Gearing Up for Threadripper 2990X Cooling

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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You might have noticed our excitement about AMD's Threadripper over the last year, both in terms of performance and cooling. Given that AMD will soon be rolling out its 32-Core 2990X processor, we have been getting things in line for it in terms of overclocking and cooling. We have two more dies down on the substrate this time around so assuredly we will be dealing with larger package power peaks and heat to deal with.

For our cooling testing, XSPC sent over its all metal Raystorm NEO Water Block. The block is of the same design than we have used so much in the past, sans the acrylic top.

The rest of the top performers that we will run through testing again are the Watercool Heatkiller 4, the Koolance 400A-S v2, and the Phanteks Glacier C399A. These four blocks were our top performers within a few degrees of each other in our 4GHz overclocked Threadripper 1950X testing.

Pictures on News Page.

You might be wondering why we are not seeing redesigned blocks since we are moving from 2-Dies to 4-Dies. The fact is that all of these water blocks are already built "correctly" in terms of cold-plate and micro-fin footprint, and how these move coolant across the tops of the dies. I do not think these companies knew that a 4-Die Threadripper was upon us, but building these the way they did actually made these appropriate for EPYC cooling as well. It was also likely more cost effective in terms of the machining processes too.

Now, AMD, bring on the 2900X Threadripper!
 
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I had a 1950x and it was wonderful having 32 threads but the IPC was a little bit disappointing since I am an avid gamer and love working with video production. I enjoy having the better of both worlds as opposed to have the best of one and barely okay in the other.

Depending on the price I may go the 32 core route. I have no quams with cooling such a magnificent beast. It is just the price and per core IPC that is my decision driver.

What do you guys expect these chips to cost? If they sell it at $1000 then that would be great! But its probably going for more I would assume? 2K?

According to WCCFT (salt grain taken by default) --- the chip can hit 4.12ghz on all 32 cores which is actually shuuuweeet if true!

I hope that they have improved per core IPC as they should have given these are essentially the reworked cores from Ryzen + stuff.
 
tangoseal said:
Kyle are you planning to buy one to review in the event they don't ship you one? Or do you have one under NDA and have to wait to release information? Do you even know when they are supposed to release? Many questions to ask.

I had a 1950x and it was wonderful having 32 threads but the IPC was a little bit disappointing since I am an avid gamer and love working with video production. I enjoy having the better of both worlds as opposed to have the best of one and barely okay in the other.

Depending on the price I may go the 32 core route. I have no quams with cooling such a magnificent beast. It is just the price and per core IPC that is my decision driver.

What do you guys expect these chips to cost? If they sell it at $1000 then that would be great! But its probably going for more I would assume? 2K?
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I will be sampled directly from AMD so we will be sticking to embargo dates and times. If I had one under NDA, I could not tell you. No I don't have one. Yes, I do know the target for release....but I will not tell you and it is very possible that could change.

While I love the 1950X, I have stuck with my i7-6950 in my personal system, but I will almost assuredly be building out a 2990X system for myself.

I honestly do not know what AMD is going to do on pricing. I would GUESS $999. But I might be wrong. That just feels like the ceiling to me. I have been wrong on pricing before.
 
pcgeekesq said:
Oooh, such shiny nerd pron, I'm getting [H]!
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stop-my-penis-can-only-get-so-erect.jpg
 
Looking good! Have you considered going with a more extreme radiator, or maybe even a water chiller to see how high you can get these to go with lesser thermal restrictions?
 
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Any chance that you get your hands on the TR4 cooler master AIO and include it in your tests?
 
1_rick said:
Why not do both? Regular "normal" constraints, "and now, for the people with more money than sense, here's the water chiller"?

Also, when you say "two more dies", you mean two more *active* ones, right? Doesn't first-gen TR have 2 live and 2 inactive dies? Just making sure I'm understanding it correctly.
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These have 4 CCX modules in the package. With no dummie dies. Each Core Complex has 8 actual cores in them.
 
Yummy. Thinking I need a home server...or Something, anything, with one of these in it.
 
Hot damn, I'm glad I didn't drop all my beans on the 1950 when the price dropped - though I was tempted to hell to do it.
 
Kyle,
What does "built correctly" mean in your comment? The geo is correct and they don't need to change it? I doubt that is the case unless AMD has shuck their imprint to fit the current footprints. I would assume you must mean something else. Once they understand the footprint concept, modification is straight forward (while it might require more) while maybe more difficult to build.
 
I'll probably make one of these my next CPU, but not for a while. My 1600 is doing fine for now, just need a GPU upgrade.
deeppow said:
Kyle,
What does "built correctly" mean in your comment? The geo is correct and they don't need to change it? I doubt that is the case unless AMD has shuck their imprint to fit the current footprints. I would assume you must mean something else. Once they understand the footprint concept, modification is straight forward (while it might require more) while maybe more difficult to build.
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See the EK waterblock testing article.
 
deeppow said:
What does "built correctly" mean in your comment?
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We have seen blocks that have had undersized cold plates, inadequate cold-fin footprint, and also ones that have run the micro-fins longways (across the short side) with the die. If it has had any of those issues I would consider it to not be built correctly. If you go back and watch the Koolance version 2 video, I talk about that and show you on the blocks.

Edit: Koolance corrected the footprint and the fin direction issue. If you look at the EK block review, it had micro-fin footprint undersizing and had the flow running the wrong way. We actually took that one apart, put it back together "correctly" and got a lot better perf.
 
Dan_D said:
I think the 2990X will be my next CPU as well.
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Me too. Current rig has served me well for 5 years. Time for something that will serve me for another 5 years. I think the 2990X will be it.
 
Riccochet said:
Me too. Current rig has served me well for 5 years. Time for something that will serve me for another 5 years. I think the 2990X will be it.
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My 5960X has served me faithfully. I was going to upgrade to a 6950X a couple years back but after seeing two of them degrade at 4.3GHz, and given their cost I decided it wasn't enough of a jump to warrant the expense. In fact, in games it wasn't a jump at all. If anything it was a step back given the reduced clock speed without enough IPC improvement to make up that difference.
 
Dan_D said:
My 5960X has served me faithfully. I was going to upgrade to a 6950X a couple years back but after seeing two of them degrade at 4.3GHz, and given their cost I decided it wasn't enough of a jump to warrant the expense. In fact, in games it wasn't a jump at all. If anything it was a step back given the reduced clock speed without enough IPC improvement to make up that difference.
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I'm a cheap bastard that buys "best bang for the buck" at the time and rarely ever go bleeding edge. I opted for a 1080ti when I upgraded GPU, got this kick ass Seasonic Prime PSU, might as well double down and get the best CPU I can get. The economy has been good to me lately. We shall splurgeses, precious.
 
tangoseal said:
These have 4 CCX modules in the package. With no dummie dies.
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Oh, so each die is like a doubled version of a first-gen die. Got it. I remember speculation about that months ago but hadn't heard confirmation before.
 
1_rick said:
Oh, so each die is like a doubled version of a first-gen die. Got it. I remember speculation about that months ago but hadn't heard confirmation before.
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It's four dies. TR1 had four dies (two dummies), TR2 will have four dies (no dummies). Each die has two CCX's, a CCX has four cores, for a total of 16 cores in TR1 (2 x 2 x 4), or 32 in TR2 (4 x 2 x 4).
 
1_rick said:
Oh, so each die is like a doubled version of a first-gen die. Got it. I remember speculation about that months ago but hadn't heard confirmation before.
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I wouldn’t really call it a doubled version so much as opposed to being a version in which 2 out of 4 modules aren’t disabled.

Nobu beat me to the explanation and did it better.
 
Nobu said:
It's four dies. TR1 had four dies (two dummies), TR2 will have four dies (no dummies). Each die has two CCX's, a CCX has four cores, for a total of 16 cores in TR1 (2 x 2 x 4), or 32 in TR2 (4 x 2 x 4).
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Actually TR2 is using the Epyc config where a CCX has 8 cores in it instead of 4. Thus the TR2 will have 4 CCX of 8 cores each if I am correct of which I do not profess to be. However, this is a good conversation to hash out for accuracy reasons.
 
tangoseal said:
Actually TR2 is using the Epyc config where a CCX has 8 cores in it instead of 4. Thus the TR2 will have 4 CCX of 8 cores each if I am correct of which I do not profess to be. However, this is a good conversation to hash out for accuracy reasons.
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There are no ryzen dies with 8 core ccx's, afaik. At least not yet. If AMD uses the same dies in TR2 as they do in (yet unreleased) 64 core Epyc CPUs, I guess it would be 8 cores per CCX and still two dummy dies, which would make it simpler and explain why the TDP went up so much (TR1 and Epyc TDP were similar at stock settings), I guess. Would also explain why scaling is so good in (leaked) tests.
 
Nobu said:
There are no ryzen dies with 8 core ccx's, afaik. At least not yet. If AMD uses the same dies in TR2 as they do in (yet unreleased) 64 core Epyc CPUs, I guess it would be 8 cores per CCX and still two dummy dies, which would make it simpler and explain why the TDP went up so much (TR1 and Epyc TDP were similar at stock settings), I guess. Would also explain why scaling is so good in (leaked) tests.
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it's 2 ccx's with 4 cores each per die..same as epyc.. tango mixed up die with CCX ;)
 
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32 Cores, that's fantastic. I may need to finally upgrade from my 4790k.
 
As I'm primarily a 3d artist, the Cinebench score that the 2990X is performing at is blowing me away. So went to check and compare scores with the top 20 results, and the closest score of 6284 was done by a 4 x Xeon E7-4890 v2, which retails for an average of $2,200 each! This is a phenomenal performance per $.
 
Guess its time to start cleaning out the closet of old parts and spare systems so the wallet doesnt get reamed too badly. Or so i dont when the wife finds out how much i spent :)
 
Nobu said:
It's four dies. TR1 had four dies (two dummies), TR2 will have four dies (no dummies).
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Ok, I guess I misunderstood tangoseal to have meant each die went from two CCXs to four. :facepalm:
 
tangoseal said:
I had a 1950x and it was wonderful having 32 threads but the IPC was a little bit disappointing since I am an avid gamer and love working with video production. I enjoy having the better of both worlds as opposed to have the best of one and barely okay in the other.
Click to expand...

I think the performance is pretty good for 1950X. What is it barely ok in? For video there are applications that don't use all of its threads and on the gaming side even less of those threads are used.
 
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