AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X (16-core/32-thread) Desktop Processor, without Cooler

There are a lot of claims going around that this CPU requires water cooling so I tested it. Mine easily and stably overclocks to 4.0GHz with a single-fan noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3. Could possibly clock a little higher with liquid cooling but I haven't attempted it, even though there's plenty of thermal headroom. My CPU only runs a degree or 2 hotter with the noctua than with h115i. This processor also plays nice with high speed RAM, just make sure you get an asus motherboard if you want to hit 3600mhz on 128GB. I tested 3600mhz on 64gb with the zenith extreme and it works, but I ultimately chose the asrock x399 fatal1ty professional gaming for size reasons and my GPU wouldn't fit on the first slot of the zenith extreme. There are lots of other benefits to the asus boards but there are some unique benefits to the fatal1ty board, like onboard 10G lan for what that's worth. So with the asrock board I've been able to run 3200mhz on 64gb. It doesn't say anywhere in the manual or elsewhere that the board does not support 3600mhz, but if you select 3733mhz, it will revert to 2166 when you boot into windows. And when I selected 3600mhz, it'd boot and run at that number but crash as soon as i ran a program like google chrome. Tried it at lower and lower rates until I got to 3200mhz which is completely stable, so I'm guessing that's just a known limit but asrock's customer support is unaware of it. So yeah the threadripper is an amazing CPU but there are some things you gotta plan out in advance for your system. By the way, if you want to boot off an NVMe RAID array, this is definitely the platform to go with. The setup isn't trivial but it's this versus intel VROC, so there you go.

CAUTION - THE INCLUDED SCREWDRIVER LIKE MANY OTHERS DID NOT RELEASE ON THE RIGHT TENSION! THIS CAN CAUSE DAMAGE IF YOU OVERTIGHTEN!Aside from the initial issue of the screwdriver; I stopped as I felt it was too much force and watched install videos, confirming I have put about as many turns as they have without it popping out to indicate it's tightened. I would recommend watching these so you don't overtighten as this can damage the motherboards socket or the CPU.The CPU:I have long since been an intel fanboy, but not anymore.Temperatures: With a Noctua TR4 cooler, expect 23C-33C Idle with 40-48C under load. The max I believe I've seen was 53C with a very high amount of CPU usage likely from an unoptimized piece of software.It runs cooler than all of my intel chips, including one that was watercooled while this is on an air cooler.Performance: It does everything. At once. You'll need lots of RAM if you want to do everything at once depending on what you do. If you want to play a game, stream said game, render graphics to a file you should get no less than 32GB of 3600 MHz memory, most of these TR4 boards support up to 128GB RAM.If you do graphics work, video editing, rendering and still want a PC you can use to have fun; this is a great CPU. I'll never get less than this in the future and it makes a quad core look like a toaster.Normal retail price is $800, it's been on sale often for $200, and moves up to $262 lately. The boards are expensive generally around $250-$350, but well worth the cost to have up to 3 NVMEs, 8 DIMM slots and a high cap of 128GB RAM.10/10 Highly recommend, and would recommend further Threadripper CPUs they release.

this thing's fast. I made this rig for a 4k editing and damn its fast !!!I am not overclocking it for now as the client is not interested in doing that. I dont think this CPU even nededs overclocking as it can tackle anything you throw its way with ease at stock speeds.This is my first time building an AMD Threadripper rig so i was not sure if i should go for air cooling or water cooling.I chose to do some test with air cooling first and it was surprising. i have always heard that threadripper produces a lot of heat so i bought a Cooler Master MA621P TR4 Twin Tower RGB CPU Air Cooler. the temperatures levels are better than amd ryzen 1600.(My Rig). the min temp I got is 42 and the max is 56 while rendering 4k video.Currently i am using ASRock X399 Taichi sTR4 ATX Motherboard with quad channel 4x4 GB RAM @2666MHz. i like the fact that this CPU supports ECC ram however i am not using it at the time being.in the whole process of building testing and using i haven't had a single issue. the building process was easy, the test results were better than average of the similar builds. and the usage since then has not given a single issue in terms of thermals, processing speeds or anything else.

Pros:-Extremely fast-Price for value is great!Cons:-Had some challenges getting it to run at optimal performanceOther Thoughts:Unlike some, I found the installation to be very straightforward. The best tip I would provide is to screw in the number 1 screw a little, then the number 2 screw, then the number 3 screw. Then go back and tighten them all up.A few tips to save time on optimizing.First, make sure you are running four sticks of quad channel memory. Dual channel really hurts your performance.Second, turn off IOMMU in the northbridge bios settings. This also hurts performance.Third, turn off HPET in the bios settings. This KILLS performance. Prior to getting this turned off, my FPS were half what they are now, programs were slow to load, etc....With these three items out of the way, I am having a GREAT experience. Wonderful CPU. Everything loads instantaneously.