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Really feelin' the itch to do a build here. Have been holding off on a Ryzen build for far too long - partly due to the fact that I don't really need an upgrade (it's just a "nice to have"), and partly due to the cost of DDR4.

The Ryzen 2700X looks like a pretty darned sweet upgrade from the FX-8350 I'm still running though...

Well don't forget AMD will be announcing the 3000 series shortly, so you may want to hold off and see how much better the new ones are before you take the plunge. At the very least, it will drop the price on the 2000 series ones.

Heh... yeah, good point. I've waited this long already, so what's another couple of months?

Thoughts on motherboards? I've gone with mid-range Asus on my last few builds (the FX-8350 system I'm posting this from is hosted by an Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0), and have not regretted it. I'd prefer something that supports ECC at a price point of ~$150 or below. The ASUS Prime X370-Pro looks like a reasonable bet, or I'd be willing to consider something from ASRock since they seem to be getting decent reviews.

Planning on an M.2 SSD boot/application drive, and spinning rust (pair of drives in RAID-1) for bulk storage. Leaning Crucial for the SSD (I'm still pissed off at Samsung), and WD or Toshiba for the spinning rust (Seagate has also pissed me off recently).

32GB RAM is the goal, but may start with 16GB to keep initial costs down and upgrade a few months down the road depending on what RAM prices do.

"I'd prefer something that supports ECC at a price point of ~$150 or below."

Well, wouldn't you know it, I just finished building a new Ryzen system with ECC!!!! Literally one week ago!!!!

So as far as X470 motherboards supporting ECC go, I know of two sets:
(1) Almost anything Asrock (both X470 and B450), and
(2) The Gigabyte X470 Gaming Aorus 7 Wifi - specifically this particular board, and not any others from Gigabyte

I see the Asus X370 board you mentioned does support ECC, but it looks like Asus's X470 boards do NOT support ECC. And I'd recommend X470 so that you can take better advantage of XFR2 and Precision Boost 2.

I wanted X470, and since every X470 board is automatically premium, it was hard to choose. You can't really go wrong. So between the Asrock and Gigabyte, I chose the Gigabyte because it has heatpipes on its motherboard heatsinks, and because it has lots of thermal sensors all over the place. It was really a toss-up. But I'm very happy with my choice. Still, take a look at all the Asrock boards to see if you like them better. If you're trying to cap the motherboard at $150, then the Gigabyte is too expensive - it's $220 - but you can probably get an Asrock B450 within your price range.

In fact, on Newegg, the Asrock X470 Master SLI/AC is exactly $149.99, and the ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 is just barely above your price range, at $157.99. And the ASRock Fatal1ty B450 GAMING K4 is $99.99. Interestingly, the Master SLI/AC seems to have the most features: it has integrated Wifi and Bluetooth, which for me makes it a better deal. So take a look at Asrock's boards.

The ECC is installed in my Gigabyte and as far as I can tell, it's working. I created a BAT file with the line "cmd /k wmic memphysical get memoryerrorcorrection", and it returns "6", which is supposed to mean "multi-bit ECC."

By the way, it's hard to find high-speed unbuffered ECC. Most of it is 2400 MHz, but I found that Kingston sells 2666 Mhz:
(1) 8 GB: https://shop.kingston.com/partsinfo.asp ... M26ES8/8ME
(2) 16 GB: https://shop.kingston.com/partsinfo.asp ... 26ED8/16ME

I bought two sticks of the 16 GB.

If you want to search for a different size, go to https://www.kingston.com/US/memory/serv ... y-standard, then click "Show All Locked Build Server Memory" (instead of searching for compatibility with a specific motherboard), then tell it the module capacity you want (there are no matched pairs, so don't try to specific a kit capacity), tell it 2666 MHz, tell it unbuffered, and tell it DIMM form-factor. I see only 8 and 16 GB.

Anyway, I bought two sticks of the 16 GB, and it worked right out of the box. I was also able to overclock it without any memory errors. I went up to 3000 MHz, didn't see any performance benefits in the programs I use, so I just reverted it back to stock. I was also able to tighten up the timings quite a bit, but again, I didn't see any performance benefits in the programs I use, so I just went back to stock. (After all, the whole point of ECC is stability, so I'm not going to overclock and risk even the slightest chance of instability unless there's a very clear and meaningful performance benefit. I won't overclock just for the hell of it. But just in case you care, this Kingston 2666 MHz ECC DDR4 is not only the fastest stock I could find, but it overclocks too.)

Thanks!

FWIW, it looks like the Asus PRIME X470-PRO has ECC support, and is close to my target price range. But definitely will be looking at the ASRock boards too.

Didn't know about the availability of faster unbuffered ECC from Kingston; the price even looks about the same as the 2400 stuff.

And on a mostly unrelated (other than it being a motherboard thing) note, it amuses me that current motherboards still have legacy COM port headers on them. Presumably this is done to accommodate legacy peripherals that don't work well with USB RS-232 converters.

just brew it! wrote:

Thanks!

FWIW, it looks like the Asus PRIME X470-PRO has ECC support, and is close to my target price range.

Hmm, how did I miss that? Let me check the manufacturer's specifications: "ECC Memory (ECC mode) support varies by CPU."

. . . hmm, that's kind of vague, but I guess that means it supports ECC? Personally, I'd prefer an explicit statement that ECC is supported, but I guess you're right. Thanks.

Oh, just to clarify, when I say that I went up to 3000 MHz on the Kingston, I don't mean that that's as high as I got before I started getting errors. I mean that I got that high, saw no performance gain, so I just went back to 2666 MHz. So it's possible it could go even higher.

Also, I just looked at my notes, and I got to 3200 MHz, not 3000. My fault for my faulty memory.

So I got to 3200 MHz, didn't see a benefit, so I went back to stock instead of trying to go even higher.

One thing to be careful with ASUS boards is last few generations they have been using both substandard cooling on their VRMS along with really poor VRMs. The first gen threadripper boards had such bad cooling they couldnt run the high core ones without the VRMs overheating and shutting down. They have been doing a lot of corner cutting on their boards and they are not as good as they used to be years ago. Just be sure to check out what you are getting before you buy anything.

mikewinddale wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Thanks!

FWIW, it looks like the Asus PRIME X470-PRO has ECC support, and is close to my target price range.

Hmm, how did I miss that? Let me check the manufacturer's specifications: "ECC Memory (ECC mode) support varies by CPU."

. . . hmm, that's kind of vague, but I guess that means it supports ECC? Personally, I'd prefer an explicit statement that ECC is supported, but I guess you're right. Thanks.

It's because the APUs don't support ECC.

What about using StoreMI? I'm looking at linking a 1TB NVMe SSD + 5TB drive together and then having an additional 6TB drive to back that up.

M3rcy wrote:

What about using StoreMI? I'm looking at linking a 1TB NVMe SSD + 5TB drive together and then having an additional 6TB drive to back that up.

In general I am not a fan of proprietary storage solutions which are tied to a specific motherboard. What happens if the motherboard dies? Also a non-starter for me since this system will need to be capable of running Linux.

Might be a reasonable option for some people though.

StoreMI only uses up to 128GB of SSD

just brew it! wrote:

M3rcy wrote:

What about using StoreMI? I'm looking at linking a 1TB NVMe SSD + 5TB drive together and then having an additional 6TB drive to back that up.

In general I am not a fan of proprietary storage solutions which are tied to a specific motherboard. What happens if the motherboard dies? Also a non-starter for me since this system will need to be capable of running Linux.

Might be a reasonable option for some people though.

Having a full backup (which I would have either way) on the 6TB drive makes me not worry too much about the first concern. But, yeah, if you need Linux, a proprietary Windows-only, tiered storage solution wouldn't be the way to go.

Just put together a rig with an MSI B450 Tomahawk, no idea if it has ECC support, but one nice thing it did have was secure erase built into the bios. I actually had to use it and worked out good. (ssd was mbr and w10 wouldn't install, it wanted GPT)

M3rcy wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

M3rcy wrote:

What about using StoreMI? I'm looking at linking a 1TB NVMe SSD + 5TB drive together and then having an additional 6TB drive to back that up.

In general I am not a fan of proprietary storage solutions which are tied to a specific motherboard. What happens if the motherboard dies? Also a non-starter for me since this system will need to be capable of running Linux.

Might be a reasonable option for some people though.

Having a full backup (which I would have either way) on the 6TB drive makes me not worry too much about the first concern. But, yeah, if you need Linux, a proprietary Windows-only, tiered storage solution wouldn't be the way to go.

I'm also somewhat distrustful of niche proprietary storage solutions like that in general; since they don't get pounded on by millions of users daily, they are more likely to have latent bugs which could result in data corruption. Sure, backups can protect you from that too; but only if you notice the corruption when it occurs, and don't overwrite your last good backup with bad data. (You can protect against the overwrite issue by rotating your backups, but with only a single 6TB backup drive it doesn't sound like you're planning to do that.)

anotherengineer wrote:

Just put together a rig with an MSI B450 Tomahawk, no idea if it has ECC support, but one nice thing it did have was secure erase built into the bios. I actually had to use it and worked out good. (ssd was mbr and w10 wouldn't install, it wanted GPT)

Sounds like a useful feature.

On a related note, flash memory is cheap enough these days that I'm surprised nobody has started putting a subset of UBCD right on the motherboard, accessible via a menu in the EFI. Would be a nice selling point for tweakers/enthusiasts.

LocalCitizen wrote:

StoreMI only uses up to 128GB of SSD

I'm reading 256GB for StoreMI (It's 128GB for FuzeDrive Basic), but yeah, I'd forgotten that I was looking at purchasing the Plus version from the vendor to get the full 1TB support.

just brew it! wrote:

M3rcy wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

In general I am not a fan of proprietary storage solutions which are tied to a specific motherboard. What happens if the motherboard dies? Also a non-starter for me since this system will need to be capable of running Linux.

Might be a reasonable option for some people though.

Having a full backup (which I would have either way) on the 6TB drive makes me not worry too much about the first concern. But, yeah, if you need Linux, a proprietary Windows-only, tiered storage solution wouldn't be the way to go.

I'm also somewhat distrustful of niche proprietary storage solutions like that in general; since they don't get pounded on by millions of users daily, they are more likely to have latent bugs which could result in data corruption. Sure, backups can protect you from that too; but only if you notice the corruption when it occurs, and don't overwrite your last good backup with bad data. (You can protect against the overwrite issue by rotating your backups, but with only a single 6TB backup drive it doesn't sound like you're planning to do that.)

I'll have sequential backups going. I doubt I'll be anywhere close to filling those drives up for quite a while, so I'll have room for a number of backups.

Also, Enmotus have scaled Fuzedrive down from their enterprise vSSD software. It's got a pedigree.

M3rcy wrote:

I'll have sequential backups going. I doubt I'll be anywhere close to filling those drives up for quite a while, so I'll have room for a number of backups.

Also, Enmotus have scaled Fuzedrive down from their enterprise vSSD software. It's got a pedigree.

Ahh, OK. Didn't know that. It should be pretty solid then, unless they've managed to screw something up when they scaled it down.

If you want to agonize over numbers without any testing, you can look up the X470 VRM list to see if you're really buying a proper VRM for your Ryzen.

If you want 144 Hz gaming, I would say that is still intel's territory.

just brew it! wrote:

Really feelin' the itch to do a build here. Have been holding off on a Ryzen build for far too long - partly due to the fact that I don't really need an upgrade (it's just a "nice to have"), and partly due to the cost of DDR4.

The Ryzen 2700X looks like a pretty darned sweet upgrade from the FX-8350 I'm still running though...

A few points:
a. The X470 is probably not worth the upgrade over the B450. Especially if you'd rather invest the money elsewhere.
b. I can confirm that the Asus Crosshair VI that I use has visible ECC support in the BIOS, although I haven't actually bought ECC sticks (yet). All the options are there though (enable/disable and a few other more esoteric things). Asus has typically offered ECC support since the Bulldozer days, but do check.
c. The best ECC memory is the same Samsung B-die that you find in high-end overclocker kits, so the 2400 speed label is just a label, nothing more. I read here in the TR forums that a good choice for B-die ECC RAM is Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CRC. Many people can push it to 3000+ at CL15 or below, but your mileage may vary. I intend to buy a pair of these when I find the $400 or so.
d. It's probably not a bad moment to upgrade. Even though AMD is expected to launch 3xxx CPUs soon, they probably will be APUs based on Zen+ (note: the 2200/2400 are based on 14nm Zen cores so there is an obvious place for a 3200/3400). The full-fat 3700X etc will probably not launch before the end of the year. Plus, I have seen the 2700X go for very cheap ($329 here, probably sub-$300 in the USA).
e. Having upgraded from the 8350 to the 1700X I can tell you that the difference in performance is easily perceptible and definitely worth it for most workloads. In fact, for a lot of things you may become GPU or SSD-limited.

The 3000 series ryzen will be based on ryzen 2 not ryzen plus. It will also be on TSMC 7 nm not glo flo 12, so it should be a massive improvement.

The Ryzen 3000 Apu's are Ryzen+ on 12nm.
The Ryzen 2000 Apu's are Ryzen on 14nm
Amd said that Epyc (Rome) will be the first 7nm Ryzen 2, so Ryzen 3000 CPU will only be announced some time after that.
rumour is CES will see Ryzen 3000 Apu, not CPU

LocalCitizen wrote:

The Ryzen 3000 Apu's are Ryzen+ on 12nm.
The Ryzen 2000 Apu's are Ryzen on 14nm
Amd said that Epyc (Rome) will be the first 7nm Ryzen 2, so Ryzen 3000 CPU will only be announced some time after that.
rumour is CES will see Ryzen 3000 Apu, not CPU

Yes, this is exactly what I was trying to explain above. The naming is unfortunately a bit confusing. So no 7nm Zen 2 Ryzen coming soon in my opinion.

cegras wrote:

If you want to agonize over numbers without any testing, you can look up the X470 VRM list to see if you're really buying a proper VRM for your Ryzen.

If you want 144 Hz gaming, I would say that is still intel's territory.

In real life most people are not going to pair a $300 CPU with a $1200 GPU and play at 1080p. In practice, most people are GPU limited in games, not CPU limited. I believe I'd see a much bigger increase at 1440p framerates exchanging my RX 480 for an RTX 2070 than exchanging my 1700X with a 9900K.

You don't mention (or I'm blind) of your intent to overclock or let it do its own thing. My take on what i was researching is X470 boards tend to be coupled with better VRMs if you are intending to overclock and need extra PCIe lanes for another graphics card/multiple storage/add on cards. Otherwise B450 boards are good enough, with the consensus being MSI boards having an edge with VRMs. But they lack some voltage control option that might impact on fine tuning an overclock.

In the end, I opted for a Asus Strix B450-F because of a Canadian boxing day sale brought it down to budget board range and I prefer them. Until then, I was leaning toward the Gigabyte X470 Ultra Gaming Pro. Like you my experience so far has been positive with Asus boards, though read plenty online that seems like they are sliding.

I bought with an R5 2600 and my plan is to upgrade to a R7 3xxx when they available.

ptsant wrote:

Asus has typically offered ECC support since the Bulldozer days, but do check.

They've actually had it on most (if not all) of their AMD boards back to the Socket AM2 days (excluding the FMx APU boards, since the APUs do not support ECC). It's one of the reasons Asus is at the top of my short list.

Things got weird with AM4 though. There were a lot of questions early on whether Asus supported ECC on AM4, and I believe it depended on mobo model and/or BIOS version. ASRock seemed to have more consistent support (at least as of when I looked into the AM4 motherboard situation a year or so ago).

ptsant wrote:

I have seen the 2700X go for very cheap ($329 here, probably sub-$300 in the USA).

Microcenter has a $30 discount if you buy a CPU and motherboard together; on a 2700X bundle this effectively does bring the CPU below $300. The downside is you can't get that deal online (you have to go to one of their B&M locations). Fortunately, there's one not too far from where I live so I could actually do that.

ptsant wrote:

Having upgraded from the 8350 to the 1700X I can tell you that the difference in performance is easily perceptible and definitely worth it for most workloads. In fact, for a lot of things you may become GPU or SSD-limited.

Good to know.

Village wrote:

You don't mention (or I'm blind) of your intent to overclock or let it do its own thing.

Will probably run at stock settings; this is what I typically do for my primary rig, because I value stability above all else. That said, up until the point where I actually cut over to it as my primary rig I may play around to see what sort of headroom it has, just to satisfy my own curiosity. So OC capabilities are not high on my list of priorities.

Village wrote:

My take on what i was researching is X470 boards tend to be coupled with better VRMs if you are intending to overclock and need extra PCIe lanes for another graphics card/multiple storage/add on cards. Otherwise B450 boards are good enough, with the consensus being MSI boards having an edge with VRMs. But they lack some voltage control option that might impact on fine tuning an overclock.

I don't really see myself using dual GPUs, but I do have an LSI SAS/SATA card (PCIe x8 interface) I may want to use, so the extra lanes are potentially useful for that.

ptsant wrote:

LocalCitizen wrote:

The Ryzen 3000 Apu's are Ryzen+ on 12nm.
The Ryzen 2000 Apu's are Ryzen on 14nm
Amd said that Epyc (Rome) will be the first 7nm Ryzen 2, so Ryzen 3000 CPU will only be announced some time after that.
rumour is CES will see Ryzen 3000 Apu, not CPU

Yes, this is exactly what I was trying to explain above. The naming is unfortunately a bit confusing. So no 7nm Zen 2 Ryzen coming soon in my opinion.

Might want to look at this then

https://wccftech.com/amd-launching-ryze ... n-gpu-ces/

The 3000U series is the 12 nm with Vega graphics, the regular 3000 series will be ryzen 2 core on 7 nm

Its not 100% but I have seen it multiple places so far that the 3000 series should reach ipc and clock parity with intel or even beat them. There is no way they will be able to do that on 12 nm, so they need to get their clocks up to at least 5 ghz, and 7 nm will make that happen. I guess we will see what happens at CES, but AMD has been going hard at intel, so I doubt they will just release a 3000 series that will mostly be the same as the 2000 series.

What Starfalcon said. Wait for Zen 2 cores on 7 nm.

In the worse case, even if you were to get a Ryzen 2700X now. The upcoming Zen2-based Ryzens should be compatible with most existing AM4 boards, but you most likely have to update the UEFI prior to the CPU upgrade. AMD plans on changing sockets with desktop/laptop versions of Zen3 (DDR5/PCIe 4.0 support).