I like HEDT for the longevity. I’ve got 2 friends still on X99 that bought into the platform at launch
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AMD Announces Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-Series: Zen 3 For OEM Workstations
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I’m glad they are getting their moneys worth when you build systems with specific (non gaming) goals in mind you tend to get more longevity out of them. Games are a constantly moving goalpost, work doesn’t change until you change the work.
One plays light games and mostly does taxes etc. The other started out with it as his primary system. Then he upgraded and gave the 920 to his oldest kid. He has 4 boys, so each time he upgraded again the systems moved down the line. The youngest has the X99 with a gulftown and a 970 in it if I remember correctly
Yep. My gaming box (Z490/10700K) will probably get upgraded with Raptor Lake. But my two workstations still have a lot of life and growth in them.
Mchart
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Those older systems had the longevity. The 'latest' HEDT platforms were basically already old news once they came out, though. But yeah, i've still got a 5820k system rocking just fine. It's not my primary, but still does just fine for most gaming.
ElementDave
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The article from the OP links to a review of a ThinkStation P620 from last year, which was sort of interesting.
From an engineering standpoint, high-end OEM workstations are often quite impressive, especially when compared to a typical DIY PC assembled from off-the-shelf parts. They tend not to be budget-friendly for non-business use, unfortunately.
My quick build, which would need RAM (their cost for ram is ouch) came out to 5k. Pretty reasonable, with the 32C TR Pro on it, and a basic GPU. Still needs 128G of memory and a real GPU, but... that's not ~horrible~ if you're making money off of it.
That is a bummer. I run the several VMs on my main machine including secondary server 2016 domain controller, server 2019 test web server and windows 10 and windows 11 test machines on my threadripper 3960x as well as doing video editing and photo work. I have an esxi server for the primary domain controller and the rest of the vms. Still hoping for Threadripper. 5970x drop in upgrade to make this system last a while longer. Zen4 would mean new motherboard and DDR5 ram.
So my Lenovo rep contacted me about some redesigns they have done to the existing Threadripper Pro lineup of workstations and their new pricing so I thought I would check it out knowing that the 5000 series will be coming soon so I thought "Hell maybe I can swing one with what's left of this years budget, I need to move that Panorama server onto some new hardware anyways". And I was looking it over and the price changes weren't that great but looking over the descriptions I see something very interesting and I really hope this isn't what it looks like because if it is I am not exactly happy with that prospect.
No, the Quadro P620 that comes as the default card only has mini-DP output.
If you buy one retail it comes with a smattering of MiniDP to full size DP.
Giggles in DP…
No even if you go to the Lenovo site now and try building one it seems they have that soldered keyword on all the options I tested.
weird. I'm SURE it's not from the reviews I've seen with video / photos. Weird.
I had previously expressed my dissatisfaction with my existing P620 Threadrippers to my Lenovo rep due to how ungodly loud they are, nobody wants that under their desk in a small office it's painful, we actually had to remove them and put them in the server room and set them up as RDP boxes instead because of the issue.
Anyways, they called me to let me know they had updated the lineup to address the noise issues and I should check out their options and new pricing, and when looking it over I just happened to notice it there in brackets, I am waiting on a call back to find out if that is a typo or not because I told her I expect that from Apple, not Lenovo.
Tell her you want a test box - for science - so you can tell us how loud/not loud it actually is. If that's the only way to get TR in the future...
The problem is I need the box, my options here are either Threadripper or EPYC. I have a bunch of VM's running on an EPYC 7502P, and one of them recently got an update that more than doubled its IO and memory requirements so I need something with dedicated M2 storage to deal with it. The options to get those on an EPYC are sort of dollar intensive in a time when I am looking at budget cuts. So I thought OK let's give the Threadripper lineup another go, and spin something up that would be exclusively running this VM.
I swear if they come back and tell me that ram is in fact soldered down now I am tempted to spite them and just order the Mac Studio, I could get it running on there easily enough ...
I found a response in the Forums, but my rep still hasn't gotten back to me. They are not soldered, but they are vendor locked, so if you try to remove them and use them in a different system it will throw an error about not being in a Lenovo board.
I have fewer issues with this than I would with soldered chips.
I have fewer issues with this than I would with soldered chips.
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Zarathustra[H]
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Only reason I still buy HEDT stuff is for the PCIe lanes.
I'm unwilling to give up on the ability to install as many PCIe expansion cards (or m.2 drives) as I want.
I consider that flexibility to be absolutely crucial, and just cannot fathom getting by on these consumer grade Ryzen and Intel systems that only have enough lanes for a GPU, the chipset and maybe 4 more. It feels so incredibly restrictive to me.
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Slightly fewer, but it is still bullshit.
It does still allow for upgrades, but still, vendor lock outs and lockins should be illegal. The whole point of the PC market is parts compatibility. That you can mix and match and swap parts as you see fit. Knowing that Lenovo does this, that would instantly result in them being on my "never buy" list.
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Agreed. IF I have to get one, I'll get a single dimm, use it as a spacer to hold something up, and swap in my own ram
Dell doesn't really do AMD. Especially threadripper.
https://www.servethehome.com/amd-psb-vendor-locks-epyc-cpus-for-enhanced-security-at-a-cost/
During our recent Dell EMC PowerEdge C6525 review we briefly mentioned that AMD EPYC CPUs in the system are vendor locked to Dell EMC systems
Lenovo has exclusive rights to the Threadripper Pro’s and Dell sells as many EPYC systems as AMD will provide chips for.
In the laptops, thats where it gets tricky.
After looking into it, Threadripper and EPYC systems use encrypted memory which is secured by certificate and it’s part of the AMD provided BIOS.
It’s also looking like they also have the option to lock the CPU’s to the board as well.
Servers are a different world.
Yep. That’s the one exception.
Good point on the ram
Outside of the hyperscalers, the C series chassis doesn't sell much. IT's not a popular platform - especially since hte OCP design means that the networking card options are unique and more expensive (and unlike the FX2 chassis, didn't offer much of a benefit). The R series (and M1000, although that died and I haven't seen much interest in the M7000) are the big sellers - and that's still heavily intel biased. Especially because things like VMotion don't work between Intel/AMD, so... either you plan greenfield, or you're stuck.
Microsoft has a series of powershell tools that can be used to transition them in Hyper-V and Azure that work well. There is one that works well for VMWare and AWS but I don’t recall if it was Norton or Solarwinds that made it, or if they still make it, it was a long time ago that I had to use it. But it worked perfectly but sadly for me it didn’t preserve the virtual NIC’s MAC address and it messed up the licensing for the software I was hosting.
Also had a reboot for all of those - they work, great actually (Zerto has one too), but it's a shutdown/start. Even VMware can do that natively - just no one can without a shutdown.
ElementDave
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⸺https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkS...dor-Lock-for-AMD-Threadripper-PRO/m-p/5074599Lenovo Forum User said:
⸺https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkS...d-to-Motherboard-or-Vendor-Lenono/m-p/5070226Lenovo Employee said:
This may be old news by this point, but if you follow the links you can read all the details about the AMD-Lenovo sponsored e-waste campaign.
Vendors have long known that "security" is the best-selling Lie, so I guess this shouldn't come as surprise.Well in this case the Threadripper Pro's are Lenovo exclusive chips, you can't buy them from anybody else, and this isn't a Lenovo feature its an AMD one. AMD calls this their Platform Secure Boot (PSB)⸺https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkS...dor-Lock-for-AMD-Threadripper-PRO/m-p/5074599
⸺https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkS...d-to-Motherboard-or-Vendor-Lenono/m-p/5070226
This may be old news by this point, but if you follow the links you can read all the details about the AMD-Lenovo sponsored e-waste campaign.
https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/amd-security-white-paper.pdf
And they enable it by default in all their Enterprise and Pro series chips.
Yes it is a pain in the ass, but they don't sell their Pro series chips in retail channels they are OEM only so it's less of a big deal here, but it is also nice to say "hey I am decommissioning this server, it's ram is the same as this one's over here that still has some time left on it, let's just move it's ram chips over and extend it's life a little!"
So can't do that anymore.
My Epyc's were supplied by Dell and this is their response to the topic:
"As you rightly point out, the AMD Platform Secure Boot Feature (PSB) is a mitigation for firmware Advanced Persistent Threats. This allows us to establish an unbroken chain of trust from AMD’s silicon root of trust to our BIOS and then from the BIOS to the OS Bootloader using UEFI secure boot. This provides a very powerful defense against remote and local attackers seeking to embed malware into a platform’s firmware.
We design PowerEdge servers with security built-in as the security of our products is critical to helping ensure our customers’ data and systems are protected. Given the pervasiveness and increasing sophistication of these ongoing persistent threats, we decided to enable the PSB function that AMD makes available. The tradeoff, as you pointed out, is that the CPU would only be able to operate in another Dell EMC PowerEdge server. However, we feel that’s a rather limited use case for how customers look to decommission old equipment and wanted to err on the side of security.
We have a decades-long focus on sustainability, and are fully committed to accelerating the circular economy and diverting all e-waste from landfills (more information here about our efforts and our sustainability goals). We also provide recycling solutions that protect our customers’ data, safeguard their brand reputation, reuse precious materials and responsibly recycle in compliance with local regulatory guidelines, such as the EPA and WEEE legislation and waste regulations. (Source: Dell EMC statement to STH.)"
https://www.servethehome.com/amd-psb-vendor-locks-epyc-cpus-for-enhanced-security-at-a-cost/2/
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I guess if you had more money with sense and a motherboard that supported one of these chips, you could probably take the CPU out before ever powering the Lenovo up, and then transplanting it.
Lotta ifs there, though.
But they have to power them on to verify them before they ship them out. So it's locked before it ever gets into a box.
The quote above says you get the message the first time you power it up, although reading it again, I guess maybe he meant "if you somehow get another TR Pro and put it in the machine"?
Yes, I suppose so, Lenovo does sell the TRPro CPUs through their trusted vendors like CDW, so you can purchase unlocked ones from them but finding a board they will work with then becomes an issue there aren't exactly a lot of 3'rd party sWRX8 socket MB's kicking around out there.
But given I was never prompted with that message for my existing P620's that must mean that they were locked before I received them.
I wonder if it would be possible to request the feature to be turned off during the ordering of the systems so that they aren't locked, I know that Dell at least will make a good number of customizations to an order if you request them, but I have never had a reason to ask for this one in particular.
To be fair, given the stated aim of this locking (chain of custody, web of trust, whatever), I can understand the pre-locking them. Having said that, presumably the vendor could have some way to make sure that burn-in testing didn't lock the CPU. If they wanted to.
You should contact your rep and ask.
ElementDave
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PSB is an AMD feature that Lenovo chose to implement. The exclusivity is irrelevant. Lenovo had an exclusive on Threadripper Pro last generation too. The other day a number of posts had expressed a concern about fused memory modules. The links I provided expand on the vendor lock-in situation.
I realize that not everyone cares, and some may even think the decision was motivated by security concerns.
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Come now, of course it does: Lenovo's securing their client list.