# Building a 2990WX System



## xkm1948 (Aug 20, 2018)

So back in January I helped a Professor setup a TR 1950X build used for Nanopore sequencing as well as Genomic data processing. It was so well received that I got request to help another researcher building another TR system also used for Genomics and machine learning.

Here are the specs:

AMD Threadripper 2 2990WX
Enermax LIQTECH TR4 II 360 (Going full hard tubing water cooling in the future)
MSI MEG X399 Creation
EVGA 2080 Ti (Place holder for now)
GSKill DDR4-3200 128GB
Samsung 970 Pro 1TB
WD Gold 10TB *2 RAID-1
EVGA 1600Watt Titanium
Thermaltake Tower 900
Samsung UH 750 32'' 4K monitor
HTC Vive Pro (possible, waiting for wireless kit to become available)

And of course nothing would be complete without some pictures.

His goal is 4GHz all 32 core overclocking using the Enermax AIO for now. Don't know whether that is possible or not. But man, those X399 MEG boards surely look amazing.



















Will definitely post more as the parts arrive.


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## cdawall (Aug 20, 2018)

Oh dope build. Definitely subbing to this one.


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## HammerON (Aug 20, 2018)

Sub'd as well!!!


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## HTC (Aug 20, 2018)

@xkm1948 : Avoid Enermax TR4 cooler!

Here's why: start from post #14, then post #23: it gets "uglier" after that.

Unless i'm confusing and the cooler mentioned in OP is not the one referred to in the Anandtech's forum posts.

Just a heads up!

Be sure to post how much of an improvement over that other 1950X this 2990WX is.


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## xkm1948 (Aug 20, 2018)

HTC said:


> @xkm1948 : Avoid Enermax TR4 cooler!
> 
> Here's why: start from post #14, then post #23: it gets "uglier" after that.
> 
> ...




Liqtech TR4 *II* 360

Yeah I think enermax knows thir old gen problem as well


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## HTC (Aug 20, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> Liqtech TR4 *II* 360
> 
> Yeah I think enermax knows thir old gen problem as well



So i did confuse the coolers: thanks for clearing that up.

Dunno how memory intensive the workloads for which this CPU is intended for are but it could end up with 2950X like performance, in worse-case-scenario, due to the RAM only being connected to 2 of the 4 dies.


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## Toothless (Aug 20, 2018)

How did I know it was you building a TR build? Subbing for the build porn.


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## Caring1 (Aug 20, 2018)

Count me in.
*drools* 
I wouldn't miss this build for anything.


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## Vayra86 (Aug 20, 2018)




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## DeathtoGnomes (Aug 20, 2018)

Vayra86 said:


>


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## phill (Aug 20, 2018)

Looking forward to this   Subbed!!


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## xkm1948 (Aug 27, 2018)

The build is done, minus the 2080Ti. So my friend used a 1050Ti to power up for now. Damn nice!

He is gonna dual boot Linux and Windows10, so benchmarks wont be available for a while. This PC will be used as hardcore deep learning based genomics/transcriptomics study,


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## HammerON (Aug 27, 2018)

How are your CPU temps?
Nice build


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## Frick (Aug 27, 2018)

I'm decidedly not a fan of lights in computers, but I actually like the look of those DIMMs really looks nice to me.


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## xkm1948 (Aug 27, 2018)

HammerON said:


> How are your CPU temps?
> Nice build




Idling around 30C. Without OC full load under his regular usage is about 50C. Don't have Windows on it yet so cant use stress test tool. He has yet to entertain the thought of overclocking. I mean the entire PC is close to $9K so yeah.




Frick said:


> I'm decidedly not a fan of lights in computers, but I actually like the look of those DIMMs really looks nice to me.



Waiting to set them in the MSI RGB software to sync. Hopefully it will work well.


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## sepheronx (Aug 27, 2018)

what a god ugly case.

Nice CPU though.  Would love to have one myself.  One day when I win the lottery.


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## phill (Aug 27, 2018)

Not a fan of RGB myself, but I do like the setup   I would love to have one of these CPUs for some crunching and some benchmarks just for some giggles, completely pointless really but I would willingly use it as my daily setup


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## xkm1948 (Sep 3, 2018)




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## phill (Sep 3, 2018)

I'd so like   It would be a complete waste, but I'd still like one!! 

Thank you so much for sharing!!


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## cdawall (Sep 3, 2018)

phill said:


> I'd so like   It would be a complete waste, but I'd still like one!!
> 
> Thank you so much for sharing!!



So get one?


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## blobster21 (Sep 3, 2018)

How much for those parts ? (if you're allowed to mention the price)


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## Toothless (Sep 3, 2018)

blobster21 said:


> How much for those parts ? (if you're allowed to mention the price)


He said $9k.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Sep 3, 2018)

Toothless said:


> He said $9k.


Well i never, 9k i am eager to buy Tr but I am not expecting to pay that much ,but i wouldn't for sure be getting that spec list either to be fair, but wow still.


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## xkm1948 (Sep 3, 2018)

cdawall said:


> So get one?



Did you buy a 2990WX as well?


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## cdawall (Sep 3, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> Did you buy a 2990WX as well?



Yes I got it a week or two ago. Waiting on my board and waterblock to show up to replace the 5960x I have been using. That chip is getting tired. Can't hold 4.8ghz anymore.


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## xkm1948 (Sep 3, 2018)

cdawall said:


> Yes I got it a week or two ago. Waiting on my board and waterblock to show up to replace the 5960x I have been using. That chip is getting tired. Can't hold 4.8ghz anymore.



You getting the MSI MEG? My friend told me earlier bios are not playing well with ram settings. You might wanna try some of those beta BIOS.

As of now my friend's DDR4-3200 C14 can only run max at 2933.


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## phill (Sep 3, 2018)

cdawall said:


> So get one?



I wish I could   But sadly there's other things that have happened and I can't go spending silly crazy amounts on hardware like I used to..  Well for the moment   When things are a bit more normal, then I might consider!!  That said, I have promised myself to finish off my 5960X build, that's been waiting nearly 3 years!! lol  By the time I get my daughters and girl friends Ryzen systems up and running, I believe then I might have some money for actually buying a completely loopy build for myself  

Well I hope so!! 



cdawall said:


> Yes I got it a week or two ago. Waiting on my board and waterblock to show up to replace the 5960x I have been using. That chip is getting tired. Can't hold 4.8ghz anymore.



What volts did yours need for that speed @cdawall ??


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## cdawall (Sep 4, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> You getting the MSI MEG? My friend told me earlier bios are not playing well with ram settings. You might wanna try some of those beta BIOS.
> 
> As of now my friend's DDR4-3200 C14 can only run max at 2933.



Nope this is going into my matx case so the asrock x399m was my only option. It sounds like they have memory clocking down so we will see what it'll do. They 4x8gb trident kit I have has no issues pushing 3400+ so I'm going to try for as far as they'll let me go. 



phill said:


> What volts did yours need for that speed @cdawall ??



1.45-1.47v this chip was always under a massive loop so I never really cared. It's running at a much more sane 4.4ghz right now. Voltage definitely pushed way too far for far too long.


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## Jez :) (Sep 4, 2018)

Subbed. Would like to see the finished product!!


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## therealmeep (Sep 4, 2018)

Sub because I like where this is going and we have several PC's for similar use where work, 7900X, 128GB RAM, 1TB 960 Pro, 2TB HDD, 2xTitan XP service pack 3 or whatever the most recent ones are. We've got 3 of them running Linux doing modeling and AI training/machine learning.


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## phill (Sep 4, 2018)

cdawall said:


> 1.45-1.47v this chip was always under a massive loop so I never really cared. It's running at a much more sane 4.4ghz right now. Voltage definitely pushed way too far for far too long.



Ah   I was running 4.8Ghz with mine around the 1.25vcore mark, it was a bit of a cherry picked CPU   Currently running 4.2Ghz @ 1.062vcore


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## Liviu Cojocaru (Sep 4, 2018)

What a monster!!! Very nice system I hope it serves its purpose well  Great job!


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## cdawall (Sep 4, 2018)

phill said:


> Ah   I was running 4.8Ghz with mine around the 1.25vcore mark, it was a bit of a cherry picked CPU   Currently running 4.2Ghz @ 1.062vcore



OH yea this was a used chip that always loved voltage. Probably would be a monster under LN2.


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## phill (Sep 4, 2018)

cdawall said:


> OH yea this was a used chip that always loved voltage. Probably would be a monster under LN2.



I had it booting at 5Ghz under standard water at about 1.34vcore, but not stable..  I'm guessing maybe chilled water might have been a different story..  I believe it was tested under LN2 at 5.7Ghz or something..  4.75Ghz in Windows 7 was 1.23vcore   So worth the money I paid for it   I think Windows 10 makes the voltages I used in 7 unstable so sadly I have to higher the volts up a bit...


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## cdawall (Sep 4, 2018)

phill said:


> I had it booting at 5Ghz under standard water at about 1.34vcore, but not stable..  I'm guessing maybe chilled water might have been a different story..  I believe it was tested under LN2 at 5.7Ghz or something..  4.75Ghz in Windows 7 was 1.23vcore   So worth the money I paid for it   I think Windows 10 makes the voltages I used in 7 unstable so sadly I have to higher the volts up a bit...



This did 5ghz@1.5v stable. Chip was a beast it just loved voltage. The higher density ram I have in it now didn't help things. The old 4*4gb kit I had let it boot much higher.


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## xkm1948 (Sep 4, 2018)

Man, please take your X99 discussions to PM.


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## phill (Sep 4, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> Man, please take your X99 discussions to PM.



Apologises, this will be my upgrade path to Threadripper, so I'm interested in finding out how you get on


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## Deleted member 178884 (Sep 7, 2018)

phill said:


> Apologises, this will be my upgrade path to Threadripper, so I'm interested in finding out how you get on


Make sure to get a future proofed board one as good as or better than the OPs one, The threadrippers coming 2020 will make a nice upgrade.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 7, 2018)

Build looks awesome, and I have to admit I'm jealous of it!  I want that many threads at my disposal.

One note, from the pictures it looks like the Rad is mounted below the pump on the AIO cooler.  In my experience, this works at first, but as a little of the fluid evaporates, the air bubble ends up getting into the pump and causing a gurgling noise.  It takes a year or more before it happens though.


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## phill (Sep 7, 2018)

Xx Tek Tip xX said:


> Make sure to get a future proofed board one as good as or better than the OPs one, The threadrippers coming 2020 will make a nice upgrade.



Looking at the X399 Meg but I'm sure there will be others that are available by the time I get to upgrade   The Threadrippers just seems complete overkill for what I need, but that makes it more fun for me   I'm keeping an eye on the thread to see what happens and so on


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## bonehead123 (Sep 7, 2018)

Nice job so far, but with that case and all of it's options, you could have definitely done a better job of cable/wire/tubing management and it would have looked a lot better    When you add the water cooling you will have a really messy interior....

I have a TT900 too, and it is way moar better in this regard, although it is air cooled right now (I'm saving up for custom loop hdwr in the near future).  

I have a similar set of RGB ram and it looks great along with my RGB fans, most of which are only barely seen though.  I also put a digital fan/temp controller in the lower front 5 inch bay, which adds to the bling effects....


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## ryan.voth (Sep 7, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> So back in January I helped a Professor setup a TR 1950X build used for Nanopore sequencing as well as Genomic data processing. It was so well received that I got request to help another researcher building another TR system also used for Genomics and machine learning.
> 
> Here are the specs:
> 
> ...


Incredible looking Machine I am looking forward to seeing the completed project. My bad I didn't notice the other parts to this.


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## cdawall (Sep 9, 2018)

well it begins...


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## storm-chaser (Sep 10, 2018)

Very impressive build! Nice to see a decent backstory and pictures to go along with it. 

Do you think the owner is really going to be able to use all 64 threads? 

I'd like to see the benchmark report from AIDA64 on this system. I'm sure it would top out most of them.


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## xkm1948 (Sep 10, 2018)

storm-chaser said:


> Very impressive build! Nice to see a decent backstory and pictures to go along with it.
> 
> Do you think the owner is really going to be able to use all 64 threads?
> 
> I'd like to see the benchmark report from AIDA64 on this system. I'm sure it would top out most of them.



Usage of just 64 threads? Pff easily. The programs like predication of gene regulation network usually require 40+ threads over terabyte level of RAM on clusters. The problem even with TR-2 platform is lack of large RAM capacity. Yeah 128GB is small fry.


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## hat (Sep 10, 2018)

So what do you do when 128GB isn't enough?


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## Aquinus (Sep 10, 2018)

hat said:


> So what do you do when 128GB isn't enough?


You start using registered and load reduced memory and server boards with gratuitous amounts of DIMM slots.
https://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/2U/2023/AS-2023US-TR4.cfm

If you don't like the cost of the server, the cost of the CPUs and Memory will horrify you. 128GB DDR4 LRDIMMs with ECC are not cheap, it's something like $1,300 a stick.


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## hat (Sep 10, 2018)

Well... I already know servers exist that have huge amounts of RAM... I meant on the same system.


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## Flyordie (Sep 10, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> Usage of just 64 threads? Pff easily. The programs like predication of gene regulation network usually require 40+ threads over terabyte level of RAM on clusters. The problem even with TR-2 platform is lack of large RAM capacity. Yeah 128GB is small fry.



Sounds like you need these..

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...s-paving-the-way-for-16gb-single-rank.247395/

Should net you what.. 256GB then?


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## hat (Sep 10, 2018)

But the board/CPU still only supports 128GB? So such ram wouldn't help...


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## storm-chaser (Sep 10, 2018)

I'm surprised these chips are made in china. You'd think AMD would want to bring manufacturing back home to the states.
Little off topic but it's just a thought I had.


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## Flyordie (Sep 10, 2018)

hat said:


> But the board/CPU still only supports 128GB? So such ram wouldn't help...



Last I checked the board has 8 slots... so... 32GBx8= 256GB right?  Threadripper supports up to 2TB.


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## hat (Sep 10, 2018)

Specs page on Newegg for this board shows 128GB.


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## Flyordie (Sep 10, 2018)

hat said:


> Specs page on Newegg for this board shows 128GB.



Yep. Because thats all that there was at the time for DDR4 capacities.  In theory the only thing *limiting* the RAM amount now is the IMC/Physical RAM slots. BIOS is ready for 2TB. I asked. (Gigabyte has a sample in its labs now doing validation testing.. with its X399 boards)


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## xkm1948 (Sep 10, 2018)

hat said:


> But the board/CPU still only supports 128GB? So such ram wouldn't help...




Should be fine. Intel official only listed 5820K as supporting 64GB max RAM.

https://ark.intel.com/products/82932/Intel-Core-i7-5820K-Processor-15M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz

 Simply because max avaiable RAM at that time was 64GB. Then check out this:

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/128gb-ram-on-x99-platform-with-5820k-no-problem.222305/


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## phill (Sep 10, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> Should be fine. Intel official only listed 5820K as supporting 64GB max RAM.
> 
> https://ark.intel.com/products/82932/Intel-Core-i7-5820K-Processor-15M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz
> 
> ...



Just passing on comment of Awesome!!  That is all


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## HTC (Sep 17, 2018)

According to Wendell @ level1techs, there's a "problem" with core 0 of this chip.

He noticed the issue while using Indigo benchmark and it's explained here:










Does this affect other programs / benchmarks? No idea. Doing the steps he did can *potentially* speed up the 2990WX in other programs.

Just a heads up!


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## HTC (Sep 28, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> Liqtech TR4 *II* 360
> 
> Yeah I think enermax knows thir old gen problem as well



Heads up: https://hardforum.com/threads/enerm...coolers-review.1945204/page-4#post-1043848370

Start reading from this post and prepare for a *possible* nasty surprise.


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## xkm1948 (Sep 28, 2018)

The build is now complete


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## Toothless (Sep 29, 2018)

Let's see it done! Let's see it benched!


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## xkm1948 (Sep 29, 2018)




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## phill (Sep 29, 2018)

That's one test I've not yet run..  I'm really slacking!!


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## xkm1948 (Jan 7, 2019)

Did a bro night out with local LAN party, putting the two RTX 2080Ti rigs next to each other.

His RGB lights won the show at the end.


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## Toothless (Jan 7, 2019)

Looks like an RGB demon with a crown.


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## Flyordie (Jan 7, 2019)

xkm...   Do you know what he uses for a pump curve on that Liqtech AIO?  

I have the 240 version... and well.. its wonky for me. 

Could just be the fans I use but its never really been the greatest on my 1900X. I idle around 28-32C.  Full load I will easily hit 70C @ 4.0Ghz (1.38V).  So idk if its just the rad not being good enough or the pump not being the greatest. 

I am using SP120s on the 570X. BUT- Custom water cooling is enroute.  Got the monoblock, rad and fittings. Waiting on pump which is sitting at DHLs Cinci, OH hub since Saturday.   (Went with an EK D5 Xylem II PWM pump and glass reservoir)


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## Vayra86 (Jan 7, 2019)

xkm1948 said:


> Did a bro night out with local LAN party, putting the two RTX 2080Ti rigs next to each other.
> 
> His RGB lights won the show at the end.
> 
> View attachment 114144



I gotta say that is an awesome combination of RGB parts. All of it has a diffuser. Sweet


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