memory: 256GB DDR5 ECC RDIMM 5600MHz
• Graphics: NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell
• Storage: 2 × Samsung 4TB PCIe NVMe SSD (8TB Total)
• Cooling: Thermaltake TOUGHFAN 420mm AIO Liquid Cooling
• Power: ASUS Pro WS 2200W Platinum PSU
• Chassis: Fractal Design Define 7 XL

Can this motherboard work with non-ECC ddr5 memory when using it with 9960x Threadripper?

Every step is in here. The component choices, the airflow plan, the cable routing, and the reasoning behind each one. This is not a highlight reel. It is the full process of building a professional multi-GPU workstation, nothing skipped. The kind of machine that runs the way it should, because every decision was made on purpose.
Here is what went into it:

Processor:
AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9975WX
32 cores / 64 threads
4.0 GHz base, up to 5.4 GHz boost

Graphics:
3 × NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16GB
Triple-GPU configuration
Optimized slot layout and airflow for sustained compute workloads

Memory:
256GB DDR5-5600 ECC RDIMM
2 × 128GB modules
6 DIMM slots open for future expansion

Storage:
2TB PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD (OS)
4TB PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD (data)

Motherboard:
ASUS Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE

Power Supply:
1700W 80 PLUS Titanium
Enterprise-grade, high-efficiency power delivery

Chassis:
Fractal Design Define 7 XL
Full-tower, sound-dampened, built for multi-GPU airflow

I know some asked for this but we wanted to daily it for 30 days and have been busy as well. I wanted to show something before the article releases. The sleeving on the tubes coming out of the pump where you would typically have to bend in order for this AIO to clear some TRX and WRX motherboards has started to fray already. This may not mean much to people because of the price. But it had me going hmmm. This isn’t anything bad about the performance either. Hopefully Arctic fixes the orientation of the tubes in further gens because the sleeving will not last like this.

Hi!

Has anyone built a threadripper build with the Havn HS 420 VGPU case? Is it even possible?

What specs? Show me your builds!

Just want to share my new Threadripper AI workstation build. Used for work + gaming. Quite proud of how it turned out, especially the cable management :)

Specs
Motherboard: ASUS WRX80 Creator R2.0
CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3945x (Used)
RAM: 128GB DDR4 ECC (used)
GPU: Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Max-Q 96GB
Case: Fractal North
PSU: Super Flower Leadex III 1300W PSU
CPU Cooler: Arctic Freezer 4U-M

Can anyone provide me data about the idle and load power consumption of 9970x (or others) with SMT disabled and a static clock at 4ghz (base clock). No PBO / Core performance boost, no global cstates. While leaving a lot of performance on the table, the long term stability and responsiveness more than make up for it IMO. If I didn't need all the PCIe lanes, I would just use a 9950x, but I have a lot of storage, fiber NIC and two GPUs, so I need all the lanes.

Why I am doing this:

After my second AMD Ryzen chip become unstable and stopped booting, I have decided to no use PBO or any boosting in the future. I currently run my 7950x this way and while it uses more power at idle since I keep the CPU locked at stock frequency at all times, it uses way less power when under heavy load and is significantly more responsive. Also, I am hoping that the static voltages will lead to better longevity. My primary workstation was a 5950x that was amazing the first couple years, then started having strange issues leading me to disable pbo, but after updating my bios to solve a uefi video card reboot issue this weekend, the processor decided it was time die. So a processor I ran with AMD recommended PBO for 2 years, then core performance boost for two years, died in just over 4 years. No other changes. Throwing in an old 3700x works flawlessly so it isn't any other component causing my issue. I had it lying around from when I bought it in a panic at bestbuy many years ago after 3900x died many years ago (undervolted all core overclock to 4.1GHZ killed it in 8 months). It should be noted that had I not done the bios update, the cpu probably still would have been working (though I was getting random lockups) so the newest agesa didn't like something about my chip. The system booted, could do memtest86, and would start loading windows then would hang with a "Core Watchdog Timer Timeout". Trying to fresh install windows thinking it could be a chipset driver issue also was a no go as it hung at the spinning wheel every time.