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We recently started to purchase Ryzen 2700 for our office, and us used to be all Intel 4790K and Intel 7700K. These AMD CPUs are pretty great price for what yo

We recently started to purchase Ryzen 2700 for our office, and us used to be all Intel 4790K and Intel 7700K. These AMD CPUs are pretty great price for what you get and way faster than the similarly priced Intel CPUs for our needs. We sort of make fun of the multi-colored CPU coolers that come with the CPU though. It seems weird to have these in business machines. (We have also invested in another 16 AMD Threadrippers, they are just amazing power for the price. It is sort of weird that is less than 6 months, we have become an AMD shop after being Intel for as long as I can remember.)

amelius 9y ago
> We sort of make fun of the multi-colored CPU coolers that come with the CPU though. It seems weird to have these in business machines. This is also the case for GPU cards, and their "gamer" marketing approach.
- Semaphor 9y ago
  I'm both gaming and working on my PC. When I thought about switching to Ryzen, I had a hard time finding cases and GPUs and other things that didn't seem to mainly differentiate from their competitors by the amount, color and controlling options for their fancy blinking lights.
  - ivl 9y ago
    I believe Nvidia is purposely discouraging OEMs from altering their stock clocks. At least that was true for the 1070 Ti. The big thing I usually look for is if the PCB layout matches the reference layout. Else liquid cooling (mostly for how much quieter it is under load) becomes much more of a pain.
    - saganus 9y ago
      > The big thing I usually look for is if the PCB layout matches the reference layout. How do you do that? I mean, where do you look for the PCB layout of a potential card you will be buying? Do you physically open the box and take a picture? Also, why would the PCB layout make any difference? I mean, I've been buying 3D cards since the original Voodoo but I just never heard of this metric. Sounds interesting but would be nice to have some more details :)
      - ivl 9y ago
        I was lucky to very early on have one of those Voodoo cards, so it's kind of amazing how far we've come. Unfortunately, it's a true pain to determine whether or not a card matches reference. The reason is simple: if the layout changes, there's a good chance the water cooling block won't correctly align with the high points on the card. Having that happen means two things: you will have points where the block won't be making contact, or you will have to bend the PCB, or you will have a component not being cooled. All really bad things. This can even be impacted by the thermal pads used by the OEM. I mostly check to see if they're using the reference cooler design. I haven't bothered with AMD/ATI cards in ages, so this only really applies to Nvidia products. Cards with the blower style coolers with a single fan towards the rear of the card, with an output near the video outputs are almost always reference. Cards with coolers the OEM designs often are, but sometimes are not. That's mostly where things are annoying. Thankfully, water cooling OEMs often have specs from the start as to which cards will match if you're planning on buying day on. An example: With reference layouts the 980 and 980 Ti ought to be compatible. On some EVGA cards, you have memory mounted on the rear of the card, that makes backplate installation impossible depending on which backplate you use, as it'll teeter: either a 980 backplate, or one meant to be compatible with both the 980 and the 980 Ti. Worse, that can mean having to find a different set of screws to mount the water block you wish to use.
      - cc439 9y ago
        There's no definitive rule for determining whether a card is using rhe reference PCB design or not, but generally, any card using the reference cooler (1) and most card SKUs released on a new GPU family's launch day will use the reference PCB design. As for why you's want the reference PCB for water cooling, well that is easily explained by looking at water cooled GPU heatsinks (2). A Graphics Card is composed of much more than the GPH itself. They basically stuff all the components of a mini computer (power management, memory, processor) onto a single board and each one of those subcomponents needs cooling in order to achieve optimal performance. A GPU heatsink that neglects the VRMs or memory will not be able to be overclocked as far as a GPU where those parts are actively cooled and in a liquid cooled system, there is typically very little airflow within the case. Slap an all-in-one water cooling system intended for a CPU onto a GPU and you'll often get memory issues right off the bat even with stock clocks and overheated VRMs will lead to throttling after a relatively short time in heavy use. The fans on a GPU provide enough direcf airflow to keep those components within spec, but remove the fans and replace them with nothing and you lose that necessary airflow. Since each card manufacturer uses their own PCB layout (once they figure out what to improve or lower costs on versus the reference design), there is no way to guarantee a heatsink will work with anything but the reference design. Card manufacturers place their VRMs all over the place and sometimes even stray from spec in memory placement so heatsink manufacturers can't standardize on anything but the one design guaranteed to have a market presence which is the OEM reference PCB. 1* Here's an article covering an old Nvidia reference cooler design: https://techbuyersguru.com/founders-edition-vs-open-air-video-card-coolers-definitive-analysis https://techbuyersguru.com/founders-edition-vs-open-air-vide... 2* Here's a GPU water heatsink: http://www.phanteks.com/PH-GB1080.html http://www.phanteks.com/PH-GB1080.html
- copperx 9y ago
  I have no numbers to back my gut feeling, but I feel that most people building custom PCs are gamers (which welcome the LED colored fans) and those building high end workstations (the market for Threadripper). It does leave someone building a "serious" budget PC with Ryzen with the feeling that they're doing something wrong. Maybe that's the intent.
  - devonkim 9y ago
    Even among gamers I’m not sure if the bewildering array of random LEDs is well received as a generality. I’ve built all my PCs for 20 years now and my gaming machines have always been as boring as I could buy and build. My computer shouldn’t be so loud and distracting that it takes attention away from what’s in front of me. Additionally, it’s bad enough to be a computer nerd of any variant and a brightly lit PC with a side window that has some half naked woman on the blower fan would repel most women away from that zip code.
kikimaru 9y ago
What coolers did you have on your 4790K/7700K machines before?
- masklinn 9y ago
  I expect they had Intel's stock cooler. For some reason, AMD decided Ryzen's stock coolers should come with RGB LED (at least for Ryzen 7). Intel stock: https://i.imgur.com/egFD543l.jpg https://i.imgur.com/egFD543l.jpg Ryzen stock: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y0efXDSgSPU/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y0efXDSgSPU/maxresdefault.jpg
  - vatueil 9y ago
    To be precise, not all AMD Ryzen stock coolers have LEDs. The Wraith Max, Wraith Prism (successor to the Max), and some Wraith Spire coolers have LEDs. For first-generation Ryzen, the -X models were often sold without a bundled stock cooler, which limited uptake of Wraith Max. Some had Wraith Spires with LEDs, others without. For second-generation Ryzen, all CPUs come with stock coolers. The Ryzen 7 2700X has Wraith Prism and the 2700 non-X has Wraith Spire w/LED. The stock Wraith Spire and Wraith Stealth coolers for other Ryzen 2000-series CPUs do not have LEDs. Of course, you can always turn the LEDs off.
- bhouston 9y ago
  The Intel providers coolers fail at high rates unfortunately. We prefer CoolerMaster HYPER 212 EVO. It is awesome and it has never failed for me.
yAnonymous 9y ago
Agreed, they're great. If only they weren't so unreliable with Linux. First the segfault bug and then there's still random freezes in idle state: https://community.amd.com/thread/225795 https://community.amd.com/thread/225795
- jcastro 9y ago
  Just how common is this? Three ryzen/linux machines here and they've been rock solid.
  - adamc84 9y ago
    I believe only very early silicon was affected. AMD replaced CPUs for people on request. If you google you can find the affected datecode visible on the CPU. I have an early Ryzen from the next date and it doesn't have any issues.
    - paulmd 9y ago
      AMD tightened up manufacturing at Week 25 and the incidence rate is significantly reduced after that point, but there is no date range (or factory code) on the 1000-series processors that is guaranteed to be unaffected and I recommend that everyone test their processor just to be sure. I've seen about a dozen reports of faulty post-week-25 processors crop up in the AMD Community Forum and on Reddit from different users. Which is of course a lot better than pre-week-25 where the overwhelming majority of units are faulty. Of course, most users aren't testing for it in the first place, especially since the newer processors were widely (and incorrectly) reported to be "fixed", so it's hard to say. https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1635&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1635&tstart=0 (user jcoiner, 1726PGT) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1725&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1725&tstart=0 (user scorpio810, 2x 1728SUS) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1770&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1770&tstart=0 (user ryzlin, 1733PGT) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1785&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1785&tstart=0 (user flyinryzen1700, 1737SUS) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1830&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1830&tstart=0 (user skimba 1725PGT, user xtronom 1728PGT) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1860&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1860&tstart=0 (user jc_yang, 1742SUS) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1875&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1875&tstart=0 (user fedor_s 1726SUS, user karabojkov 1741SUS+1737SUS, user spiffy 1748PGS) https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/76q7ne/got_a_defective_ryzen_7_1700_on_rma_process/dofye3u/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/76q7ne/got_a_defective... (user grosbof 1733SUS) https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_still_selling_preweek_25_ryzens/dpc5iue/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_s... (user triplesal, 1733PGS) https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_still_selling_preweek_25_ryzens/dpcrkv0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_s... (user istockporno, 1726PGT) I am guessing that this was finally squashed for good in the 2000-series stepping. Incidentally, there have been reports of the latest patch of Battlefield One having strange random crashes on Ryzen 1000-series but not 2000-series or Intel processors, that is reportedly fixed by disabling SMT, and I'm wondering if that's another manifestation of the segfault bug. It's hard to say, and the reality is the first-gen silicon will never be 100% trustworthy. Buy 2000-series processors instead, it's worth it for the peace of mind.
bluedino 9y ago
Are you building your own PC's?
- copperx 9y ago
  I'm interested in knowing the answer to this. I thought it was cheaper to buy Dell/HP and let them deal with any support issues. Is it really cheaper to build your own, considering there's no support?
  - bhouston 9y ago
    I do not know if it is cheaper, but we build our own desktop machines. We just always have.
  - zrm 9y ago
    > I thought it was cheaper to buy Dell/HP and let them deal with any support issues. Is it really cheaper to build your own, considering there's no support? This has changed somewhat with the decline of Moore's Law. Companies are keeping equipment longer, past the point that OEMs typically provide warranties or even parts. When you know that's going to happen you want to start with something that uses standard parts rather than vendor-specific ones.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    It is, especially at large enterprises. Most companies also now make do completely on laptops (or even chromebooks) and have no need for desk machines. For the small or midsize companies though that need that extra power, building can work if you have the talent in house. Cheaper, more standard, and more powerful parts and everything is very reliable these days so its no longer a major support issue.
  - dagw 9y ago
    Is it really cheaper to build your own Depends on what you need. In the general case, No. If however you need something 'special', like the very fastest CPUs, lots of RAM and/or multiple GPUs for example, then Dell/HP etc. tend to greatly overcharge for these configurations.

amelius 9y ago

> We sort of make fun of the multi-colored CPU coolers that come with the CPU though. It seems weird to have these in business machines. This is also the case for GPU cards, and their "gamer" marketing approach.

Semaphor 9y ago
I'm both gaming and working on my PC. When I thought about switching to Ryzen, I had a hard time finding cases and GPUs and other things that didn't seem to mainly differentiate from their competitors by the amount, color and controlling options for their fancy blinking lights.
- ivl 9y ago
  I believe Nvidia is purposely discouraging OEMs from altering their stock clocks. At least that was true for the 1070 Ti. The big thing I usually look for is if the PCB layout matches the reference layout. Else liquid cooling (mostly for how much quieter it is under load) becomes much more of a pain.
  - saganus 9y ago
    > The big thing I usually look for is if the PCB layout matches the reference layout. How do you do that? I mean, where do you look for the PCB layout of a potential card you will be buying? Do you physically open the box and take a picture? Also, why would the PCB layout make any difference? I mean, I've been buying 3D cards since the original Voodoo but I just never heard of this metric. Sounds interesting but would be nice to have some more details :)
    - ivl 9y ago
      I was lucky to very early on have one of those Voodoo cards, so it's kind of amazing how far we've come. Unfortunately, it's a true pain to determine whether or not a card matches reference. The reason is simple: if the layout changes, there's a good chance the water cooling block won't correctly align with the high points on the card. Having that happen means two things: you will have points where the block won't be making contact, or you will have to bend the PCB, or you will have a component not being cooled. All really bad things. This can even be impacted by the thermal pads used by the OEM. I mostly check to see if they're using the reference cooler design. I haven't bothered with AMD/ATI cards in ages, so this only really applies to Nvidia products. Cards with the blower style coolers with a single fan towards the rear of the card, with an output near the video outputs are almost always reference. Cards with coolers the OEM designs often are, but sometimes are not. That's mostly where things are annoying. Thankfully, water cooling OEMs often have specs from the start as to which cards will match if you're planning on buying day on. An example: With reference layouts the 980 and 980 Ti ought to be compatible. On some EVGA cards, you have memory mounted on the rear of the card, that makes backplate installation impossible depending on which backplate you use, as it'll teeter: either a 980 backplate, or one meant to be compatible with both the 980 and the 980 Ti. Worse, that can mean having to find a different set of screws to mount the water block you wish to use.
    - cc439 9y ago
      There's no definitive rule for determining whether a card is using rhe reference PCB design or not, but generally, any card using the reference cooler (1) and most card SKUs released on a new GPU family's launch day will use the reference PCB design. As for why you's want the reference PCB for water cooling, well that is easily explained by looking at water cooled GPU heatsinks (2). A Graphics Card is composed of much more than the GPH itself. They basically stuff all the components of a mini computer (power management, memory, processor) onto a single board and each one of those subcomponents needs cooling in order to achieve optimal performance. A GPU heatsink that neglects the VRMs or memory will not be able to be overclocked as far as a GPU where those parts are actively cooled and in a liquid cooled system, there is typically very little airflow within the case. Slap an all-in-one water cooling system intended for a CPU onto a GPU and you'll often get memory issues right off the bat even with stock clocks and overheated VRMs will lead to throttling after a relatively short time in heavy use. The fans on a GPU provide enough direcf airflow to keep those components within spec, but remove the fans and replace them with nothing and you lose that necessary airflow. Since each card manufacturer uses their own PCB layout (once they figure out what to improve or lower costs on versus the reference design), there is no way to guarantee a heatsink will work with anything but the reference design. Card manufacturers place their VRMs all over the place and sometimes even stray from spec in memory placement so heatsink manufacturers can't standardize on anything but the one design guaranteed to have a market presence which is the OEM reference PCB. 1* Here's an article covering an old Nvidia reference cooler design: https://techbuyersguru.com/founders-edition-vs-open-air-video-card-coolers-definitive-analysis https://techbuyersguru.com/founders-edition-vs-open-air-vide... 2* Here's a GPU water heatsink: http://www.phanteks.com/PH-GB1080.html http://www.phanteks.com/PH-GB1080.html
copperx 9y ago
I have no numbers to back my gut feeling, but I feel that most people building custom PCs are gamers (which welcome the LED colored fans) and those building high end workstations (the market for Threadripper). It does leave someone building a "serious" budget PC with Ryzen with the feeling that they're doing something wrong. Maybe that's the intent.
- devonkim 9y ago
  Even among gamers I’m not sure if the bewildering array of random LEDs is well received as a generality. I’ve built all my PCs for 20 years now and my gaming machines have always been as boring as I could buy and build. My computer shouldn’t be so loud and distracting that it takes attention away from what’s in front of me. Additionally, it’s bad enough to be a computer nerd of any variant and a brightly lit PC with a side window that has some half naked woman on the blower fan would repel most women away from that zip code.

kikimaru 9y ago

What coolers did you have on your 4790K/7700K machines before?

masklinn 9y ago
I expect they had Intel's stock cooler. For some reason, AMD decided Ryzen's stock coolers should come with RGB LED (at least for Ryzen 7). Intel stock: https://i.imgur.com/egFD543l.jpg https://i.imgur.com/egFD543l.jpg Ryzen stock: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y0efXDSgSPU/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y0efXDSgSPU/maxresdefault.jpg
- vatueil 9y ago
  To be precise, not all AMD Ryzen stock coolers have LEDs. The Wraith Max, Wraith Prism (successor to the Max), and some Wraith Spire coolers have LEDs. For first-generation Ryzen, the -X models were often sold without a bundled stock cooler, which limited uptake of Wraith Max. Some had Wraith Spires with LEDs, others without. For second-generation Ryzen, all CPUs come with stock coolers. The Ryzen 7 2700X has Wraith Prism and the 2700 non-X has Wraith Spire w/LED. The stock Wraith Spire and Wraith Stealth coolers for other Ryzen 2000-series CPUs do not have LEDs. Of course, you can always turn the LEDs off.
bhouston 9y ago
The Intel providers coolers fail at high rates unfortunately. We prefer CoolerMaster HYPER 212 EVO. It is awesome and it has never failed for me.

yAnonymous 9y ago

Agreed, they're great. If only they weren't so unreliable with Linux. First the segfault bug and then there's still random freezes in idle state: https://community.amd.com/thread/225795 https://community.amd.com/thread/225795

jcastro 9y ago
Just how common is this? Three ryzen/linux machines here and they've been rock solid.
- adamc84 9y ago
  I believe only very early silicon was affected. AMD replaced CPUs for people on request. If you google you can find the affected datecode visible on the CPU. I have an early Ryzen from the next date and it doesn't have any issues.
  - paulmd 9y ago
    AMD tightened up manufacturing at Week 25 and the incidence rate is significantly reduced after that point, but there is no date range (or factory code) on the 1000-series processors that is guaranteed to be unaffected and I recommend that everyone test their processor just to be sure. I've seen about a dozen reports of faulty post-week-25 processors crop up in the AMD Community Forum and on Reddit from different users. Which is of course a lot better than pre-week-25 where the overwhelming majority of units are faulty. Of course, most users aren't testing for it in the first place, especially since the newer processors were widely (and incorrectly) reported to be "fixed", so it's hard to say. https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1635&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1635&tstart=0 (user jcoiner, 1726PGT) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1725&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1725&tstart=0 (user scorpio810, 2x 1728SUS) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1770&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1770&tstart=0 (user ryzlin, 1733PGT) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1785&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1785&tstart=0 (user flyinryzen1700, 1737SUS) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1830&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1830&tstart=0 (user skimba 1725PGT, user xtronom 1728PGT) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1860&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1860&tstart=0 (user jc_yang, 1742SUS) https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1875&tstart=0 https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1875&tstart=0 (user fedor_s 1726SUS, user karabojkov 1741SUS+1737SUS, user spiffy 1748PGS) https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/76q7ne/got_a_defective_ryzen_7_1700_on_rma_process/dofye3u/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/76q7ne/got_a_defective... (user grosbof 1733SUS) https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_still_selling_preweek_25_ryzens/dpc5iue/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_s... (user triplesal, 1733PGS) https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_still_selling_preweek_25_ryzens/dpcrkv0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_s... (user istockporno, 1726PGT) I am guessing that this was finally squashed for good in the 2000-series stepping. Incidentally, there have been reports of the latest patch of Battlefield One having strange random crashes on Ryzen 1000-series but not 2000-series or Intel processors, that is reportedly fixed by disabling SMT, and I'm wondering if that's another manifestation of the segfault bug. It's hard to say, and the reality is the first-gen silicon will never be 100% trustworthy. Buy 2000-series processors instead, it's worth it for the peace of mind.

bluedino 9y ago

Are you building your own PC's?

copperx 9y ago
I'm interested in knowing the answer to this. I thought it was cheaper to buy Dell/HP and let them deal with any support issues. Is it really cheaper to build your own, considering there's no support?
- bhouston 9y ago
  I do not know if it is cheaper, but we build our own desktop machines. We just always have.
- zrm 9y ago
  > I thought it was cheaper to buy Dell/HP and let them deal with any support issues. Is it really cheaper to build your own, considering there's no support? This has changed somewhat with the decline of Moore's Law. Companies are keeping equipment longer, past the point that OEMs typically provide warranties or even parts. When you know that's going to happen you want to start with something that uses standard parts rather than vendor-specific ones.
- manigandham 9y ago
  It is, especially at large enterprises. Most companies also now make do completely on laptops (or even chromebooks) and have no need for desk machines. For the small or midsize companies though that need that extra power, building can work if you have the talent in house. Cheaper, more standard, and more powerful parts and everything is very reliable these days so its no longer a major support issue.
- dagw 9y ago
  Is it really cheaper to build your own Depends on what you need. In the general case, No. If however you need something 'special', like the very fastest CPUs, lots of RAM and/or multiple GPUs for example, then Dell/HP etc. tend to greatly overcharge for these configurations.