# Building an AMD Ryzen 3950X based system - your comments?

## paulj

I am considering building a new system around the AMD Ryzen 3950X processor. Have any of you been down this path, and are there any potential pitfalls I need to be aware of? It will be a well specced system, probably built on an Asus motherboard: ASUS AMD Ryzen ROG STRIX X570, or the similar X570 equipped TUG board from them.

Thanks in advance!

Moderators: If this should be in a different sub-forum, please feel free to move it!

edit: corrected typo - from 9350X to 3950X - Thanks Anon-E-moose!Last edited by paulj on Wed Jun 03, 2020 8:03 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Anon-E-moose

I assume you meant the ryzen 3950x, I use the 3700x, it works fine.

If upgrading, I would recompile world to a generic march before the upgrade (unless you're coming from earlier ryzen cpu) and then rebuild completely after the upgrade.

Need more or less modernish kernel 5.6 and up to get hw monitoring

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## paulj

 *Anon-E-moose wrote:*   

> I assume you meant the ryzen 3950x, I use the 3700x, it works fine.
> 
> 

 

Thanks - corrected!

 *Anon-E-moose wrote:*   

> 
> 
> If upgrading, I would recompile world to a generic march before the upgrade (unless you're coming from earlier ryzen cpu) and then rebuild completely after the upgrade.

 

It would be a new install - I de-commissioned my desktop recently, and am working on my laptop currently (with docking station etc). I have just installed Gentoo on an Udoo Bolt with no issues (nice SBC), but I feel like the desktop could do with being replaced.

 *Anon-E-moose wrote:*   

> Need more or less modernish kernel 5.6 and up to get hw monitoring

 

I am already using the unstable gentoo-sources, so this should be no issue.

Thanks for your comments!

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## nick_gentoo

Hi, the wiki has some advice on Ryzen-related (mainly kernel) configuration: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Ryzen

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## Ant P.

I got a 3900X in January. Adequate case cooling is important, the stock heatsink is good but this one will still ride at 70°C with turbo off.

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## Goverp

Like Ant P I've a 3900X.  Not a lot to say on setup; follow the relevant stuff in the gentoo wiki and it just works.  I've just been compiling firefox, so 100% CPU for several minutes.  Got the CPU cooling fan spinning and lm-sensors says the core temp went over 80C for a short period - whoosh from the fan - temp back down, all happy.  It doesn't need ridiculous amounts of cooling, it's only about 105W peak IIRC.

One thing I noted with the 570X motherboard and my 3200MHz memory:  It came up as something like 2200 MHz; looking on Crucial's web site it's a known problem with the motherboard/BIOS (I forget who's involved) misreading, so you need to tweak the turbo mode settings.

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## paulj

Thanks all! I appreciate your comments and pointers.

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## Anon-E-moose

 *Ant P. wrote:*   

> I got a 3900X in January. Adequate case cooling is important, the stock heatsink is good but this one will still ride at 70°C with turbo off.

 

With the asus boards, one can play with different settings and keep the cpu running cooler. 

They have turbo boost (renamed   :Rolling Eyes:  ) off, but there are other settings where the cpu runs outside of specs and the voltage and other things increase which leads to more heat. Not sure about MSI, Asrock or Gigabyte bioses. I haven't noticed any performance hits due to my changes.

I'm only running the 3700x but the cpu base temps stay stable at ~10 C over room temps, was ~20 before tweaking. 

I picked up 3600 memory (it was on sale) and the default bios setting for memory doesn't see that speed so you have to give it the memory profile # (if it has one), mine runs fine at 3600 now.

Other than this the install is pretty straightforward.

Edit to add: To get the most from the cpu/mb, I always put the bios into advanced mode, sometimes it's the only way to get to obscure settings.

ETA2: case cooling is important as Ant.P says, I use an old antec 300 fans front, rear and top, and most importantly for the cpu/nvme #1 the side fan, that makes a world of difference in how hot the cpu and nvme gets. (sub par placement of nvme's,  IMO)

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## paulj

It's interesting seeing the different options for this build. I haven't necessarily decided yet on going all the way to the 3950X - I am still researching the benefit/price balance. However, there are some other questions that I am working through at the moment:

Should I have only SSD drives? I will make this system dual boot with Windows running alongside gentoo, as I started my own manufacturing consultancy last year, and need to have access to a windows environment. I could run Gentoo on a 1TB SSD and Windows on a second SSD. However, I would also consider a hard drive on board and set it up as a back up (automated).

Should I consider setting up RAID? 

Will 3200 memory be quick enough? It seems so, unless I decide to overclock (unlikely, at least currently).

What should I be looking at for AMD graphics cards? Until now, all my systems have used nvidia graphics, or been laptops with onboard intel graphics. I am not generally a heavy graphics user, but I have been playing a bit with Elite Dangerous on my windows laptop, so there should be some capability there!

As always, your opinions would be most appreciated!

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## Anon-E-moose

As far as price performance, that's a personal thing.

I went with the 3700x because I wanted a low power processor (65w) but also wanted multi-core processing power.

Last I checked (admittedly years ago) windows didn't really take advantage of multi-core machines (not to the extent of linux).

Unless you absolutely need 16/32 core/threads, then I'd say go for the 3900x which will give you plenty of power without paying the premium price. But again that's personal.

About ssd's, I buy the samsung evo line and have never had problems and the performance has always been good. I do use a spinning disk, but that's what I keep media that I watch/listen to on. I wouldn't worry about raid at least on the mb.

3200 memory is fine, but if you read the specs from AMD, they say some of 3600 will work, but either way, memory won't be a bottleneck.

Graphics cards, I used to use nvidia (with nouveau drivers) but there was some instability in nouveau/mesa that would just cause the desktop to freeze every so often sometimes I'd even had to hit the reset button. I was already doing qemu passthrough on the second video card, which was an amd radeon, so I wound up just putting in another radeon card for linux/primary graphics. No crashes/instability that I would see from nvidia occasionally.

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## Tony0945

 *paulj wrote:*   

> I will make this system dual boot with Windows running alongside gentoo, as I started my own manufacturing consultancy last year, and need to have access to a windows environment.

 

Consider VirtualBox instead of dual boot. It's much more convenient. Your processor is more than sufficient for VirtualBox.   Not everything can run, only applications with drivers that VB emulates, so if you are running a hardware application VB won't work. But if all you use is keyboard, mouse, screen, USB and files, then VB is fast and convenient.   For example I run TurboTax, Visual C++, various browsers including Internet Edge and Internet Explorer (Microsoft won't let you download with anything else), MS Office and MsMoney, all in VirtualBox on a 2700X with 32G memory., sometimes simultaneously with a weekly update.  Applications like APC PowerChute won't work.  Go to the VirtualBox website and check your needed application out. I think they have a website too. 

I do dual boot on an old Phenom II X6 with 8G memory, because it doesn't' have the horsepower, but the Ryzen 2700X was a snap. I think 16G would be enough if you weren't doing anything heavy with Gentoo simultaneously with Windows. The ebuild's are in the portage tree. I run ~amd64 but not the 9999. Yes, that's mixing amd64 and ~amd64 and it can be a headache, but have had no incompatibility with VB.

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## paulj

 *Tony0945 wrote:*   

>  *paulj wrote:*   I will make this system dual boot with Windows running alongside gentoo, as I started my own manufacturing consultancy last year, and need to have access to a windows environment. 
> 
> Consider VirtualBox instead of dual boot. It's much more convenient. Your processor is more than sufficient for VirtualBox.   Not everything can run, only applications with drivers that VB emulates, so if you are running a hardware application VB won't work. But if all you use is keyboard, mouse, screen, USB and files, then VB is fast and convenient.   For example I run TurboTax, Visual C++, various browsers including Internet Edge and Internet Explorer (Microsoft won't let you download with anything else), MS Office and MsMoney, all in VirtualBox on a 2700X with 32G memory., sometimes simultaneously with a weekly update.  Applications like APC PowerChute won't work.  Go to the VirtualBox website and check your needed application out. I think they have a website too. 
> 
> I do dual boot on an old Phenom II X6 with 8G memory, because it doesn't' have the horsepower, but the Ryzen 2700X was a snap. I think 16G would be enough if you weren't doing anything heavy with Gentoo simultaneously with Windows. The ebuild's are in the portage tree. I run ~amd64 but not the 9999. Yes, that's mixing amd64 and ~amd64 and it can be a headache, but have had no incompatibility with VB.

 

Good suggestion Tony, thanks. I had virtualbox on my old desktop system - a 1st generation core i7 system, and had Windows XP on it on top of gentoo. It was more for proof of concept than for real use though as I had work provided laptops which were significantly more up to date!  It did have it's conveniences for some stuff though. I may go with installing VB once everything is here - it'll certainly be more straight forward. I am enjoying Elite Dangerous, having first played Elite on a Spectrum many moons ago. I am not sure that'll work under VB. I guess I could have both options - VB and dual boot if I want to do a bit of space exploration! 

I'll probably drop 32GB into it, so memory should be no issue. I generally build a system which is well equipped, then run it into the ground. This will be the third desktop system I have built over the years and to give you an idea of how long I use them, the first was an AMD-K6 system, replaced by the Core i7 system, and now to be replaced by this one.   :Very Happy: 

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## Tony0945

 *paulj wrote:*   

> I generally build a system which is well equipped, then run it into the ground. 

 

That Phenom II was a top of a line when I built it - about a decade ago.  My wife has a Turion based laptop with Win 7 on it. It's sufficent for its purpose, e-mail and web surfing.

But, having seen that the Turion is a k10 like the Phenom II w2hich is running on a  500G 10,000 RPM velociraptor and having two spare 500G SSD's in front of me right now, I'm sorely tempted to put one in the laptop and clone the Phenom II, making slight changes for the hardware and adding wireless. I'll bet it would boot faster than Win 7 on rotating rust (probably a 5400RPM drive).

I'm looking to build a 3900X myself, having $2400 in stimulus money that the US government gave me for nothing, but I'm having trouble finding key components like motherboard and power supply.

There seems to be no shortage of CPU's.

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## Goverp

Some experiences:

On price-performance: when I bought my 3900X, the prices of the Ryzen 9 chips were in strict proportion to the number of cores.  I decided I could afford 12 and 16 (3950X) was a step too far...

As part of the transfer from my old Phenom box, I first installed everything onto the Samsung 500 MB NVMe SSD I'd put in the new machine - that was except for /home, which I populated with a new user to check the system out.  The result was blisteringly fast.

The /home stuff was on a 4-disk RAID 5 array, using 320 MB WD Caviar Blue drives, and was quite slow (I'd guess around 50 MB/s).  For performance, that changed to a 5disk RAID 10 array using 1 TB Toshiba disks (seemed the most cost-effective of the ones readily available to me, according to userbenchmark.com); much faster (copying a 20 GB backup file goes at about 400 MB/s), but of course has much worse latency than the SSD.  The delay starting my KDE desktop is significant compared to the SSD.

If I hadn't bought a big case specifically for the RAID array, and if 2 TB NVMe SSDs had been a bit cheaper, I'd have gone that way for everything.  Of course, prices have dropped in the 6 months since I built the box.

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## Makersmarx

 *paulj wrote:*   

> It's interesting seeing the different options for this build. I haven't necessarily decided yet on going all the way to the 3950X - I am still researching the benefit/price balance. However, there are some other questions that I am working through at the moment:
> 
> Should I have only SSD drives? I will make this system dual boot with Windows running alongside gentoo, as I started my own manufacturing consultancy last year, and need to have access to a windows environment. I could run Gentoo on a 1TB SSD and Windows on a second SSD. However, I would also consider a hard drive on board and set it up as a back up (automated).
> 
> Should I consider setting up RAID? 
> ...

 

I prefer SSD's, but use a combo of HDD and SSD due to the price of large SSD's here in Central America. As cheap as I see them on Amazon nowadays outside of my area I would go all SSD if that applies in the UK. The performance gain is one of the largest I have noticed in the years building my own PC's. EVO is a great choice, but I have been unable to kill an old Kingston I have had for some time. I think they are just 'better' nowadays, but am sure someone could find issue with any brand. 

I recently upgraded my original 1600 with a 3600 and for working remotely over the years I could barely burden my 1600 with zoom, Skype, compiling software, etc...The 3600 has only improved things a bit. Personally I would save some cash and dumb down the CPU a bit if your being conscious of money and don't have a need for the extra cores. Here is a cool site that can compare some benchmarks. You may know of it, but as you can see there is a gain with the 3900X, but is it worth 3-400 usd more? https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-3600/4044vs4040

I went with 16G @ 3200 myself. These AMD boards allow you to OC the memory and CPU very easily in many cases. Make sure once you finished building check that your memory profile is correct. For some reason my board defaulted to a lower speed. 

Graphics is AMD all the way IMO. I have had the RX570 since it came out and it so easy to setup in the kernel and just generally easy to maintain. I personally got tired of messing with Nividia back when I had a 750Ti. I always seemed to get a random hiccup every few months and eventually just gave up. I am not a huge gamer aside from WoW and some Steam titles, but it has not let me down once in this regard. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/AMDGPU

Have fun building, its always fun!

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## DaggyStyle

call me annoying if you want but I'd like to point out something that bugs me.

I see various references here to ssd, I must point out something, ssd is the actual hdd without the controller.

there are two common types of controllers, one with sata connector and another with pcie (namely NVMe).

I work daily with both of them in my workplace, imho, I'll never pay a dime for an sata ssd.

NVMe ssd on the other hand, yes (not that I can afford one) but it depends on which company.

memory wise, my brother runs a 3900X with one kits of these: https://www.gskill.com/product/165/170/1535961634/F4-3200C14D-16GFX-Overview

I run an 2700X with two of does kits

runs great.

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## Anon-E-moose

 *DaggyStyle wrote:*   

> call me annoying if you want but I'd like to point out something that bugs me.
> 
> I see various references here to ssd, I must point out something, ssd is the actual hdd without the controller.
> 
> there are two common types of controllers, one with sata connector and another with pcie (namely NVMe).\

 

And when the great majority say ssd they mean sata form factor, nothing worth getting upset over, IMO.

Most refer to an nvme as an nvme so it's not hard to figure out what people mean.

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## DaggyStyle

 *Anon-E-moose wrote:*   

>  *DaggyStyle wrote:*   call me annoying if you want but I'd like to point out something that bugs me.
> 
> I see various references here to ssd, I must point out something, ssd is the actual hdd without the controller.
> 
> there are two common types of controllers, one with sata connector and another with pcie (namely NVMe).\ 
> ...

 

bugs me != getting upset...

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## Anon-E-moose

And you have to remember that most people at least on the forums are hobbyists, so apply appropriate expectations   :Laughing: 

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## DaggyStyle

 *Anon-E-moose wrote:*   

> And you have to remember that most people at least on the forums are hobbyists, so apply appropriate expectations  

 

but but but but why????????

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## Tony0945

 *DaggyStyle wrote:*   

> I work daily with both of them in my workplace, imho, I'll never pay a dime for an sata ssd.

 

I have to disagree. I found a great performance boost going from SATA HDD to SATA SSD. Yes, the NVME is faster yet, but the SATA HDD is 2C-4X faster than the "rotating rust".   I had to move my VirtualBox directory of SSD to HDD because Win 10 is so damn huge, Performance took a palpable hit.

OTOH, storage may become cheaper in the future but I recently bought a 6TB HDD Helium-filled for less than the price of a 1TB NVME. And I haven't seen a motherboard that has ,ore than 2 NVME slots.

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## DaggyStyle

 *Tony0945 wrote:*   

>  *DaggyStyle wrote:*   I work daily with both of them in my workplace, imho, I'll never pay a dime for an sata ssd. 
> 
> I have to disagree. I found a great performance boost going from SATA HDD to SATA SSD. Yes, the NVME is faster yet, but the SATA HDD is 2C-4X faster than the "rotating rust".   I had to move my VirtualBox directory of SSD to HDD because Win 10 is so damn huge, Performance took a palpable hit.
> 
> OTOH, storage may become cheaper in the future but I recently bought a 6TB HDD Helium-filled for less than the price of a 1TB NVME. And I haven't seen a motherboard that has ,ore than 2 NVME slots.

 

I migrated my VB windows to kvm long ago and never looked back

imho, sata ssd's price per GB aren't worthwhile, I'd rather buy several spindles with higher storage and raid them to get similar performance (where I live, sata ssds are expensive)

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