AMD or Intel

[Chaps]

Has anyone had any experience with using a liquid CPU cooler? I'm waiting on components to build a computer based on an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU and a liquid CPU cooler is something I'm thinking of adding to the case. It gets awful hot here in the SJ valley and heat buildup is always something that has concerned me.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Chappel

[Jon White]

2 hours ago, Chappel said:

Has anyone had any experience with using a liquid CPU cooler? I'm waiting on components to build a computer based on an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU and a liquid CPU cooler is something I'm thinking of adding to the case. It gets awful hot here in the SJ valley and heat buildup is always something that has concerned me.

Hi.  It really depends upon how hard you drive a particular CPU.  I lightly overclock most of the time on my video post system, and always do fine with normal fan cooling.  Audio systems don't need superperformance in general.

One other thing that helps my video system is the NVidia CUDA design structure.  That makes having huge processing power in the CPU somewhat of a moot point.  The GPU power takes care of things.  SDD write performance these days makes it even nicer, although 4K calls for even more transfer efficiency if you don't like the waits.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Jon White

[StudioNSFW]

18 hours ago, ZincT said:

 

Also, seeing StudioNSFW mention NVME drives.... my existing PC motherboard didn't have any NVME slots so I bought a relatively cheap PCIE NVME adapter (something like this one ) and added a 1Tb Sabrent Rocket and this thing absolutely flies! My system already has 3 x 2.5" SSDs but the NVME drive performance is in a different league. The bonus is that almost any AMD motherboard that I get will have NVME slots so I can just transfer it over to the new board without the PCIE adapter. 

There is zero difference between a dedicated slot vs a stand up adapter card so long as the PCIe slot it is in has enough lanes. I recently learned that the newest AMD architectures are much more lane heavy than the iIntel platforms around and  are advantaged there. That may be specific to some new platform stuff happening in the enterprise storage world but its for real there for sure.  NVMe is NOT a storage medium, to be clear, it is a transport layer like SATA or SAS. 

Edited May 7, 2020 by StudioNSFW

[Chaps]

1 hour ago, StudioNSFW said:

 I recently learned that the newest AMD architectures are much more lane heavy than the Intel platforms around and  are advantaged there.

Here's a graphic from the manual for the AMD motherboard I ordered (Gigabyte B450 AORUS PRO WIFI). It shows that an M.2 SSD uses 2 SATA lanes out of 6.

 

[StudioNSFW]

That chipset limitation is not in the newest platforms coming down the road by a long haul, but again, thats pretty specialized stuff today and wont be mainstream for a year or more.   Today the big NVMe solutions use internal NVMe switches to drive more parralelization to the individual calls.  More lanes from AMD will see a much cleaner architecture that they've committed to.

Edited May 7, 2020 by StudioNSFW

[Jim Roseberry]

14 hours ago, abacab said:

I wonder what @Jim Roseberryhas to say on the topic? Last I heard he was testing Ryzen processors, but only using Intel for his Studiocat builds... https://studiocat.com/opencart2/index.php?route=common/home

We've discussed this subject a lot over the past several months.  

Ryzen and Threadripper excel at heavily multi-threaded scenarios (video rendering).

The 3970x will smoke the 10980xe for rendering video.

 

Where Ryzen and Threadripper are weak is scenarios that aren't heavily multi-threaded (do to lower clock-speed).

ie: If you're running Helix Native at 96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size (1ms total round-trip latency), that's not something that lends itself to being heavily multi-threaded.

In this case, the "lowly" 9900k will out-perform CPUs from Intel and AMD that are double/quadruple the cost.

 

Not every process in a DAW can be multi-threaded.

Performance increase from adding cores doesn't scale 1:1.

IOW, Doubling the number of cores doesn't double performance.

This is why clock-speed is still the single most important factor.

Having more cores is certainly beneficial, but not at the expense of significant clock-speed.

 

For an "Audio" machine, the major problem with Threadripper is its 280w TDP.

There's no way to build a quiet Threadripper machine.   Large water-cooler is absolutely necessary.

The motherboard chipsets have to be actively cooled (meaning small high RPM fan).

If you're used to a quiet machine, the high-pitched "whine" from the chipset fan is super annoying.

By comparison, the 9900k has TDP of 95w.  With quality air-cooler, it'll run (all 8 cores locked at 5GHz) near dead-silent.

The 3950x has a much more manageable TDP of 105w.  It'll also run near dead-silent with quality air-cooler.

Side note:  We tested 3950x with 360mm water-cooler... and there was no appreciable performance increase compared to using quality air-cooling.

Socket 2066 i9-10980xe has a TDP of 165w.  Water-cooler is necessary... but it'll run much quieter than Threadripper.  Chipset isn't active-cooled.

 

I tested numerous Threadripper and Ryzen 9 builds... using multiple top-tier motherboards.

Some of the motherboards don't allow turning off extraneous hardware in the BIOS (onboard audio, WiFi, etc).

I've also seen flaky behavior from numerous motherboards:

• RAM related issues (requiring an occasional BIOS reset)
• Disabling onboard audio could cause the machine to no longer post/boot (requiring a BIOS reset)
• Disabling SMT could cause the machine to no longer post/boot (requiring a BIOS reset)

If you're fairly tech savvy, a BIOS reset isn't a big deal... but it is annoying.

 

Ryzen and Threadripper have never had much OC headroom (the current generation is no different).

The 3950x can do ~4GHz across all 16 cores... maybe 4.1GHz.

By comparison, the 9900k can easily run 5GHz across all 8 cores.

If you get a 3970x hoping to achieve anywhere near 4.5GHz across all cores, you'll be disappointed.

The reason why is the 280w TDP.  There's just nowhere to go (already pushing the limits of cooling).

 

AMD is winning IPC (instructions per clock).

Intel is winning all-core clock-speed.

 

If I'm spending $2000-$4000 for a CPU, I want top-performance in all scenarios.

AMD needs to get Threadripper's TDP better under control... and that'll allow higher clock-speed.

With higher clock-speed,  passive-cooled (no fan) chipset, and motherboards "sans flake"... AMD would have a clear winner.

 

I always bring up the i9-9900k... because it's an amazing performer at ~$500.

Super high clock-speed... 8 cores... and it runs near dead-silent.

In scenarios that aren't heavily multi-threaded, it'll out-perform CPUs that are double/quadruple the cost (both Intel and AMD).

 

We've got professional composer clients who work under stressful deadlines (TV/Film).

There's absolutely no way I'd build a Threadripper or Ryzen machine for these clients.

[Chaps]

17 hours ago, Jon White said:

Hi.  It really depends upon how hard you drive a particular CPU.  I lightly overclock most of the time on my video post system, and always do fine with normal fan cooling.  Audio systems don't need superperformance in general.

One other thing that helps my video system is the NVidia CUDA design structure.  That makes having huge processing power in the CPU somewhat of a moot point.  The GPU power takes care of things.  SDD write performance these days makes it even nicer, although 4K calls for even more transfer efficiency if you don't like the waits.

Thanks for the input. I have a video card that is, I think, CUDA capable (GeForce GT640LP) so that will be helpful if I get into video creating, editing and processing. I guess I'll wait to see how everything works out before I decide to get a liquid CPU cooler. My main concerns are the temperature in my bedroom and the lack of good airflow because of where my desktop tower is.

[abacab]

I think I'd be OK with 8 cores locked at 5Ghz. ?

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

8 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

I always bring up the i9-9900k... because it's an amazing performer at ~$500.

But outperformed by the 3900x which is cheaper

Edited May 7, 2020 by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[oneofmany]

Running a 9900k at 5.1 stable on a TUF z390 plus gaming with a simple cm hyper 212. Rock solid. 

 

Grant 

[Robert Bone]

I happen to have 3 computers set up for DAW usage, and some 2 use Intel CPU's and 1 use AMD.  Over the years, I have generally favored AMD over Intel, because of the bang for the buck, and AMD CPU's offer more cores for less money, than Intel CPU's.

That being said, Thunderbolt 3 is currently available on certain motherboards for Intel CPU's, whereas to the best of my knowledge, no motherboards built for AMD CPU's currently have Thunderbolt 3 headers needed for having Thunderbolt 3.  That will change, but it is the way things currently are.

The reason Thunderbolt 3 is so attractive to me, is that there are now multiple audio interfaces available, that have Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, and my first experience with that, is having a massively upgraded Dell Alienware 17 R5 laptop, with 2 PCIe M.2 2280 NVME 2 TB drives, and a 2 TB 2.5" SATA III SSD, along with a Thunderbolt 3  port and an Intel CPU.  That laptop is BLAZING fast, and it is coupled with a UAD Arrow Thunderbolt 3 audio interface.  Amazing speed, and the Thunderbolt 3 protocol supports up to 40 Gb/sec transfer speeds.

In the past 5 weeks, I did a bunch, like a BUNCH, of evaluation of laptops for a couple friends looking to use laptops for dual roles of live performance and for music production, and they were interested in having a Thunderbolt 3 port to be paired with a new Presonus Quadra Tunderbolt 3 audio interface.  I noticed that there are now sub-$1000 laptops with a combination of a primary drive of type M.2 (some were M.2 NVME and some were M.2 SATA III), while also having a Thunderbolt 3 port.   That is a GREAT combination - each also had 16 GB of memory, and Intel CPU's.

I just checked, and finally see a motherboard for AMD CPU's, with Thunderbolt 3 support, which could make things quite interesting - I know nothing about this particular motherboard, as of yet, as I literally found it 5 minutes ago:

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-x570-phantom-gaming-itx-tb3/p/N82E16813157891?Item=N82E16813157891&Tpk=thunderbolt 3 motherboard

Please note that I am not particularly suggesting purchasing, or not, any motherboards from New Egg - the link is provided so that you can examine the specs of the motherboard.  Same for the next link, it is simply because New Egg had a Thunderbolt 3 search filter, that returned a wide selection of motherboards for Intel CPU's that have Thunderbolt 3 ports:

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=thunderbolt+3+motherboard

 

One more link - I found this January 2020 review of motherboards with Thunderbolt 3 support, which might be good to take a look at, if Thunderbolt 3 is something you might be interested in, whether for now or for later - it is a site for laptops, but this is a review of desktop motherboards:

https://thunderboltlaptop.com/best-thunderbolt-3-motherboards/ 

SO - I generally find AMD CPU's give a great 'bang for the buck', in terms of the number of cores at a good price, while currently, there are far more motherboards for Intel CPU's, that have Thunderbolt 3 ports.  If I was building a new DAW and not looking for Thunderbolt 3 support, I would almost certainly go with AMD, and if looking to also have Thunderbolt 3 ports, would look carefully at any AMD-based motherboard that had it, though for now would also definitely evaluate Intel-based motherboards for that support, as there are so many more to choose from.

Bob Bone

 

[Robert Bone]

On 5/6/2020 at 4:01 PM, Chappel said:

Has anyone had any experience with using a liquid CPU cooler? I'm waiting on components to build a computer based on an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU and a liquid CPU cooler is something I'm thinking of adding to the case. It gets awful hot here in the SJ valley and heat buildup is always something that has concerned me.

I have a liquid CPU cooler on my 2 DAW desktops, and they are awesome.  I do not overclock whatsoever, because heat can shorten the lifespan of CPU, memory, or video components.  I just figure that even without overclocking, using a liquid radiator will keep the CPU running cooler, which is always a good thing.

I also have another liquid radiator on the graphics card in one of the desktops, while the other one has the graphics integrated already.

I think them to be good to use, myself.  Not actually needed, if not overclocking, but helpful nonetheless, at helping the CPU to live a long happy life of comfort

Bob Bone

[Chaps]

2 hours ago, Robert Bone said:

I have a liquid CPU cooler on my 2 DAW desktops, and they are awesome.  I do not overclock whatsoever, because heat can shorten the lifespan of CPU, memory, or video components.  I just figure that even without overclocking, using a liquid radiator will keep the CPU running cooler, which is always a good thing.

I also have another liquid radiator on the graphics card in one of the desktops, while the other one has the graphics integrated already.

I think them to be good to use, myself.  Not actually needed, if not overclocking, but helpful nonetheless, at helping the CPU to live a long happy life of comfort

Bob Bone

The more I learn about them, the better they look. I don't plan on overclocking, mostly because that voids the motherboard's warranty, but for sure I want this processor to last as long as it can.

[Robert Bone]

7 minutes ago, Chappel said:

The more I learn about them, the better they look. I don't plan on overclocking, mostly because that voids the motherboard's warranty, but for sure I want this processor to last as long as it can.

Mine is running at 32c at moment, which is wonderful.  That is why I have the CPU liquid cooler

[Jim Roseberry]

23 hours ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

But outperformed by the 3900x which is cheaper

Who runs the 9900k at 4.9GHz???  ?   It'll run all 8 cores locked at 5GHz... with air-cooling... and do so nearly dead-silent.

The 3950x  (4.7 max turbo) doesn't out-perform the 9900k when working at ultra low latency settings.

Using a Presonus Quantum, fire up an instance of Helix Native (patch using dual 2048-sample Cab IRs) running at 96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size.

That's running Helix Native at ~2ms total round-trip latency.

• With the 3950x... pops/ticks
• With the 9900k... audio is glitch-free

BTW, The 3700x is ~$90 less than the 9900k.

• Active-Cooled chipsets
• Small incompatibilities with AMD (not really AMD's fault)
• Flaky motherboards (requiring BIOS resets)
• Some motherboards have no option to disable onboard audio, WiFi, etc

To save $90?  Not for me or our clients.  

 

As I've mentioned 1001 times, Threadripper and Ryzen shine in heavily multi-threaded scenarios (video rendering and at larger buffer sizes).

That's when they'll smoke the Intel i9s.

In ultra low latency scenarios, Intel bests AMD (clock-speed is the single most important factor).

 

AMD is winning IPC (instructions per clock).

Intel is winning at all-core clock-speed.

If AMD can get Threadripper's TDP down (currently 280w), that'll allow higher clock-speed.

280w TDP is why AMD can't get Threadripper's all-core clock-speed higher than ~4GHz.

Even with 105w TDP, the  3950x can't get all-core clock-speed much more than about 4GHz.

If you're used to a super quiet machine, you're not going to like a 3970x build.  There's just too much heat to keep it quiet.

[Jim Roseberry]

To be fair, Intel has their own issues.

ie: Can't seem to actually get the new i9-10980 out to suppliers.

Out of stock across the entire US and Canada... and probably not available thru the end of 2020.

 

[Tezza]

So this is the price list I have in Australia, I am probably looking at the i5-9600kf or the Ryzen 5 3600, both around the same price.

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Tezza

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

19 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

Who runs the 9900k at 4.9GHz???  ?   It'll run all 8 cores locked at 5GHz... with air-cooling... and do so nearly dead-silent.

The guy at Scan Computers who does all the testing . A lot of folks on various forums  can't get to a stable 5ghz O/C.

19 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

Using a Presonus Quantum, fire up an instance of Helix Native (patch using dual 2048-sample Cab IRs) running at 96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size.

That's running Helix Native at ~2ms total round-trip latency.

• With the 3950x... pops/ticks
• With the 9900k... audio is glitch-free

 Well I have neither Helix Native - or a need to run at 32 samples and I don't work at 96k so that's a particular use case which is pretty different to mine. 

128 samples @ 48k is fine for me

I guess if 96k is sort of thing you need from your DAW rig then you'd be to be be willing to pay the extra for it.

19 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

BTW, The 3700x is ~$90 less than the 9900k

Really ?  Where I live the 3700x is about £280 and the 9900k is around £480 ...which is something like a $250 difference

The 3900x seemed better value for the extra, I only spent £810 on the whole system.  Personally I've never bought a dedicated DAW PC, I've always bought something off the shelf that does the job  as it works out less than the specialist companies charge. Never really had an issue except for my i5 2500 which had a DPC latency spike which turned out to be a temp sensor that I had to disable in the BIOS. 

My use case is making tracks for music libraries for TV.  Electronic stuff - 95% in the box. As I've said in the Ryzen thread, it's fast , quiet enough for me , no overclocking, stock cooler , p###es all over my previous PC even without tweaking anything.

Have attached the spec / invoice and a screengrab of my mixer off the track I just finished today, it dealt with this mix perfectly well at 256 samples by the end

Edited May 9, 2020 by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[hockeyjx]

I have built many of both AMD and Intel systems over the years, but always seemed to have weird Gremlins in a DAW system with AMD. That was a while ago, but when you get something that works well (as in my case, Intel-based systems), you stick with it.

However, I know the bakers have had a relationship with Intel over the years. I'm not sure they do currently, but knowing they were working with them made my decision easy on which to go with.

Edited May 10, 2020 by hockeyjx

[StudioNSFW]

4 hours ago, hockeyjx said:

I have built many of both AMD and Intel systems over the years, but always seemed to have weird Gremlins in a DAW system with AMD. That was a while ago, but when you get something that works well (as in my case, Intel-based systems), you stick with it.

However, I know the bakers have had a relationship with Intel over the years. I'm not sure they do currently, but knowing they were working with them made my decision easy on which to go with.

They were dating??