Anybody planning a Ryzen build?


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Now that Ryzen is official I'm quite interested in it.

 

Upto 8 Cores/16 Threads, excellent SMT implementation, ECC RAM support, IOMMU, 8 port on-CPU SATA with the X370 chipset and the high end models are half the price of comparable Intel CPUs.

 

It seems to tick all boxes but I'm concerned whether it'll play nice with unRAID and VM PCI/GPU passthrough. Is anybody planning to test this?

 

 

Update to make things a bit easier for people interested in running Unraid on Ryzen:

 

unRAID 6.4rc7+ generally works fine with Ryzen as of July 2017. Be sure to follow your motherboard manufacturers instructions to update to the latest UEFI version with AGESA 1.0.0.6.

 

As of right now (6.4rc6) there appears to be one bug related to CPU power-managment that causes unRAID to crash intermittently. 

Good news: This bug was fixed in 6.4rc7! 

The way to fix this is to either disable "Global C-State Control" in the motherboard's UEFI/BIOS or have a constant load on the machine (i.e. with a Windows VM idling) so that the CPU never throttles frequency down completely at idle. Either of these fixes will lead to slightly increased power consumption.

 

The second bug is in KVM and leads to decreased video performance when passing through GPUs into VMs on Ryzen. The problem is related to Nested Page Tabling; Ryzen owners have observed decreased CPU and I/O performance inside the VM when NPT is off and decreased FPS in graphic intensive applications (i.e. video games) when NPT is on.

Gaming performance inside a unRAID VM with passed through GPU can be disappointing for that reason. Some systems seem to be affected more than others. The good news is that Xen hypervisor is not affected by this problem so it looks like the bug is in the KVM software, not AMD's hardware;  KVM lead developers have acknowledged the issue but are lacking time/resources and did not mention a timeframe for a fix.

There are some more advanced workarounds that can improve the situation by turning off NPT and passing through entire storage controllers but don't work around it completely.

 

If you are affected by this issue please take a look at https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196409 and consider commenting to raise awareness among developers and perhaps even AMD.

 

Edited by lionceau
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I am planning on one, probably the 1800X so I can do the 2-gamers-1-pc thing.  I did it before with a E5-26xx system but the single core speed was just too low to play the games my wife and I play (2-2.5ghz).  My main unraid server will probably stay the dual e5-2665 v1 setup it currently is though.

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Honestly, It's a little disappointing in the pricing, at least up here in Canada. Their cheapest offering is $432CAD, just not going to cut it when an i5 can be had for under $300. YES, I know the 1700 will trounce an i5, but most of that performance is gravy at this pricing level.

 

I'm also not sold on how effective these will be for VM's. Sure, they have 8 cores / 16 threads, but a quad core intel (4 core / 8 thread) is just a little bit behind in terms of performance... this translates into the intel having a PER CORE advantage since the Ryzen needs double to barely beat it...

 

They need to release some more mainstream parts, and fast if they are after market share.

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When I first started working in the computer industry it was 1996, AMD, Cyrix and Intel were the three big chip makers, Cyrix unfortunately died an untimely death and AMD has struggled over the years while Intel has become this behemoth. Its amazing really that AMD can still compete really. I hope this new line of CPU's turns out to be their greatest achievement yet, as you say, it's about time!

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The latest news on ECC support is that Ryzen will not officially support it after all but there is a chance that it still does support it unofficially like many previous AMD CPUs do.

 

That would require motherboard manufacturers to provide the extra traces for ECC RAM and it is unknown whether they will. A bit disappointing. I believe ECC RAM support should be standard in all devices from Servers to IoT these days.


Ryzen looks like an excellent platform for unRAID provided all the small details work out.

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21 minutes ago, lionceau said:

The latest news on ECC support is that Ryzen will not officially support it after

 

That would be disappointing, if that's the case I would only use it for desktop, all my unRAID servers use ECC and I'm not going back to regular RAM.

 

9 hours ago, ashman70 said:

Cyrix unfortunately died an untimely death

 

I remember those, can't really say that I was sad to see them go...

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On 2/24/2017 at 10:24 AM, lionceau said:

The latest news on ECC support is that Ryzen will not officially support it after all but there is a chance that it still does support it unofficially like many previous AMD CPUs do.

 

That would require motherboard manufacturers to provide the extra traces for ECC RAM and it is unknown whether they will. A bit disappointing. I believe ECC RAM support should be standard in all devices from Servers to IoT these days.


Ryzen looks like an excellent platform for unRAID provided all the small details work out.


Lisa Su (AMD CEO) just confirmed that Ryzen supports ECC memory in the Reddit AMA they're doing.
Link : https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_creators_of_athlon_radeon_and_other/def58sv/

 

Edited by solrsa
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I want to make 4 Gaming VMs and I want to do this setup:
CPU: Ryzen 1700X
GPU: 4x 1050Ti
Motherboard: Some with support for 4 video cards

Ram: 32 GB HyperX (2x 16GB)

PSU: Corsair CX 750

Have not released any motherboard AM4 with support for 4 video cards (At least, not that I have seen).
Can you tell me if it will launch any motherboard with 4 PCI-e support for this processor?
Do you think that with these settings I will be able to play the current games normally in all VMs?
Example, GTA V, Battle Field 1, Crysis 3, Just Cause 3, No Man's Sky, CS: GO, Etc...

 

Sorry for my bad English, i i'm Brazilian and i'm using google translator a few times.

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6 hours ago, JeffS2Duda said:

I want to make 4 Gaming VMs and I want to do this setup:
CPU: Ryzen 1700X
GPU: 4x 1050Ti
Motherboard: Some with support for 4 video cards

Ram: 32 GB HyperX (2x 16GB)

PSU: Corsair CX 750

Have not released any motherboard AM4 with support for 4 video cards (At least, not that I have seen).
Can you tell me if it will launch any motherboard with 4 PCI-e support for this processor?
Do you think that with these settings I will be able to play the current games normally in all VMs?
Example, GTA V, Battle Field 1, Crysis 3, Just Cause 3, No Man's Sky, CS: GO, Etc...

 

Sorry for my bad English, i i'm Brazilian and i'm using google translator a few times.

As of now I don't think there are any plans to do beyond 2 PCI-e slots due to newer cards not being designed for more than 2 card crossfire or SLI setups so I think you might be out of luck in that realm. Also because there is no on-board graphics you would need a fifth video card (nothing fancy) for unraid itself. 

 

And here's some food for thought as the Ryzen still doesn't seem to beat Intel on overall gaming performance. 

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-amd-ryzen-7-review/

 

I think you'd be better off building an Intel system as it would have the on-board graphics and the 4 PCI-e that you would need. 

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13 hours ago, stublehustle said:

As of now I don't think there are any plans to do beyond 2 PCI-e slots due to newer cards not being designed for more than 2 card crossfire or SLI setups so I think you might be out of luck in that realm. Also because there is no on-board graphics you would need a fifth video card (nothing fancy) for unraid itself. 

 

And here's some food for thought as the Ryzen still doesn't seem to beat Intel on overall gaming performance. 

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-amd-ryzen-7-review/

 

I think you'd be better off building an Intel system as it would have the on-board graphics and the 4 PCI-e that you would need. 

There are already some cards with 3 PCI-e, they do not need to do sli or crossfire to be able to use them as a VM, then only need to launch a card with 4 slots.
It does not make any difference to mount an intel extreme edition and it also does not help to mount an i7 7700k, because it will be divided for 4 people to play, the 7700k only has 8 threads, if users only use 2 threads each, it will get very bad for games that need More cpu.
Ryzen has 16 threads, which in the case is ideal for 4 VM's 4 threads each, because the performance difference that the 7700k has on ryzen is only in the single core, and as I will overclock, it will get the same performance.

 

PT-BR:

Já existem algumas placas com 3 PCI-e, elas não precisam fazer sli ou crossfire para poder usá-las como VM, então só falta lançar uma placa com 4 slots.
Não compensa nada montar um intel extreme edition e também não adianta montar um i7 7700k, porque será dividido para 4 pessoas jogarem, o 7700k só tem 8 threads, se os usuários só usarem 2 threads cada, vai ficar muito ruim para jogos que necessitam de mais cpu.
O Ryzen possui 16 Threads, que no caso fica ideal para 4 VM's 4 threads cada, até porque a diferença de desempenho que o 7700k tem sobre o ryzen é somente no single core, e como irei fazer overclock, irá ficar o mesmo desempenho.

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I am in the process of a Ryzen build.  I'll detail the build and the results in a separate post later.  It will take a few weeks, as the Noctua CPU cooler I purchased required an adapter, which is shipping from Austria to me (in Atlanta).  It will probably be late March before I have it up and running.

 

My use-case is slightly different than many of you, as this is not a gaming platform for me.  For my work I write code that needs to be tested on multiple platforms simultaneously.  I've got several VM images of various Windows Servers (2003, 2008, 2008R2, etc).  My goal is to be able to have all VM's up and running simultaneously on my unRAID server. 

 

The real challenge that I've come across is that my VM's are VMware images, and if I convert the Server 2008 and later images to KVM, it wants to me re-license the OS.  This would be many thousands of dollars I'm not willing to spend.  My workaround is that I'm attempting to run a lubuntu VM on unRAID, with CPU pass-through and VM nesting support enabled, and then run VMware Player inside lubuntu to in turn run several server VM's.

 

Luckily I was able to convert my 2003 VM's to KVM's, and they run great directly on unRAID. 

 

My current build (in my signature below) uses a very weak Celeron G1610 processor and a measly 16GB of RAM.  I originally built this server to be a very power efficient 24-bay server, back on unRAID v5, long before we had VM capabilities.  Amazingly, it can run a couple KVM Server 2003 images okay (if a little slow), but attempting to start up a VM image of Windows Server 2008 inside a lubuntu KVM brings everything to a screeching halt, and sometimes causes the VM to crash.

 

My new build:

  • AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
  • ASRock Fatal1ty X270 Professional Gaming (yes I know this is a gaming board, but it also has dual M2's plus a 5GB/s network port)
  • G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4 2800
  • Noctua NH-C14S (biggest cooler that would fit in my case).

I know the memory is not the fastest, but I'll have to overclock just to hit those levels.  Apparently Ryzen wants to run 4 sticks of dual-rank DIMMs at 1866.  I've seen one report of 4 sticks overclocked to 3200, so I'm pretty hopeful.

 

I was pretty excited about the Aquantia AQC108 LAN chipset that supports 100/1000/2500/5000Mbps speeds (which can run on CAT5e/CAT6 cables!), but when I looked into 5G switches I couldn't find anything below about a $1k.  That's too much money for a switch.  Hopefully these will come down over the next year or two.  Even so, apparently this chipset has better throughput on 1Gbps speeds since it is underutilized at that speed.

 

I'll reuse my 650w power supply, and of course my 24-port SAS controller card.  I'll also add in a spare GTX 670 I have laying around, since Ryzen has no GPU built-in.  Not sure if I will actually utilize the video card, as I keep the server in my basement, out of sight.  Not sure if there is any benefit to passing through a GPU for a remote desktop connection.  I suppose I can at least try it for a few minutes in the basement and report back, if no one else beats me to it (JonP probably will).

 

On unRAID compatibility, from what I've read you want to be on Linux kernel 4.10, or at the minimum 4.09.10, for Ryzen support.  unRAID 6.3.2 is 4.9.10, so hopefully it will work okay.  The motherboard I chose has the Realtek ALC1220 codec, which doesn't get support until 4.11, but I don't care about audio for my purposes - I currently have audio disabled on my server to save an extra watt or two.

 

Believe it or not, I'm actually thinking this will be a temporary build.  Once the new Naples version of the Zen chips come out in Q2 (will they call it Opteron again?  Nah, I'm betting Optizen), if it's affordable I wouldn't mind upgrading to a true server build.  I don't think I would need a 32-core beast, but a more affordable 16-core would offer quad memory channels and 8 DIMM slots allowing me to load up 128GB of RAM.  I know that sounds insane for a home server build, but I currently have 7 different server VM's that I want to run concurrently for accelerated development and testing, and my VM count keeps growing.

 

-Paul

Edited by Pauven
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34 minutes ago, tr0910 said:

@pauven. Did you consider the ex Facebook Intel 2670 dual CPU builds with 128gb RAM. Sounds like that would work for you too. Lots of cores and lots of reliable power at an affordable price for server class hardware.

via mobile
 

 

Very interesting.  I didn't even know about those.  Seems like a good value.

 

To be honest, no I'm not considering it.  I've got 25k shares of AMD stock that I started purchasing back in 2007, with multiple purchases over the years as it dropped dropped dropped in price.  It's been a rough ride, but my purchases have finally paid off (crappy bulldozer fiasco), and I plan to sell them in the next year or so to build a house.  Yes, I'm a bit of an AMD fanboy, rooting for the underdog. 

 

And to support my stock purchases, I always try to buy AMD when I can justify it.  But my main office PC is an i7-3960X with a GTX 1070 (and previously a GTX 670).  My gaming/theater PC is a i7-6700k with a R9 Fury, my unRAID server is the Celeron G1610, and my laptop is an i7 M620 with nVidia GeForce GT 330M.

 

In every purchase, I wanted to buy AMD only, but couldn't justify it.  Hard to admit, but true.  I don't own any Intel or nVIDIA stock, yet AMD's poor lineup has forced me to buy the competition's products.  And it wasn't just slow, power hungry and hot chips, but also poor software support that affected my buying decisions.  For example, when I bought the GTX 670 instead of AMD's competition at the time, it was because only nVidia supported video acceleration in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.

 

For the first time in a long time, AMD has my money again with Ryzen.  And hopefully Vega and Naples earns more of my money too.  And since my laptop is a good 5 years old, perhaps a mobile Ryzen APU is in my future too.

 

Besides, with as much stock as I have, I perceive these as free purchases, since I'm helping the stock to rise, the money comes back to me.  B|  A $0.05 cent rise in the stock price pays for my new Ryzen build.

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