AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X Processor 16 Cores & 32 Processing Threads, with Cooler

The 2950x is a great CPU at a much better value than the 1950x. The only complaint is that it’s not “easy” to get it to boost to the 4.4ghz advertised single core boost clock in some cases. All in all though, this chip is fast enough, very powerful, and much less power hungry than the previous generation. It performs especially well in both workstation workloads, and gaming applications where you’re gaming, and streaming from a single machine.Further Nerd stuff regarding 4.4ghz boost clock:You will need a good motherboard with a really strong VRM. While the gen 1 TR motherboards will work, it’s better to use some of the x399 boards that were released specifically for the ThreadRipper 2000 series CPUs. In the “overclocking” software Ryzen Master there are 3 factors which the system uses to determine how high to boost the chip. These are all related to how much power the CPU can get. EDC specifically is related to how many amps the motherboard can provide to the chip, and is more often than not the limiting factor. Without a really good motherboard you’ll have to optimize power distribution to things like your memory, and power settings to allow the board to underclock other cores to get it to hit the 4.4ghz single core.

I enabled PBO and observed the CPU's behavior in HW monitor with great interest. All 16 cores will boost to 4.4 GHz individually, and all together have boosted to 4.24 GHz. That was not commonly happening when this CPU was first released and reviewed, and I wonder if this one is just better, or if all the more recently built ones are better silicon overall.I noticed that under a moderate load, the temps hold at about 51 degrees, and under a heavy boost, temps go into the low 60s before the fans spool up and drive them back into the 50s. That's impressive considering I am using a round AIO cooler that doesn't even cover the entire IHS. Looking at the PBO constraints, I find that the limiting factor thus far is not temperature at all but voltage. This makes me wonder if I can undervolt and obtain the 200MHz offset for 4.6 GHz.Not that this really matters, its just a fun and interesting thing to check out. What does matter is that I came from a 1900X, and I am kind of shocked by the difference. Dota2 saw a 22% increase in FPS, and I'm not exactly sure why. Other games it made no difference. I think some games suffered from the first gen TR scheduling, though the 1900X certainly did far better in games than I expected.Interacting with gigantic folders of images in windows is completely different with double the cores. 32 threads is more than enough most of the time for me. I checked. Even with my "leave everything up when I take a brake to game" use case, I still found that 4 to 6 of the 32 threads weren't being used. On the other hand, when you do a batch file conversion, its pretty cool that programs use all available resources.I'm glad I was able to get one of these before they disappear. I have an enormous amount of storage with the x399 NVME setup and I don't really feel like building a new system yet. This is a nice stopgap, though I wish the 3960X was a 16 core that fit in X399.I'm not sure that anyone should get this, except if you currently have a 1900x or 1920x, or if you can find a great deal on all the hardware and absolutely need the I/O. Otherwise X570 with 3950X is the way to go.

I'm not sure why this CPU is dropping in price and playing second fiddle to the new Ryzen 3700's because this thing is a MONSTER. The only issues I have are that some of my programs are not multi-core designed so in my older version of After Effects, it's like I'm running a Celeron or something. But that's not this CPU's fault. It's has way more power than what you need for gaming. But I use it for video editing.When I started editing videos back in the Pentium 4 days, it would take 2-4 X's the length of the video to encode an SD video to a DVD. So a 1 hour video would take between 2-4 hours. This CPU takes a 1 hour SD video and spits it out in the same DVD format in a little over 5 minutes (CPU usage is usually only 60% during this process). My 2011 Quad Core W/ HT i7 will take 30 minutes for the same process. I know that is an extreme example, but it is consistent (an old P4 will never have messed with HD or 4K, so we're keeping things consistent). And since the CPU is only using 60% while it's encoding, I no longer have to leave the computer overnight to do its thing. Rather, I can put one video on encode and then pull up another one and do some editing and it doesn't slow things down AT ALL!!! I'm telling you, if you do heaving multitasking and video editing, you NEED this CPU. For the $$$, it is the BEST performance you will find. Obviously don't sink this thing with dumb crap like too little RAM or with anything less than an NVMe drive. And make sure you use a proper GPU. And BTW, I have not O/C'd this chip. It's totally stock with a Noctua fan on it. This fan is the best option as others have tested water on it and it doesn't seem to be right for this chip. Find the Noctua cooler/fan combo that fits this chip. It has a large enough base for the girth this chip brings to your bed.