AMD Ryzen 7950X Water Games

Almost the very same day that AMD unleashed the new Ryzen 5nm Zen 4 chips, my usual network of geeks started poking me for feedback on this new chip.

Now I have just upgraded my two 3995WX Threadripper rigs to Threadripper Pro 5995WX chips and I also standardized all my other five rigs on the Ryzen 9 5900X chip, all fitted with Dark Pro 4 air coolers.

This was due to the noise levels that water cooling a CPU brings to the table, it was literally driving me nutz.

I sold all my 5950X Water Cooled rigs I had built and silence and sanity abounded in the home in a serious way - you cannot hear anything in my two offices anymore!

When I informed all and sundry I had no intention of going to the 79xx myself but would take part in the video evaluations in the lab, they were not much impressed.

One of the guys just sent me a motherboard and a chip with some DDR5 RAM as a gift so I built me a rig.

Some noise is back but I am not using it until the IHS thang is sorted out.....

The X670E and X670 chipsets support up to 12 superspeed (10Gbps) USB ports and 2 superspeed (20Gbps) USB ports.

The B650E and B650 chipsets, in comparison, only support up to 6 superspeed (10Gbps) USB ports and 1 superspeed (20Gbps) USB port.

Each motherboard is different by the way, so the amount and speed of USB ports may vary.

After looking at the usual Motherboard suspects I noticed most were not doing the hardware TPM module but the stupid stuttering BIOS workaround.

As alluded to in prior blogs this is a really, really shit idea.

AMD also sneakily released a new Ryzen Master 2.10.x.x.x version mostly for these Ryzen 7xxx series cooling purposes et al.

My 2.9.x.x.x versions suddenly would not load after last weeks BIOS update...

Due to the BIOS only TPM issue, the Motherboard I was sent was swapped for the Aorus X670 Elite AX but I was to find horrific thermals with this 7950X chip (again) but this time I suspected I knew exactly why and I was proven right by my German pals in Stuttgart who dabble with this sorta thang.

This was because the actual thermals were 20 degrees C higher than what I predicted on my chart based on the electrical specs AMD shared with me.

The Germans called me and we went over the math and decided this was application not chip design at fault here.

My German pals got the IHS case off one 7950X chip and built a custom water cooling block for it to prove out the theory and the basterd thing runs at 63 degrees C at 5.4 GHz after that mod.

AMD have done a terrifically shite job of the IHS block on all of these new 7xxx Ryzen 5,7 & 9 chips.

I am not willing to sacrifice my chip to damage by removing the IHS myself but Klaus is coming to visit me over Christmas and he will do the deed with his kit then and I will enjoy the silence until then (it will be switched off in other words).

My goal is to also use the Dark Pro 4 to cool it sans IHS somehow.

I suspect I will in fact have to use a custom EK block on this thing in the end though.

In the meantime I have been helping three or four folks who bought the ASUS ROG Elite MOBO for over $1000 and they have almost all bought the same Aorus X670 MOBO that I have after also having stuttering issues with TPM based BIOS bullshit or weird RAM clocking issues.

My Aorus X670 Elite AX with a hardware 2.0 TPM does not stutter one bit.

One of my pals had ordered the Godlike X670E but it was on back-order for $1299!

It also had no hardware TPM when it arrived!

Actually they sent him a replacement on 11/14/22 with the TPM header in it and this has made a massive difference as we loaded Windows 11 immediately in a new install and are running all the tests again which it flew through.

If you look at most of these new X670E motherboards they have a TPM 2.0 header, just like on the X570 and I seriously advise you buy the $42 TPM 2.0 device on Amazon and do not use the fTPM bollocks because it definitely causes stuttering does this fTPM BIOS based BS.

Buy the TPM for your specific motherboard by the way they are not generic - they come in different pin formats, though Amazon does have generics that I am using with no problems with the right pin layout per my various motherboards.

There seems to be a fair amount of prototype X670E motherboards sans this TPM header. Send it right back if you get one of these prototype MOBOs.

Also pay attention to if the board supports PCIe 5 as I have seen some X670E boards with just PCIe 4.0 capability and an asterisk for PCIe 5.

Dive into this aspect a bit, it will save you time and money down the road.

Of course this is a moot point right now as there are no PCIe 5.0 SSD or GPU available anyways and I suspect you will want the SSD at PCIe 5, not the GPU itself, but these goodies are coming, sooner or later (probably much, much later).

Even when PCIe 5 GPU becomes available I would look hard at performance differences as there were such negligible differences between PCIe 3 and PCIe 4 GPU that I myself am running 1080Ti Founders edition GPU on most of my 5 5900X rigs and they are just fine.

Of course if you want USB-C GPU connectors you will need a newer AMD or nVidia GPU that is at least PCIe 4.0.

Post COVID and sans bitcoin mining antics, GPU is getting more sane cost wise these days.

Apacer, Corsair and Aorus are prepping PCIe 5 SSD for pre-Christmas sale by the way and they ain't cheap so brace yourselves if you want them..

My Two 5995WX Threadripper rigs do run 3090Ti Cards with Dual 8K monitors but they are P-CAD workstations and serve a specialty purpose. These are not general purpose compute systems.

I went back to LG 2K curved screens on all my other rigs and got rid of the multi-monitor setups I had going on those as it was frankly a total waste of money.

4K vs 2K is a moot point on the average computer system in my considered opinion.

So on 11/12/22, my pal calls me to tell me his Godlike Motherboard had arrived and I rushed over to install it in his rig.

We ran Windows 10 on it after some big TPM SW issues with the testing ran awry on Windows 11 and I built a Windows 11 image sans TPM pieces to mitigate as a test.

So on 11/13/22 we used use my Windows 11 image sans TPM requirements to upgrade the Godlike from Windows 10 to 11 and run all the tests again.

It ran the modified Windows 11 image for a few hours but we swapped back to Windows 10 on his other boot disk pair.

So the HW TPM solved all the stuttering issues we saw on Call of Duty ...they put one on the RMA'd motherboard for us free of charge (they read this blog) for $1299 it should come with one IMHO...

So what do you get for your $1299 with a MSI MEG Godlike X670E exactly?

• M-Vision Dashboard: The Touchable 4.5-inch full-color IPS LCD not only indicates the status of your gaming rig which combines hardware monitor and debug function, but also allows system operation and customization with touch control - This is in fact a rather nice touch this one!

• Extreme Power Design: 24+2+1 phases power design with 105A Smart Power Stage and dual CPU power connectors are ready to unleash the maximum performance - probably the killer reason for going with this MOBO in my opinion..

• Premium Thermal Module: Wavy fin design, Direct Touch Cross Heat-pipe, MOSFET Baseplate, 7W/mK thermal pads, Double-Sided M.2 Shield Frozr and Frozr AI software ensure the utmost performance with low temperature - Meh...

• Maximum 6 x M.2 Connectors: Onboard and exclusive M.2 XPANDER-Z GEN5 DUAL PCI-Express card offer totally sextuple M.2 connectors for the maximum storage performance. The double-sided Shield Frozr design keeps M.2 SSDs safe while preventing throttling, making them run faster - This is very nice!

• Latest Network Solution: Onboard 10G Super LAN, Intel 2.5G LAN and the latest Wi-Fi 6E solution deliver the best online experience without lag - without question the 10 GbE and the 2.5 GbE with the WiFi 6E is kickass on the networking side - but I would have chosen better stand alone components myself, really just needed the 2.5 GbE MLAG port here - I got that in my $329 Aorus X670E Elite AX MOBO....

• Lightning Fast Game experience: PCIe 5.0 slots, Lightning Gen 5 x4 M.2, Front USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20G with 60W USB Power Delivery - Meh.....

• DIY Friendly Design: Patented Magnetic M.2 Shield Frozr, Screwless M.2 Shield Frozr, EZ M.2 Clips, Smart Button, Pre-installed I/O Shield, Steel Armor - Meh..

• 10 Layer PCB with 2oz Thickened Copper: Provides higher performance and long-lasting system stability without any compromise - this is a solid MOBO...

• Audio Boost 5 HD: Ultimate audio solution with latest premium ALC4082 audio processor combining ESS audio DAC and amplifier deliver the breathtaking experience - Meh.....

• Supports BT 5.2 - Nice to have that one! (my Aorus Elite AX supports 5.3!)

I do not see the value of the Godlike here myself, maybe when we do detailed performance testing I will see some glimmer of point to it all?

It is worth noting however that the other X670 MOBOs from MSI do NOT seem to have PCIe 5.0 support, just the Godlike board which is tres bizarre!

Also, if you think this AM5 board is expensive, they have a Z690 Godlike for Alderlake CPU that is actually listed at $2099!!

The overclocking capability of both AMD and Intel based Godlikes is impressive but you can in fact damage CPU and RAM modules with these Godlike things.

I myself have concluded that Ryzen Master does a much better job in Auto OC and you need a chip sans IHS to make this even worth the effort on a 7950X IMHO.

The gains on manual OC alone just are not worth the effort...

The ASROCK X670E PG Lightning MOBO for a mere $259.99 does in fact also have one PCIe 5 Port for a whole lot less than the MSI Godlike by the way...just a 14+2+2 Power arrangement which I do not much like myself...

I just got a few different X670's to test and they are pretty easy to get running these things...

I myself will stay on my Dark Pro rig setups, it is worth the sound of silence!

Stay tuned for more hilarious updates on this one!

So it is now January of 2023 and my German Wunderkind arrived and wrecked my 7950X chip with his IHS removal tool so he has taken the whole shebang back to Deutschland aus and I bought a new 7950X chip for him to try wreck.

His colleague will do the next one as he has much more experience with it and we had far too many schnapps under the hood when we tried this IHS removal.

I will pick it up when I go to Germany in May to pick up our new electric Motorglider in the C5 transport I have a slot on for transport at Ramstein Airbase in May.

I am actually doing a study for DERA and the Defense energy agency of electrical power cells in aviation and this experimental aircraft will form a part of that study.

This aircraft will be one big battery cell with solar panel cells to charge while flying.

I suspect when they get this right it would potentially be possible to cross the Atlantic when the wind conditions are right.

Anyhew, I am not missing the 7950X noise much.

The German crew will build me a water loop system with pumps and fancy coolants and I have asked for silence as a hallmark, so I will be fascinated to see what they come up with.

In the meantime I have had some failure on Kingston NVMe SSD which have melted in some of my 5900X rigs that were using them and I switched back to the WD Black 1 TB NVMe SSD and am in an RMA process for those KC3000 thangs.

I also acquired some very serious M2 Heatsinks for all of my M2 SSD as a result of this saga.

I also found that the memory chips Kingston are using in these M2 NVMe SSD KC series are sub standard in terms of quality.

I dunno what I will do with the replacement RMA units but they ain't going in any of my rigs!