Advice for Upgrading X99 Workstation for Modern Engineering Workloads

[Eliomiller]

Hello, I’m looking for advice on upgrading my workstation, which has served me well on the X99 platform for nearly a decade. My current build has started showing its age, especially with the increasing demands of my engineering work, so I’m considering a new CPU, motherboard, RAM, and GPU. Here’s my situation:

My primary tasks are engineering-heavy, including CAD applications; FEA software like ANSYS; MATLAB, and 3D rendering tools like Keyshot and Blender, plus Adobe Suite like Photoshop, After Effect and Premiere. I do a lot of video work and some casual competitive gaming but am mainly focused on work stability and reliability, with gaming quality as a secondary priority. I'm mainly looking at the new AMD Ryzen 7000/9000 series or Intel Arrow Lake, with a budget of around $1–1.5k USD. I’d like to keep as much of my existing build intact as possible, without a full overhaul, and I’m prioritizing stability, durability, and a future-proof platform that can ideally last another several years.

However, I do have some concerns with the current hardware trends. After catching up with the PC hardware scene, I’m sadly seeing a lot of potential issues, and would love some clarity. The recent controversies have me concerned, from Intel’s silicon degradation reports to ASUS motherboard build quality, the shutdown of EVGA's GPU division, and connector problems on the RTX 4000 series. Stability and reliability are key, so I’m wondering which brands and components are most recommended now. As I live in a place where getting warranty claims processed and servicing hardware is difficult, I would like to go for parts that have a good track record of not failing often and of being of good quality.

Compared to my current ASUS Sabertooth, newer motherboards seem to be a downgrade in terms of durability (less metal backplates, fewer SATA ports, reduced PCI-E lanes, fewer RAM slots, and way fewer USB ports). I need at least 6, ideally 8, SATA ports due to my current storage setup. Are there any specific models that might offer durability and feature sets comparable to my old Sabertooth?

After upgrading the core components, I plan to replace my secondary monitor with a 4K display, so graphics performance and 4K support are factors to consider. I don’t need the absolute best but want reliable, steady performance for engineering and occasional gaming.

Any advice on viable options for my budget, insights into current reliability issues, or recommendations on motherboards that might offer solid build quality and ample connectivity would be incredibly helpful. Should I consider waiting a couple of months for the release of the new RTX 5000 series and to hear more about the Zen 5 and Arrow Lake releases? Thanks in advance!

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3 GHz 6-Core Processor ($420.00)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 3 67.8 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler ($90.00)
Motherboard: Asus SABERTOOTH X99 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LED 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($82.99 @ Corsair)
Storage: Samsung 850 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($192.00)
Storage: Samsung 850 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Crucial T500 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($145.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Red Plus 8 TB 3.5" 5640 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($159.99 @ Western Digital)
Storage: Western Digital Red Plus 8 TB 3.5" 5640 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($159.99 @ Western Digital)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($60.00)
Storage: Western Digital Red Pro 4 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($210.28 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA SC ULTRA GAMING GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB Video Card
Case: be quiet! Silent Base 800 ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic Platinum 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Optical Drive: LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM - DVD 64-bit
Sound Card: Creative Labs ZXR 24-bit 192 kHz Sound Card ($498.00 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Corsair SP140 49.49 CFM 140 mm Fans 2-Pack
Case Fan: Corsair SP140 49.49 CFM 140 mm Fans 2-Pack
Case Fan: Corsair AF140 (2018) 62 CFM 140 mm Fans 2-Pack
Monitor: Asus ROG SWIFT PG278Q 27.0" 2560 x 1440 144 Hz Monitor
Monitor: Dell S2721QS 27.0" 3840 x 2160 60 Hz Monitor ($237.00 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Corsair K70 RGB PRO Wired Gaming Keyboard ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Mouse: Logitech G502 Hero Wired Optical Mouse ($37.04 @ Amazon)
Headphones: Beyerdynamic DT 700 PRO X Headphones ($269.38 @ Amazon)
Speakers: Logitech Z506 155 W 5.1-Channel Speakers
External Storage: Western Digital ELEMENTS 14 TB External Hard Drive ($268.83 @ Amazon)
UPS: CyberPower PR1500LCD UPS ($545.95 @ Adorama)
Total: $3647.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-11-13 18:53 EST-0500

 

[Harlow]

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LED 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($82.99 @ Corsair)

If you're considering fitting four DIMMs instead of two DIMMs, apart from the fact 32GB is probably not enough, four DIMMs will not run as fast if you intend to run XMP overclocks.

A more recent system with DDR5 might be a better idea?

I need at least 6, ideally 8, SATA ports due to my current storage setup.

You'll be very lucky to find a board with 8 SATA ports. Modern boards allocate more CPU and chipset lanes to multiple M.2 NVMe slots, with up to five M.2 being commonly available.

My solution is to buy a cheap ($30) second-hand LSI (or Dell or HP) SAS HBA controller card. You'll need at least one additional PCIe x16 length slot running at x4 or preferably x8, to accommodate the HBA card. SAS controllers are equally happy running SATA drives. With a "forward breakout" cable, a dual port HBA card can control 8 SATA hard disks.

I usually flash the HBA card's BIOS to IT (Initiate Target) mode, but you could probably get away with the more common IR (RAID) mode. You can buy second hand cards pre-flashed to IT, but they tend to be a little more expensive.

 

[Ruru]

How about a Threadripper platform? With such, there's all the connectivity and things you're concerned about modern consumer desktop platforms.

 

[Harlow]

to ASUS motherboard build quality

I've been running a 3800X on an Asus board since 2018 and a 7950X on another Asus board since December 2022 with no problems. Both systems are video/photo editing rigs. No CPU overclocks on either rig and I'm running the DDR5 RAM at stock 4800MT/s. Premiere Pro does not benefit from XMP overclocks according to the Puget Systems test results and I prfere stability on long video renders..

How about a Threadripper platform?

That would be the first choice for my next rig, but the OP has a budget of only $1k to $1.5k. Might be tight.

A modern Threadripper or Xeon rig avoids most of the problems associated with running out of PCIe slots and lanes that occur with consumer boards. There's the option to fit ECC and 'oodles' more RAM. My ancient X99 Xeon has 8 DIMM slots and 4 memory channels, with options for RDIMM and LRDIMM to increase memory capacity above the 128GB limit with UDIMM.

 

[Frick]

If you're considering fitting four DIMMs instead of two DIMMs, apart from the fact 32GB is probably not enough, four DIMMs will not run as fast if you intend to run XMP overclocks.

That is the old build.

As for that kind of connetivity, HEDT would really shine but that is way over your budget. And honestly getting a workstation-worthy CPU/MB/RSM/GPU for $1500 is ... a tough ask. $1000 is barely enough for CPU/MB/RAM (based on the 9950X). Also, Nvidia will release new GPUs in a few months, I'd get Zen5/Arrow Lake now and keep the 2060 until then.

And yes it's so annoying to buy this stuff today, especially if you want internal storage and expansion.

How about a Threadripper platform? With such, there's all the connectivity and things you're concerned about modern consumer desktop platforms.

Not really possible for $1500.

 

[Ruru]

Not really possible for $1500.

Ah, missed that. Then I'd go for the 9950X route and just force things to work.

 

[Harlow]

External Storage: Western Digital ELEMENTS 14 TB External Hard Drive ($268.83 @ Amazon)

Caution.

Many (cheaper) external hard disk drives utilize SMR (Shingle Magnetic Recording) as opposed to CMR/PMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording).

https://www.howtogeek.com/803276/cmr-vs.-smr-hard-drives-whats-the-difference/

If you're currently using a 14TB external drive to archive projects that's fine, but if you're thinking of using it for "work in progress" and 4K video processing, I'd advise against it. When an SMR drive starts to fill up and you delete files, it takes longer to write new files as the controller shuffles blocks of data around. SMR transfer speeds can plummet on well used drives.

I avoid SMR drives like the plague in my TruNAS Core servers, where they've very bad news indeed if you ever need to resilver an array.

For video work, I have one M.2 drive for Windows + Premiere Pro/Topaz Video AI, a second M.2 drive for the Adobe/Topaz scrach files and a third M.2 drive for work in progress. Projects are saved to 5 internal CMR hard disks and archived to LTO tape. I've stopped using Blu-ray for archives because the capacity is too low for my needs.

 

[Assimilator]

$1,500 isn't enough to get you a decent HEDT system in this day and age; it's barely enough to get a five-year-old second-hand one, you'd need to lay out at least double your budget to get modern HEDT. But given your current CPU is an old 6-core part, a higher-core-count consumer AMD or Intel CPU is going to provide a significant uplift. OTOH, in consumer you're limited to only 2 memory channels while your current system has 4.

SATA is on its way out, you are not going to find new boards with a plethora of these ports. There are a bunch of cheap PCIe x1 cards on Amazon that offer up to 10 SATA ports, grab one of those and you're GTG (and you can reuse it in future builds). Plug your SATA SSDs into the motherboard directly and the spinning rust into the PCIe card. (Alternatively, consolidate your dual 500GB SATA SSDs to a single new 1TB NVMe drive; then you can get away with a motherboard with only 4 SATA ports and you don't need an add-in card.)

ASUS quality is no better or worse than any other brand, but their stuff is generally overpriced - for that reason avoid if possible.

CPU: Ryzen 9 9950X (16 cores/32 threads) or, if you think you can deal with "only" 12/24t, the cheaper 9900X
Motherboard: Literally any X670E/X870E with a spare PCIe x1 or better slot (for the SATA card) - find the one with the least bad connectivity compromises you can accept (yes that is the state of choosing consumer motherboards in 2024)
RAM: 2x 48GB DDR5-5600 modules; I know the "enthusiasts" are going to scream and cry and say you should go for DDR5-6000 at a minimum, but you want something that is stable and DDR5-5600 is the maximum officially supported by Zen 5
GPU: this is where things fall down, the cheapest 4K card I could possibly recommend that has some legs is 7900 XTX and that is already 2/3 of your budget; I'd suggest sticking with your 2060S until the RTX 5000 series launches and the prices of previous-gen cards drop

My solution is to buy a cheap ($30) second-hand LSI (or Dell or HP) SAS HBA controller card. You'll need at least one additional PCIe x16 length slot running at x4 or preferably x8, to accommodate the HBA card. SAS controllers are equally happy running SATA drives. With a "forward breakout" cable, a dual port HBA card can control 8 SATA hard disks.

TBH I would avoid these cards. They are old (generally PCIe 2.0) and as such consume one PCIe lane per SATA port which, on today's lane-gimped consumer platforms, is a massive waste of those valuable lanes.

 

[Eliomiller]

If you're considering fitting four DIMMs instead of two DIMMs, apart from the fact 32GB is probably not enough, four DIMMs will not run as fast if you intend to run XMP overclocks.

A more recent system with DDR5 might be a better idea?


You'll be very lucky to find a board with 8 SATA ports. Modern boards allocate more CPU and chipset lanes to multiple M.2 NVMe slots, with up to five M.2 being commonly available.

My solution is to buy a cheap ($30) second-hand LSI (or Dell or HP) SAS HBA controller card. You'll need at least one additional PCIe x16 length slot running at x4 or preferably x8, to accommodate the HBA card. SAS controllers are equally happy running SATA drives. With a "forward breakout" cable, a dual port HBA card can control 8 SATA hard disks.

I usually flash the HBA card's BIOS to IT (Initiate Target) mode, but you could probably get away with the more common IR (RAID) mode. You can buy second hand cards pre-flashed to IT, but they tend to be a little more expensive.

I Can probably remove 2 of the HDDs that are being used for redundancy right now and bring the amount down to 6 SATA ports, 2 for the ODDs, 2 for the SSDs, and 2 for the dual 8 TB hard disks. But PCIe lanes are already an issue on consumer builds nowadays. My current system has 24 lanes, which is enough for the graphics card, the sound card, the M.2 slot, and the motherboard built-in communication and connectivity features.

Caution.

Many (cheaper) external hard disk drives utilize SMR (Shingle Magnetic Recording) as opposed to CMR/PMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording).

https://www.howtogeek.com/803276/cmr-vs.-smr-hard-drives-whats-the-difference/

If you're currently using a 14TB external drive to archive projects that's fine, but if you're thinking of using it for "work in progress" and 4K video processing, I'd advise against it. When an SMR drive starts to fill up and you delete files, it takes longer to write new files as the controller shuffles blocks of data around. SMR transfer speeds can plummet on well used drives.

I avoid SMR drives like the plague in my TruNAS Core servers, where they've very bad news indeed if you ever need to resilver an array.

For video work, I have one M.2 drive for Windows + Premiere Pro/Topaz Video AI, a second M.2 drive for the Adobe/Topaz scrach files and a third M.2 drive for work in progress. Projects are saved to 5 internal CMR hard disks and archived to LTO tape. I've stopped using Blu-ray for archives because the capacity is too low for my needs.

I only use the external disk as a backup; I never use it to edit live from it.

How about a Threadripper platform? With such, there's all the connectivity and things you're concerned about modern consumer desktop platforms.

I have considered the Threadripper platform, but I am honestly scared by the sheer cost in the thousands just for the CPU. I don't know if it might be a good idea to go for older generation Threadripper ?

$1,500 isn't enough to get you a decent HEDT system in this day and age; it's barely enough to get a five-year-old second-hand one, you'd need to lay out at least double your budget to get modern HEDT. But given your current CPU is an old 6-core part, a higher-core-count consumer AMD or Intel CPU is going to provide a significant uplift. OTOH, in consumer you're limited to only 2 memory channels while your current system has 4.

SATA is on its way out, you are not going to find new boards with a plethora of these ports. There are a bunch of cheap PCIe x1 cards on Amazon that offer up to 10 SATA ports, grab one of those and you're GTG (and you can reuse it in future builds). Plug your SATA SSDs into the motherboard directly and the spinning rust into the PCIe card. (Alternatively, consolidate your dual 500GB SATA SSDs to a single new 1TB NVMe drive; then you can get away with a motherboard with only 4 SATA ports and you don't need an add-in card.)

ASUS quality is no better or worse than any other brand, but their stuff is generally overpriced - for that reason avoid if possible.

CPU: Ryzen 9 9950X (16 cores/32 threads) or, if you think you can deal with "only" 12/24t, the cheaper 9900X
Motherboard: Literally any X670E/X870E with a spare PCIe x1 or better slot (for the SATA card) - find the one with the least bad connectivity compromises you can accept (yes that is the state of choosing consumer motherboards in 2024)
RAM: 2x 48GB DDR5-5600 modules; I know the "enthusiasts" are going to scream and cry and say you should go for DDR5-6000 at a minimum, but you want something that is stable and DDR5-5600 is the maximum officially supported by Zen 5
GPU: this is where things fall down, the cheapest 4K card I could possibly recommend that has some legs is 7900 XTX and that is already 2/3 of your budget; I'd suggest sticking with your 2060S until the RTX 5000 series launches and the prices of previous-gen cards drop


TBH I would avoid these cards. They are old (generally PCIe 2.0) and as such consume one PCIe lane per SATA port which, on today's lane-gimped consumer platforms, is a massive waste of those valuable lanes.

Thank you for the suggestion. May I ask what you would consider to be the closest motherboards series or families currently available that share some of the build quality I saw with the Sabertooth ? the TUF series seems to be way worse nowadays, and I wonder if there are currently any similar options from MSI or ASrock. I would rather avoid Gigabyte if possible as my experience with their customer service has been bad, to say the least. For the CPU, I was mostly considering the Ryzen 9900X and the similarily priced Ultra 7 265K from intel, although I am not sure which to pick yet given my needs. pairing that with 64 GB or 128 GB of dual memory DDR5 RAM sticks from corsair or crucial at the default clock setting. I would prefer not to bother with XMP for stability concerns. I am still running my DDR4 sticks at 2400 mhz. Although I am not sure if I should just get a 64 GB of RAM and upgrade later on (as I would probably not need more than 64 GB for the forseeable future, my current needs are maxing out in the high 50s) but I am wondering if that would cause instability issues due to the mismatch if I come to add more ram in the future. I could reuse my current cooler and get an attachment kit from be-quiet although buying a new one is relatively cheap I guess.

Here's the list I've compiled so far, minus the Motherboard. I am not sure if an Ultra 7 would be better suited for my workload but I am not sure if there are any degradation issues with that new series yet. We haven't seen much news regarding that:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 4.4 GHz 12-Core Processor ($382.55 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 Black CPU Cooler ($44.90 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-5200 CL40 Memory ($154.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $582.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-11-14 07:21 EST-0500

I will follow through on most suggestions here and stick to the RTX 2060S for a bit longer and upgrade that once the 5000 comes out although it seems to be showing some occasional problems. I do have some questions.

Do you think my PSU listed in the first post would be able to handle a mid-tier GPU from the RTX 4000 or rumoured RTX 5000 series? I would prefer not to replace that if possible to save some trouble.
Am I expected to notice the downgrade from quad channel RAM to dual-channel? especially when I'm going from DDR4 to DDR5 ?
Do I really need all those PCIe lanes with modern cards ? or would running the upcoming GPU on 8x lanes still provide a significant advantage over what I am currently running ? I wouldn't mind switching the Audio Card for an external one and the smaller SSDs for a bigger M.2 one, although I would rather avoid the additional spending as they still work just fine for my needs. I have never been satisfied with onboard audio.

Thank you again to all of you guys for providing your suggestions and feedback, it is greatly appreciated!

 

[Dr. Dro]

Buy a Xeon E5-2699 v4 on AliExpress. They cost dirt in comparison to a complete machine and you don't have to change anything else on your setup. You'll go from a Haswell 6-core to a Broadwell 22-core, and you'll be spending $125-150 at most. If it's for engineering - I think you will very much like the result.

Then set the rest of the money aside for when AMD launches the 9950X3D.

 

[eidairaman1]

Look at crucial memory instead

 

[QuietBob]

My primary tasks are engineering-heavy, including CAD applications; FEA software like ANSYS; MATLAB, and 3D rendering tools like Keyshot and Blender, plus Adobe Suite like Photoshop, After Effect and Premiere. I do a lot of video work and some casual competitive gaming

In general, for the stated uses you should be looking at a CPU with at least 8 performance cores, 64 GB of DDR5 RAM, and an Nvidia RTX card with 12 GB VRAM at the very minimum.

However, certain scenarios will benefit from having more cores, or greater memory bandwidth, or more VRAM, or using AVX-512 instructions.

What kind of modelling do you do in ANSYS? What specific CAD and FEA apps do you use?

 

[Frick]

Do you think my PSU listed in the first post would be able to handle a mid-tier GPU from the RTX 4000 or rumoured RTX 5000 series? I would prefer not to replace that if possible to save some trouble.

That PSU is fine for a long time to come.

EDIT: Oh hey wait it's the old one, isn't it? That's quite old at this point. The PSU is probably still fine, but it might be time to replace it if no other reason than that sweet warranty.

Do I really need all those PCIe lanes with modern cards ? or would running the upcoming GPU on 8x lanes still provide a significant advantage over what I am currently running ? I wouldn't mind switching the Audio Card for an external one and the smaller SSDs for a bigger M.2 one, although I would rather avoid the additional spending as they still work just fine for my needs. I have never been satisfied with onboard audio.

Your sound card is x1, so it'll work. Many boards on the higher end (which is what you should buuy) have at least two and some even three x1-slots (aside from the full x16). You can plop some SATA exansion cards there, many boards only have 4 SATA ports. I don't have any recommendations off the cuff though, but MSI seems to have sensible PCIe policies (PCIe lanes are shared so a lot of even high end boards have stuff like of you have a M2 drive in M2_3 or 4 PCIe_3 will be disabled, and stuff like that, but from my very short exploration of those boards MSI doesn't really have much of that).

 

[eidairaman1]

That PSU is fine for a long time to come.

EDIT: Oh hey wait it's the old one, isn't it? That's quite old at this point. The PSU is probably still fine, but it might be time to replace it if no other reason than that sweet warranty.

Your sound card is x1, so it'll work. Many boards on the higher end (which is what you should buuy) have at least two and some even three x1-slots (aside from the full x16). You can plop some SATA exansion cards there, many boards only have 4 SATA ports. I don't have any recommendations off the cuff though, but MSI seems to have sensible PCIe policies (PCIe lanes are shared so a lot of even high end boards have stuff like of you have a M2 drive in M2_3 or 4 PCIe_3 will be disabled, and stuff like that, but from my very short exploration of those boards MSI doesn't really have much of that).

If he wants 1 of those gen 4 rtx he will need a 12 pin smoking/firestarter connectors.

 

[Frick]

If he wants 1 of those gen 4 rtx he will need a 12v smoking connector

Yeah I realized that. Definitely time to replace the PSU.

 

[Assimilator]

I Can probably remove 2 of the HDDs that are being used for redundancy right now and bring the amount down to 6 SATA ports, 2 for the ODDs, 2 for the SSDs, and 2 for the dual 8 TB hard disks. But PCIe lanes are already an issue on consumer builds nowadays. My current system has 24 lanes, which is enough for the graphics card, the sound card, the M.2 slot, and the motherboard built-in communication and connectivity features.

Ah, didn't realise those ODDs are SATA, yikes... I only have USB-C external ODDs. Well then a 4-port PCIe card for ODDs + HDDs and the ports on the board for the SATA SSDs are your best best.

I have considered the Threadripper platform, but I am honestly scared by the sheer cost in the thousands just for the CPU. I don't know if it might be a good idea to go for older generation Threadripper ?

I'm pretty happy with the system I have (check my specs) but it cost northwards of £1,000 (CPU + mobo + RAM) and it is very much a case of paying a lot for something that is already outdated. An annoying thing about Threadripper is you need to find a cooler that supports the socket; most don't (and your current one certainly won't).

May I ask what you would consider to be the closest motherboards series or families currently available that share some of the build quality I saw with the Sabertooth ? the TUF series seems to be way worse nowadays, and I wonder if there are currently any similar options from MSI or ASrock. I would rather avoid Gigabyte if possible as my experience with their customer service has been bad, to say the least. For the CPU, I was mostly considering the Ryzen 9900X and the similarily priced Ultra 7 265K from intel, although I am not sure which to pick yet given my needs. pairing that with 64 GB or 128 GB of dual memory DDR5 RAM sticks from corsair or crucial at the default clock setting. I would prefer not to bother with XMP for stability concerns. I am still running my DDR4 sticks at 2400 mhz. Although I am not sure if I should just get a 64 GB of RAM and upgrade later on (as I would probably not need more than 64 GB for the forseeable future, my current needs are maxing out in the high 50s) but I am wondering if that would cause instability issues due to the mismatch if I come to add more ram in the future. I could reuse my current cooler and get an attachment kit from be-quiet although buying a new one is relatively cheap I guess.

I'm not the best person to ask since I buy everything second-hand, so my experience with customer service departments is limited.

Intel Arrow Lake CPUs are buggy right now, best to avoid. Intel says they will fix them with updates to the Windows thread scheduler, but I would not buy a beta product.

I'd go with the 96GB in two sticks purely because AMD consumer CPUs don't like running more than that number. For example with 2 sticks the maximum official supported speed is 5600MHz, but with 4 that drops to 3600MHz - not that's not a typo. There's a whole thread about it and the tl;dr is 2 sticks for least amount of fuss. You can go with 2x 32 initially and hope to add another 2x 32 later in the hope that BIOS updates will improve the situation, but no guarantees.

Buy a Xeon E5-2699 v4 on AliExpress. They cost dirt in comparison to a complete machine and you don't have to change anything else on your setup. You'll go from a Haswell 6-core to a Broadwell 22-core, and you'll be spending $125-150 at most. If it's for engineering - I think you will very much like the result.

This is not a bad shout, but depending on the type of workloads OP is running, a 9950X (or even a lower-core-count part) is likely going to prove significantly faster. And they will definitely need to upgrade their cooler; nominally 5820K can push 140W and the E5-2699 v4 only 5W more, but more than triple the number of cores is going to make a difference.

Yeah I realized that. Definitely time to replace the PSU.

It's more than the connector, it's the fact that a PSU of that age isn't equipped to handle the high transients that modern GPUs demand (both AMD and NVIDIA). So yeah, that unit needs to be replaced regardless.

 

[Dr. Dro]

It will be faster indeed. But given the investment value (very low) and having no imminent need to replace anything else or change the setup whatsoever for a small IPC boost, 3.75x the core count and a small increase in memory bandwidth (assuming OP doesn't overclock the 5930K) will give a second life to that workstation.

I kept my X99 machine around, my 14-core 2680 v4 is about as fast as my 18-core 4669 v3 in multi thread performance, those are the two chips I have. So it's a meaningful single thread gain between the generations.

Even if upgrading platform @Eliomiller should consider grabbing something because it will greatly extend the machine's capabilities, and the Sabertooth is indeed a very nice motherboard that you'll only find an equivalent in boards like the MSI ACE or ROG Extreme series.

The 14 core 2680 v4 can be found for $15 these days.

 

[Ruru]

I'm pretty happy with the system I have (check my specs) but it cost northwards of £1,000 (CPU + mobo + RAM) and it is very much a case of paying a lot for something that is already outdated. An annoying thing about Threadripper is you need to find a cooler that supports the socket; most don't (and your current one certainly won't).

Has the mounting been the same from the first gen? I drooled about Wraithripper but unfortunately there's no AM4 version. Looks like MasterAir MA620M is the consumer socket version of that.

 

[9087125]

Ill just touch on the issues I had with my AM5 build:
- USB-C is a lottery, literally different drives and enclosures and ports give widely diff speeds. Given this and that all my 40GB/s enclosures being unreliable, USB-c 4 was a waste of money, a premium feature that hasn't delivered.
- 4 M.2 slots were not enough, needed like 6, but i got another two from the usb-c ports with enclosures. so far soo good.
- Chipsets are an absolute joke! stock they sit at 85C at 25C ambient, the GPU is hovering over the dam things. They naturally get hot and their heatsink is terrible, just a flat plate heatsink which translates to poor surface area, they should have fins that are sitting in the cross breeze of the case fans, but the GPU is in the way. Even after toning down power management settings they still sit at 72-74C. Have to keep gpu fans always on in warm periods. heaps of online accounts reporting unacceptable high temps, some well over 90C.
- My 4080 didn't come with a right angle cable and so i couldn't close the side case, had to fork out 100bucks on one from cable mod, ridiculous these people making this stuff don't know what their doing.
- no possible room four sound card.
-not enough usb type a ports on mobo,
- Awful shameful windows was constantly making my usb HDD drives spin like crazy and keeping the case fans elevated when they were on. No official solution from clowns-r-us.
- No official way to turn off HDDs in windows, of course why on earth would we offer that? only guaranteed way is a physical power switch. cbf.
-We are currently in a ginormous SSD stagnation, where no one wants to make 16-24TB nvmes, in fact many like samsung dont give a shit about even 8TB. And the prices have soared. So with only 4 slots its become a big problem.
- not enough usb headers if you run alot of extra stuff, ridiculous.
-only one 19pin connector on mobo so half my case front usb ports cannot be used.
-ASUS mobo came with bloatware that offered nothing of any possible use to me and was just bloat, AI nonsense, telemetry etc. It was hard to remove that crap.

todays mobos are just not good, the GPU is too big taking up too many slots, the whole standards need to be changed its just getting really bad.

I must be one of the few who still wants sata ssd. Is this legit???? 16TB???? Been watching this for a while.

EX2 SSD 16TB | TEAMGROUP

Evolved from GX2, getting higher read/write speed instantly.

www.teamgroupinc.com

Personally I avoid buying anything that hasn't been out for at least 4-6months. I got the AM5 system when it was 12moths old so alot of the does and donts were already established which made it alot easier. I still wont wont touch an Intel system, after what they did, gonna take alot more time before they get my trust. No one knows what the deal was as they covered it up good and proper. The big mystery was, is this just poor manufacturing design? Poor quality control? Actual degradation? or some dynamic combination of all? The only guys who could know for sure would be intel as they would have the mega expensive tools to know.

As far as mobo build quality, for every person who says x brand gave me troubles and now Im gonna go y brand, there is another saying the exact opposite. Usually brands wave and crest.

The real true horror is the GPU prices, they are literally like 4 times the cost i was paying just 8yrs ago. the world has gone mad.

As far as the 4080-4090 connector problems, most people it seems dont report their issues on the net and there were some who were silenced due to the lawyers. Dont watch online videos, those guys get gpus given to them for free, and dont know how to do the scientific method, particularly their results were not well documented and could not be reproduced, they make videos to make money. The tests at least should have been conducted over a long time period testing the many factors like gpu cable quality and brands. Fundamental Science fail To this day I dont know what the deal was because it seems clear to me it was covered up, and because there was no idea of the amount of incidents that happened per units sold, no real context could be established.
The plug was undersized and being ran near its limits, those are objective facts well grounded in electrical engineering. In an ideal world that wouldn't be a problem as the terminations are usually well engineered and secured down. But when you have alot of current through a connector made for the average joe and the connectors are not plugged in exactly right, or there are quality control issues, or very small mating area, or flimsy terminals that can deform under mechanical stresses, that makes the connector design bad and a melting plug very easy, like a ticking time bomb. If one pin goes, the others will be forced to go, if one pin goes high resistance, the others now must take more amperage.

However some were saying the plugs actually loosen up by themselves, mine were doing this every few weeks, simply due to piss poor plastic plugs with poor retaining clips, the tolerances were bad and so that what allowed them to back out. I did test it a bit and they still didn't get alarmingly warm when deliberately loosened, but i had the 4080 which draws irrc ~315W under furmark. Either way the standard is crap and if they had any decency they would simply use two screws like in a vga cable. When you plug this cable in you just shake your head, as the amount of insertion length is tiny.

 

[DirtyDingusMcgee]

If you are trying to keep the existing system intact, why not just upgrade it? You could put up to 64gb memory on that board, and up to a 22 core cpu (Xeon E5-2699V4). Bigger, better faster storage would be easy. You have enough pci-e lanes to get a Raid/controller card that would do whatever. Then just cram as much video card on it as you can afford (plenty of options there). $1500 is a pretty tight budget for a new CAD/engineering rig.....your pcpartpicker list shows a total of $3647.41.

Used Xeon E5-2699 v4 @ $149 source: ebay

New Nemix 64gb (8x8) ddr4 2400 ecc/unbuffered @ $229 source: newegg

New Nvidia Titan RTX @ $1579 source: newegg

These are just examples, but they are all compatible with your existing system, and would be a massive upgrade.

A quick edit. You are limited to pci-e 3.0, but it really isn't a problem ( as there are a lot of possibilities for storage upgrades). You aren't really giving up that much performance if you get a newer pci-e 4.0 gpu (and why I was eyeing that Titan rtx....still 3.0 and 24 gig frame buffer). Spending $400 dollars for ram and cpu leaves a healthy $1100 dollars to spend on a gpu.

 

[bobbybluz]

I've been using an Asus X99 Deluxe for A/V production since they came out 9 years ago. It's been through several internal changes; only the case and mobo remain from the original build. Here's my take on upgrade vs new stuff since I have both: A Xeon E5 2699 V4, 64GB of DDR4 2400 (8x8), a NVMe drive of decent quality, new PSU and a good Gen 3 GPU are the way to go at the moment. With a bit of looking you can get all of that for well under $500 (I've done it more than once). My best GPU score was a liquid cooled GTX 1080 Ti SC2 Hybrid Gaming for $75 off the local Craigslist from a 15 year old kid. Like new and still in the original box.

Quad channel memory and 22 cores/ 44 threads is a great plus. The Xeons run extremely cool due to having locked multipliers. DDR4 2400 is the fastest RAM supported by V4's. Every X99 rig I've built using Xeons has been stable with a 103.5 BLCK setting. My only regret about this X99 unit is not getting an ASRock X99 Extreme6/3.1 instead of the Asus X99 Deluxe because with a V4 Xeon the ASRock can run 256GB of RAM plus has USB C. I do have a X99 Extreme4/3.1 (bought from a TPU staffer) with a 16 core E5 2683 V4 and 128GB of RAM sitting on one of my parts shelves at the moment. If it had an extra USB 3.0 port on the mobo (the Extreme6/3.1 and Asus X99 Deluxe have two) I'd be using that instead of the Asus.

Other than the upgrades to your current system I'd wait to see what's happening on Black Friday if you really do want to part with a large chunk of cash soon. Upgrading the CPU & RAM will make a huge difference in your current system. The PSU and NVMe drive should be done anyway at this point.

 

[Eliomiller]

I considered upgrading the CPU for a higher-end Broadwell-E i7 or Xeon like the options you suggested; however, I found the value of such an upgrade quite small given that I also benefit significantly from single-core performance and considering that the IPC gains are marginal. For example, CAD modelling using tools like NX or SolidWorks is a heavily single-threaded task, while FEA and 3D rendering are by nature heavily multi-threaded tasks. And while sometimes I wish I had more cores to handle my CPU-based renders faster, for example, or to finish a transcient simulation quicker; other times I wish I had higher clock speeds from my 3.3-3.7 GHz where it matters in software like MATLAB, where parallelizing calculations can be tricky sometimes.

I definitely need a new graphics card, that's for sure, where even a 3060 Ti I used as a temporary rental a couple of years ago nearly doubled my rendering speed (I mean that literally, like 2x more). But as @9087125 said, the whole AI + crypto inflation + that whole fiasco with the new power connector keeps me waiting for something more reliable. At some point while looking at some benchmarks it is clear that even Zen 3 and Intel's 12th gen CPUs would provide more than double the performance of my current build in both single and multi-threaded tasks, so I think that I don't neccessarily need to squeeze the tiniest bit of performance left by the current gen stuff. My SATA SSDs are fast enough considering that I use them as scratch disks and to store Games and programs mostly.

Ah, didn't realise those ODDs are SATA, yikes... I only have USB-C external ODDs. Well then a 4-port PCIe card for ODDs + HDDs and the ports on the board for the SATA SSDs are your best best.

I'm pretty happy with the system I have (check my specs) but it cost northwards of £1,000 (CPU + mobo + RAM) and it is very much a case of paying a lot for something that is already outdated. An annoying thing about Threadripper is you need to find a cooler that supports the socket; most don't (and your current one certainly won't).

I'm not the best person to ask since I buy everything second-hand, so my experience with customer service departments is limited.

Intel Arrow Lake CPUs are buggy right now, best to avoid. Intel says they will fix them with updates to the Windows thread scheduler, but I would not buy a beta product.

I'd go with the 96GB in two sticks purely because AMD consumer CPUs don't like running more than that number. For example with 2 sticks the maximum official supported speed is 5600MHz, but with 4 that drops to 3600MHz - not that's not a typo. There's a whole thread about it and the tl;dr is 2 sticks for least amount of fuss. You can go with 2x 32 initially and hope to add another 2x 32 later in the hope that BIOS updates will improve the situation, but no guarantees.

This is not a bad shout, but depending on the type of workloads OP is running, a 9950X (or even a lower-core-count part) is likely going to prove significantly faster. And they will definitely need to upgrade their cooler; nominally 5820K can push 140W and the E5-2699 v4 only 5W more, but more than triple the number of cores is going to make a difference.

It's more than the connector, it's the fact that a PSU of that age isn't equipped to handle the high transients that modern GPUs demand (both AMD and NVIDIA). So yeah, that unit needs to be replaced regardless.

Would that PSU also not be capable of handling something like an RTX 4060 or 4070? I doubt that an RTX 4080 or any equivalent would be within my budget anytime soon. That's going to end up becoming a whole new build if I keep changing stuff .


The list compiled so far is poking right through the 1.5k budget without a graphics card:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 4.4 GHz 12-Core Processor ($382.55 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 Black CPU Cooler ($44.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO ATX AM5 Motherboard ($598.98 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-5200 CL38 Memory ($259.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic VERTEX PX-1000 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($249.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1536.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-11-14 15:09 EST-0500

 

[Dr. Dro]

I considered upgrading the CPU for a higher-end Broadwell-E i7 or Xeon like the options you suggested; however, I found the value of such an upgrade quite small given that I also benefit significantly from single-core performance and considering that the IPC gains are marginal. For example, CAD modelling using tools like NX or SolidWorks is a heavily single-threaded task, while FEA and 3D rendering are by nature heavily multi-threaded tasks. And while sometimes I wish I had more cores to handle my CPU-based renders faster, for example, or to finish a transcient simulation quicker; other times I wish I had higher clock speeds from my 3.3-3.7 GHz where it matters in software like MATLAB, where parallelizing calculations can be tricky sometimes.

I definitely need a new graphics card, that's for sure, where even a 3060 Ti I used as a temporary rental a couple of years ago nearly doubled my rendering speed (I mean that literally, like 2x more). But as @9087125 said, the whole AI + crypto inflation + that whole fiasco with the new power connector keeps me waiting for something more reliable. At some point while looking at some benchmarks it is clear that even Zen 3 and Intel's 12th gen CPUs would provide more than double the performance of my current build in both single and multi-threaded tasks, so I think that I don't neccessarily need to squeeze the tiniest bit of performance left by the current gen stuff. My SATA SSDs are fast enough considering that I use them as scratch disks and to store Games and programs mostly.

Would that PSU also not be capable of handling something like an RTX 4060 or 4070? I doubt that an RTX 4080 or any equivalent would be within my budget anytime soon. That's going to end up becoming a whole new build if I keep changing stuff .


The list compiled so far is poking right through the 1.5k budget without a graphics card:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 4.4 GHz 12-Core Processor ($382.55 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 Black CPU Cooler ($44.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO ATX AM5 Motherboard ($598.98 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-5200 CL38 Memory ($259.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic VERTEX PX-1000 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($249.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1536.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-11-14 15:09 EST-0500

You'd probably be better off with a slightly cheaper motherboard and getting the full fat 9950X. Or really just pickup everything when the 3D version comes out, I hear that will be soon.

ROG boards are great but they are very expensive. I reckon you'd be treated better by the Strix series, they have the niceties of the ROG brand, are more affordable and tend to focus less on extreme performance so they have rich I/O.

How much is the X670E-E or the X870E-E? Does your workload need or benefit from AVX-512? If not, the i9-14900K could still be an attractive product. There are a lot of options, although in your shoes I'd probably grab the 2699 v4 for a trial run and to leave as a functional backup and wait for the 9950X3D launch. The rumors state dual X3D dies will be used so that would mean CPU with a silly high 192 MB of L3 cache.

 

[AnotherReader]

I considered upgrading the CPU for a higher-end Broadwell-E i7 or Xeon like the options you suggested; however, I found the value of such an upgrade quite small given that I also benefit significantly from single-core performance and considering that the IPC gains are marginal. For example, CAD modelling using tools like NX or SolidWorks is a heavily single-threaded task, while FEA and 3D rendering are by nature heavily multi-threaded tasks. And while sometimes I wish I had more cores to handle my CPU-based renders faster, for example, or to finish a transcient simulation quicker; other times I wish I had higher clock speeds from my 3.3-3.7 GHz where it matters in software like MATLAB, where parallelizing calculations can be tricky sometimes.

I definitely need a new graphics card, that's for sure, where even a 3060 Ti I used as a temporary rental a couple of years ago nearly doubled my rendering speed (I mean that literally, like 2x more). But as @9087125 said, the whole AI + crypto inflation + that whole fiasco with the new power connector keeps me waiting for something more reliable. At some point while looking at some benchmarks it is clear that even Zen 3 and Intel's 12th gen CPUs would provide more than double the performance of my current build in both single and multi-threaded tasks, so I think that I don't neccessarily need to squeeze the tiniest bit of performance left by the current gen stuff. My SATA SSDs are fast enough considering that I use them as scratch disks and to store Games and programs mostly.

Would that PSU also not be capable of handling something like an RTX 4060 or 4070? I doubt that an RTX 4080 or any equivalent would be within my budget anytime soon. That's going to end up becoming a whole new build if I keep changing stuff .


The list compiled so far is poking right through the 1.5k budget without a graphics card:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 4.4 GHz 12-Core Processor ($382.55 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 Black CPU Cooler ($44.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO ATX AM5 Motherboard ($598.98 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-5200 CL38 Memory ($259.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic VERTEX PX-1000 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($249.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1536.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-11-14 15:09 EST-0500

You could save a lot of money by opting for a cheaper motherboard. Even the ASRock X870E Taichi Lite is going for $400 at Amazon and Newegg.

 

[Assimilator]

Would that PSU also not be capable of handling something like an RTX 4060 or 4070? I doubt that an RTX 4080 or any equivalent would be within my budget anytime soon. That's going to end up becoming a whole new build if I keep changing stuff .

RTX 4060 yes, RTX 4070 maybe. You also have to take into account whether the GPU model you're looking to buy has 6- and/or 8-pin PCIe connectors (in which case you can keep your current PSU) or a 12VHPWR (the GPU manufacturers will provide 8-pin-to-12VHPWR adapters, but these should generally be avoided in the same way ye olde, melty Molex-to-PCIe adapters should).