Should i got for a full upgrade or partial one ? (Is X99 and i7 5960x still relavent in 2020)?

[EternalSeekerX]

Hello Everyone,

I hope everyone is staying safe and things are going well during this pandemic. So to start things off, about a few months ago (might even be a year ago?) I posted a thread elsewhere about my Kraken X61 AIO pump being broken. Due to being out of warranty I never replaced it and been using my Asus Strix Laptop (i7 7700HQ+GTX 1060). Fast forward to now, a couple of my friends surprised me with the newish Kraken X63 AIO cooler. So that means I get to use my desktop again (i7 Rampage 5+5960X+GTX 970+ 16GB DDR4 RAM 2133Mhz). I build this rig when I was in uni in 2014 for gaming and engineering capstone projects. However now with the pandemic I am taking my free time to improve my skillset so I have been working with 3D CAD, Rendering (Blender) and running validation CFD models. Currently I am using my laptop with windows host (for solid works and such) and a Linux guest (running Ansys, openfoam, su2 cfd with cases ranging from 500,000 to 35 million cell cases). And I am also trying to expand into learning StarCCM+, XFlow, and other 3D Cad software in linux as well. In terms of gaming I haven’t been gaming as much, however I have been playing more ps2/wiiu/3ds emulators, bf4, warframe, pubg. I am hoping I can play more of the newest titles as well.

Now comes the part where Idk how to balance my rig now with my newish workloads. Gaming, streaming and CAD favor higher clocks. Simulations favor core, memory channel and then clock speed (there is a rule of thumb where you want at a minimum of 2*N cores where N is the amount of memory channels, as well there is a rule of thumb where the sweet spot for ram is for every 1GB of ram you can fit 2 million mesh cells, of course there are cases where its different and you can get more performance for absurd amount of cores and ram size). That’s why number crunching is mostly done on multi-socket systems as they offer multiple cores and memory channel. So going down to a consumer cpu with 12+ cores might actually decrease performance since memory bottleneck. Currently I have been distro hoping and I found I got most performance in rpm based distros (plus ANSYS and commercial codes officially support centos/rhel), and even then there are tutorial cases that would take weeks to run (specifically the SurfaceMountedCube in OpenFOAM v1912/v2006). Since I was running in a vm and on a laptop with dual channel memory I am hoping my desktop could cut it down by a lot. And of course blender renders prefer more cores/thread as well. I also would love to get back into streaming and editing and hopefully be able to game at higher res+refresh rate (so say 2K240, or 4K60), but not a big requirement. Also I am hoping to dual boot windows 10 (for solidworks, windows specific apps, gaming, etc) and most probably CentOS 7 (blender render, paraview, simulations).

So I was thinking maybe I can overclock the 5960x, upgrade ram (go from 16 to either 32 or 64GB) and storage (currently the desktop has 1TB HDD, 512GB sata SSD for data, and 128GB sata SSD for windows boot) now and maybe when market settles down, buy a new gpu? Maybe play with gpu passthrough too? Can a overclock 5960x handle these types of requirements in 2020 (I think it can!)? Will I be bottlenecked by my cpu?

Thanks

 

[GiGaBiTe]

The 5960x is still a decent chip, but it sounds like you're needing a ton of threads to do some heavy workloads. Overclocking it will gain you some performance in thread limited workloads, but probably not do too much in heavily threaded workloads.

You'll need to take into account heat and power consumption when overclocking the 5960x, because it pulls a LOT of power. At 4.5 GHz, the 5960x can pull close to 300W under load, which may overwhelm your Kraken AIO if the CPU is left in an overclocked heavily loaded state for long periods of time, you'll want to monitor it closely. You'll also want to make sure your power supply is up for the load, I wouldn't recommend anything under an 850W unit with the kind of load you're wanting to put on it.

Ideally, you'd probably want to invest in something like a Ryzen 3950x if you need a ton of threads.

 

[pimp_squeak]

Here I am with a B55 + i5 760

 

[EternalSeekerX]

The 5960x is still a decent chip, but it sounds like you're needing a ton of threads to do some heavy workloads. Overclocking it will gain you some performance in thread limited workloads, but probably not do too much in heavily threaded workloads.

You'll need to take into account heat and power consumption when overclocking the 5960x, because it pulls a LOT of power. At 4.5 GHz, the 5960x can pull close to 300W under load, which may overwhelm your Kraken AIO if the CPU is left in an overclocked heavily loaded state for long periods of time, you'll want to monitor it closely. You'll also want to make sure your power supply is up for the load, I wouldn't recommend anything under an 850W unit with the kind of load you're wanting to put on it.

Ideally, you'd probably want to invest in something like a Ryzen 3950x if you need a ton of threads.

Well cfd and other hpc is also memory bandwidth dependent so I should ideally also go from quad channel to quad channel or to hex/octo-channel. So threadripper most likely if I did a platform upgrade. However the 5960x is a decent chip like you and many other people from other forums have said, so I feel validated in my original plan of keeping it. In terms of overclock I have a 1000W gold evga psu and currently the new kraken x63 which I installed shows a stable temp of 40-50c at all core load at stock so based on that I should have head room for overclock?

Thanks

Here I am with a B55 + i5 760

Wait for real? I mean if it works it works. Thats why I posted this thread, I was thinking of keeping my x99 system but looked for other opinions.

 

[pimp_squeak]

Wait for real? I mean if it works it works. Thats why I posted this thread, I was thinking of keeping my x99 system but looked for other opinions.

Yeah, it's perfectly stable, and nothing I do requires anything much more powerful. I don't have time for hours on end gaming any more and until ryzen dropped I had no itch to upgrade. I'll likely wait for zen 4 and scoop up a zen 3 setup at the clearance sale.