The Z Build(s) 3.0 - Go Big and/or Go Home

[Zarathustra]

I would say 64 gig for your gaming box should be perfectly fine. 32 is starting to be required for the most demanding of games.

Ah, I was considering going less. 32 or 48.

While I can find DDR5-6000 at CL28 and DDR5-6400 at CL30 in 2x16GB kits, anything larger than that seems to go up to CL30 and CL32 respectively.

I have read that CAS latency isn't as big of a deal as it once was, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it.

 

[Grimlakin]

Ah, I was considering going less. 32 or 48.

While I can find DDR5-6000 at CL28 and DDR5-6400 at CL30 in 2x16GB kits, anything larger than that seems to go up to CL30 and CL32 respectively.

I have read that CAS latency isn't as big of a deal as it once was, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it.

Memory speed on the X3D CPU's shouldn't even be a primary concern. Yea you CAN find faster memory for smaller sizes easier... but really unless you're getting into competition level benchmarking... the X3d's with the larger cache don't benefit from the faster ram enough to worry about it.

AMD even recommends CL30 6000MT.

 

[Zarathustra]

Memory speed on the X3D CPU's shouldn't even be a primary concern. Yea you CAN find faster memory for smaller sizes easier... but really unless you're getting into competition level benchmarking... the X3d's with the larger cache don't benefit from the faster ram enough to worry about it.

AMD even recommends CL30 6000MT.

While I understand this in theory, and the X3D cache is huge by cache standards, it is still only 128MB. Certainly that can't fit everything needed by the render pipeline.

It would be funny to see how one of those massive caches from an Epyc X series chip would perform in a gaming SKU

 

[Grimlakin]

While I understand this in theory, and the X3D cache is huge by cache standards, it is still only 128MB. Certainly that can't fit everything needed by the render pipeline.

It would be funny to see how one of those massive caches from an Epyc X series chip would perform in a gaming SKU

Yea that would be awesome the problem there is those are more per socket throughput design to the power/speed per core is much lower. Generally 40% of a consumer CPU of matched gen. Then again with 192 threads...

 

[Zarathustra]

Yea that would be awesome the problem there is those are more per socket throughput design to the power/speed per core is much lower. Generally 40% of a consumer CPU of matched gen. Then again with 192 threads...

Yep. I'm picturing a hybrid design. Client binned cores at high frequencies, but with that massive 768MB or whatever it is cache the EPYC chips use. There is probably a limiting return on cache size at some point, but I bet 128MB is not it

 

[Endgame]

Yep. I'm picturing a hybrid design. Client binned cores at high frequencies, but with that massive 768MB or whatever it is cache the EPYC chips use. There is probably a limiting return on cache size at some point, but I bet 128MB is not it

sounds like exactly what threadripper should be. 16-32 cores at high clockspeed with 2-4x the cache of the X3D parts.

Of course, if AMD thought there would be money in that, they would be selling them. My wishlist does not apparently match the market well.

 

[Zarathustra]

There's been another little setback. Not directly related to this build, but it has taken some time away from it.

I should have taken pictures when working on this, but I was frustrated and just plain forgot.

You see, ever since the pandemic and hitting my 40's, my sensation of time passing just hasn't been what it used to be.

When I built my current loop in late 2019 right before everything shut down, I was of course aware - as I have been in all of my years of water cooling - that the coolant should be drained, flushed and replaced on occasion.

I usually consider 1-2 years to be appropriate.

Well, last year as I started planning this build it struck me. Holy ****. I haven't changed the coolant in 5 years.

I inspected it. It looked pretty clear. I decided it would have to do for now, as I was already planning the replacement. If the coolant looks this good after 5 years, I'm sure it will be fine for another couple of months.

Well, when I removed the GPU two weeks ago, it was perfectly clean on the inside. No gunk at all. I just gave it a lengthy flush (using my spare pump res from my first custom loop) and decided to think about whether or not I wanted to open and clean the block or not.

I continued using the system with the bypass cooling only the CPU.

Until last night. When I suddenly had no flow across the CPU. My flow meter was reading 0.0.

I did some troubleshooting, and concluded the CPU block was clogged.

So, if you - like me - are careful with loop cleanliness, EK Cryofuel will apparently last just fine for 5 years and ~10 weeks.

After that it rapidly degrades to the point where it completely obstructs a block in just two weeks.

At least that is my experience in my loop with the batches of Cryofuel I had.

It felt stupid to spend time taking everything apart so soon before breaking the system apart, and redoing it, but I need it for work, so it had to happen.

So I immediately repeatedly drained and flushed the loop. Took all sensitive parts out and cleaned them, and then flushed the whole loop with a small amount of dawn (but apparently not a small enough amount to avoid massive amounts of bubbles )

Once I properly flushed out the dawn, I chased it with a a flush of 6% household vinegar diluted with approximately 80% distilled water.

Then drained, filled, flushed, drained filled flushed, over and over and over again until I was happy I had both reasonably cleaned the loop, and gotten enough of the vinegar (and dawn) out of the system.

Then it was time to open the Heatkiller IV Pro block up and give it a good scrubbing.

Except those screws were stuck. Like really stuck. I even broke off an allen wrench trying to open it. I tried with my impact driver and everything. Only thing I accomplished was to strip the screws.

Now I thought I was really screwed. In defeat, I grabbed my Speed-Out kit and drilled and reversed out the screws.

Great. It's apart. I can clean it. I thoroughly washed the block, lubed up the seals, but now couldn't re-assemble it due to not having the eight little screws it needed.

Watercool will sell you replacements, but I don't have time to wait for them to ship from Germany. Modmymods had them in stock. I ordered them, but their shipping wouldn't get them here on a reasonable timeline either.

Grabbed the old calipers, and started counting threads.

Looks like they are 8mm long M3x0.5 screws, with a tapered "flat" style head.

This screw is harder to find than you might think. After a lot of searching, I figured the quickest way to get some screws would be to order them from BoltDepot.com. They had the right screws with the right type of head (just Torx drive instead of internal hex drive).

They apparently have a location about a 45 minute drive from where I live, so I oped to pick them up in person to speed things up. Only downside is that these bolts are stainless. So they are not an exact metal match. Still, they are not in a fluid contacting location, so I think they'll be fine, but I figure when I rebuild the system into the rack-mount case, I will likely have received the exact Watercool screws, and will re-asssemble it using those, just in case.

I reassembled the block. Pressure tested it for leaks. Followed up with an actual water test as a sanity check to make sure it wasn't leaking and then assembled it back into the loop.

I have now filled the loop again and am doing the whole loop leak test. It is mostly distilled water, but I found a bottle of PrimoChill Liquid Utopia that must have come with the tubing I bought, so I decided to use that for a biocide/corrosion inhibitor.

It seems to be working well. Fluid is clean, flow is good. I'm just letting it flush through and get rid of air pockets overnight. Going to try powering it up tomorrow.

Let this be a cautionary tale about keeping up with regular maintenance, and not allowing yourself to get old to the point where time loses all meaning. ( can't effing believe it is 2025...)

 

[Grimlakin]

I like reading your short stories in extreme system building.

 

[Zarathustra]

Another weekend, another limited amount of progress.

I spent some time trying to duplicate my brackets for the second radiator. No pics here. There is nothing new to show off, and I have a little bit of trimming left to do before it will work just right, and I ran out of daylight before i got that done...

I'll say this. I'm an engineer. I am pretty good at being an engineer. But there is a difference between designing a place for a hole on a drawing, and actually making that hole.

I've always had a lot of respect for good fabricators/machinists. I am not one of those. This project has only reinforced my respect for those who are good at it.

So, I am not quite yet at the level of "manufacturing maturity" to be able to claim that I can make "replaceable parts". Each of these two brackets required significant fine tuning to get them to work, and replacing one of the layers with one from the other bracket would result in them just not fitting at all.


I also spent some time working on the C-channels I had originally bought to reinforce the side panel (which ultimately wound up being unnecessary).

I am re-using them as mounting bars for the box that will contain the fan controllers, power supply (and possibly some pumps).

I wound up cutting them down to 19" and then marked the cage nut holes on them:

View attachment 3627

Then I went to drill the holes using my old ****ty drill press.

Last winter I had a mouse move in to my shed where I have my main workbench. I eventually wound up killing it with bait. I knew it built a nest in there somewhere, but I just couldn't find it. Well, I found it today:

View attachment 3628

The little ****er was living inside of the top of my drill press. Got to hand it to him (or her, no idea) that was a pretty protected space. At least until someone went to turn on the drill press.

So, anyway, brief break to stop, clean out the top of the drill press and inspect for any chew marks or other damage, and then I drilled the holes.

I measured the screws that go into the cage nuts on the rack. They all seem to be 1/4". In order to give myself a little tolerance to play with and make everything fit, I decided to go up a size to 3/8".

This wound up looking pretty good:

View attachment 3629

And of course, I had to do a test fit on the back of the rack, to make sure they will work:

View attachment 3630

More to come...


I also did some thinking. Phase 1 of this project is to just move the workstation into the rack, but phase 2 involves building the new game machine.

My local MicroCenter has both 9800x3d's and 9950x3d's in stock now. They also have the motherboard I think I have settled on for that build. The MSI x870e MAG Tomahawk.

I have decided on this one because it both has a 4x PCIe slot off the chipset I can use for a 10gig NIC and it is one of the few x870 or x870e motherboards that allow you to disable the 40Gbit USB ports and instead use those 4x Gen5 lanes off the CPU for a second CPU connected m.2 port.

I don't know if power stages and overclocking capability is any good (or if that stuff even matters anymore these days) but it seems like it is in the direction of what I want.

Thing is, this is not an official MicroCenter bundle. But the last time I bought a bundle from MicroCenter, they allowed me to customize it a bit and still gave me a bundle discount. I'm going to see if they let me do that with these.

Things I am not yet settled on:

9800x3d vs 9950x3d:
They seem to trade blows in games, which makes me think that the cheaper one (9800x3d) would be the smartest choice. That said, I could get a 9950x3d and just disable the non-X3d CCD, and essentially get a higher clocked (5.7ghz vs. 5.5Ghz ) 9800x3d.... And this would give me more flexibility. If I ever need to use it for anything that requires more cores, I can just enable them again...

In the past I wouldn't have cared this much about the CPU as I game at 4k, but the title I want to enjoy when this is all done is Stalker2, and it is crazy heavy on the CPU. If I don't wan' to use frame gen (which I don't) even the 9950x3d may not avoid minimum drops under 60fps. I generally see the 9800xrd getting better average frame rates, but the 9950x3d often gets better 0.1% minimums, which might be significant.

The 9950x3d is - of course - about $200 more expensive, but after the money I am dumping into this project, what's another $200? CPU's just aren't the significant part of a build (cost wise) like they once were...

Which RAM to buy:
I want to try for DDR5-6400 with a 1:1 MCLK:UCLK ratio, but this will involve a mild overclock of the uncore parts of the chip, which may or may not work based on silicon lottery.

I might just go with DDR5-6000 CL30, and try tho overclock it up there, instead of just trying to buy DDR5-6400 directly (in case the uncore overclock fails) Not sure.

Also not sure how much I need. I haven't thought much about RAM use in games for a long time. My workstation has had 64GB in it since 2014, so I am not even sure how much RAM a game-centric machine might need.

16GB is probably a bare minimum in 2025, but you can't even buy 8GB modules in DDR5. 32GB (2x16) is probably the standard recommendation right now. Not sure if I want to step it up to 48GB (2x24) especially if that makes me sacrifice latency.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is, I am not quite ready for phase 2 yet, and I am reticent about buying things too early and then not having a chance to test them before my return window (15 days at MicroCenter) closes. But on the flip side, it would really suck if by the time I got to phase 2, they were sold out...

So, I have some thinking to do about which RAM and which CPU I want, but I may just drive to MicroCenter and do a defensive Phase 2 buy in the next few days.

Appreciate anyones thoughts on the choices above.

Figures.

I went to Microcenter last night, and while they still have plenty of 9950x3d's and 9800x3d's, they are out of the MSI MAG x870e MAG Tomahawk motherboard.

They had 50+ of them according to the website when I last checked, but apparently they included them in a bundle, and apparently Microcenter's AMD bundles move.

Well, I don't exactly need it yet. I Still have a bit of work ahead of me. Maybe I'll wait and see if it comes back into stock.

I did confirm that they cannot mix and match bundles though, so I'd have to pay their full price since 9950x3d (or 9800x3d) + MSI MAG x870e MAG Tomahawk was not an official bundle (they must have bundled the motherboard with something else.) so I guess there is no benefit to getting the motherboard straight from them. I can get it somewhere else, and only take advantage of the fact that MicroCenter has the CPU's in stock.

 

[Grimlakin]

Figures.

I went to Microcenter last night, and while they still have plenty of 9950x3d's and 9800x3d's, they are out of the MSI MAG x870e MAG Tomahawk motherboard.

They had 50+ of them according to the website when I last checked, but apparently they included them in a bundle, and apparently Microcenter's AMD bundles move.

Well, I don't exactly need it yet. I Still have a bit of work ahead of me. Maybe I'll wait and see if it comes back into stock.

I did confirm that they cannot mix and match bundles though, so I'd have to pay their full price since 9950x3d (or 9800x3d) + MSI MAG x870e MAG Tomahawk was not an official bundle (they must have bundled the motherboard with something else.) so I guess there is no benefit to getting the motherboard straight from them. I can get it somewhere else, and only take advantage of the fact that MicroCenter has the CPU's in stock.

You can get your Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB at MIcrocenter though.

 

[Zarathustra]

As an aside,

For ****s and giggles, I decided to check eBay to see if there were any cheap 64C/128T Threadripper 3990x CPU's available. I don't really need one, but I have habit of when a platform starts getting older, just picking up the top CPU and dropping it in for ****s and giggles.

I figured since I am going to be rebuilding it anyway, why not now?

And holy crap. No they are not cheap yet. These 6 year old CPU's are still going for between $1,700 and $2000 used on eBay. That is absolutely nuts.

Even the 24C/48T 3960x I have are still going for almost $600... Crazy.

I guess we won't be doing a drop-in upgrade after all

 

[Grimlakin]

As an aside,

For ****s and giggles, I decided to check eBay to see if there were any cheap 64C/128T Threadripper 3990x CPU's available. I don't really need one, but I have habit of when a platform starts getting older, just picking up the top CPU and dropping it in for ****s and giggles.

I figured since I am going to be rebuilding it anyway, why not now?

And holy crap. No they are not cheap yet. These 6 year old CPU's are still going for between $1,700 and $2000 used on eBay. That is absolutely nuts.

Even the 24C/48T 3960x I have are still going for almost $600... Crazy.

I guess we won't be doing a drop-in upgrade after all

WOW yea that's extraordinary. Just go's to show the demand for compute at all levels is still high.

 

[Zarathustra]

You can get your Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB at MIcrocenter though.

I've been considering that.

The $500 pricetag is a little steep. Maybe I'll do it as an upgrade once the rest of the project is done.

I have a host of NVMe drives already that I can use.

The combined system right now has the following drives:
- One 800GB Optane p5800x (Boot)
- Two 2TB Samsung 990 Pros
- One 2TB Samsung 980 Pro
- One 1TB Samsung 970 Evo

Having lots of PCIe lanes is great. The Asus ROG TRX40 Zenith II Extreme Alpha (a mouthful) has five m.2 slots without even consuming any of the PCIe slots for drives.

I also have a 400GB Optane DC p5800x kicking around I plan to use.

The plan before Samsung launched the 9100 Pro was to move the 800GB Optane as a boot drive to the game machine, and move the two 990 Pros there as well as extra Steam library drives.

The workstation would get the 400GB Optane as a replacement boot drive, and keep the 980 Pro. I was considering pulling out the 970 Evo and using it as a spare, as to be honest, I barely use it currently.

The 9100 Pro launch, and its very favorable reviews makes this more interesting though. I am very curious to test that drive against the Optane DC p5800x

I've long been a fan of Optane drives. While their sequential performance is no longer at the top of things, they outperform everything, even Gen5 drives in practical use. At least in my testing.



I have long credited this to the absolutely brutal RND4k Q1T1 read performance, concluding that with rare sequential focused exceptions, sequential performance is mostly useless. My running theory has been that this metric matters more than pretty much anything else for most practical uses.

The 9100 Pro still doesn't have fantastic RND4k Q1T1 read performance, at only ~a fifth of the Optane p5800x:



...but the higher queue depth RND4k Q32T16 read numbers are absolutely insane. I'm very interested in pitting these against each other to see how much that matters in practice.

So maybe I'll pick one up anyway.

Either way, it will have to wait until I have the new game box up and running.

 

[Zarathustra]

WOW yea that's extraordinary. Just go's to show the demand for compute at all levels is still high.

Yeah, I was looking at this only because I already have the motherboard, and figuring a drop-in might be cheap.

But for most people - even those doing CPU compute - I bet a AM5 9950x is a way better buy. Its 16 cores should definitely outperform the 24 cores in my Threadripper 3960x, and possibly is pretty close to the 32 cores in the Threadripper 3970x. If you do lots of CPU compute, it would be more effective to just buy a mini cluster of 9950x systems...

 

[Grimlakin]

I've been considering that.

The $500 pricetag is a little steep. Maybe I'll do it as an upgrade once the rest of the project is done.

I have a host of NVMe drives already that I can use.

The combined system right now has the following drives:
- One 800GB Optane p5800x (Boot)
- Two 2TB Samsung 990 Pros
- One 2TB Samsung 980 Pro
- One 1TB Samsung 970 Evo

Having lots of PCIe lanes is great. The Asus ROG TRX40 Zenith II Extreme Alpha (a mouthful) has five m.2 slots without even consuming any of the PCIe slots for drives.

I also have a 400GB Optane DC p5800x kicking around I plan to use.

The plan before Samsung launched the 9100 Pro was to move the 800GB Optane as a boot drive to the game machine, and move the two 990 Pros there as well as extra Steam library drives.

The workstation would get the 400GB Optane as a replacement boot drive, and keep the 980 Pro. I was considering pulling out the 970 Evo and using it as a spare, as to be honest, I barely use it currently.

The 9100 Pro launch, and its very favorable reviews makes this more interesting though. I am very curious to test that drive against the Optane DC p5800x

I've long been a fan of Optane drives. While their sequential performance is no longer at the top of things, they outperform everything, even Gen5 drives in practical use. At least in my testing.

View attachment 3641

I have long credited this to the absolutely brutal RND4k Q1T1 read performance, concluding that with rare sequential focused exceptions, sequential performance is mostly useless. My running theory has been that this metric matters more than pretty much anything else for most practical uses.

The 9100 Pro still doesn't have fantastic RND4k Q1T1 read performance, at only ~a fifth of the Optane p5800x:

View attachment 3642

...but the higher queue depth RND4k Q32T16 read numbers are absolutely insane. I'm very interested in pitting these against each other to see how much that matters in practice.

So maybe I'll pick one up anyway.

Either way, it will have to wait until I have the new game box up and running.

That's interesting I'm not getting numbers ANYWHERE close to that with my 9100 pro 4tb. Then again it's also my boot and everything drive when I do my testing. Found my issue updated the mega thread in Storage forum. Much more in line.

 

[Grimlakin]

That's interesting I'm not getting numbers ANYWHERE close to that with my 9100 pro 4tb. Then again it's also my boot and everything drive when I do my testing. Found my issue updated the mega thread in Storage forum. Much more in line.

Actually to be fair my results are about 1.8 gig a second faster for RND4k Q32T16.