BROADWELL IS FINALLY RETIRED ▀ SWITCHING WORKSTATION TO AMD TO FUTURE-PROOF PERFORMANCE

It was more than a two-year long run with [44 thread Broadwell] , quite a nice heater.
I have really enjoyed running multi-threaded workloads on it, but it is time to move on.
As you may remember i’ve already tried [AMD in 2021] , just to make sure that it is possible in a Windows 7 environment.
And now i would like to jump on the red train again.

X99 is a really nice platform, but i have some complains:

• Xeon E5-2696v4 is quite hot (around 150W)
• 2.2Ghz single core frequency can’t feed 3090Ti ¹ in a proper way
• PCIe v3 imposes some speed restrictions on NVME/GPU operation

Of course i’d like to build a Threadripper machine based upon [5995wx] or [7995wx] .
But the prices are extremely wild, hopefully they will drop to reasonable ones over time.

In order to solve the above mentioned problems cheaply, I decided not to spend too much money on the upgrade
and stuck to the following configuration:

To cool CPU down i’ll use my old [Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4] .
Fortunately, it is compatible with the AM5 socket.. Excellent cooler!

In a month or two i’ll drop in another 32Gigs to fill the ram slots and return to the familiar and satisfying 64Gb configuration.

Looking to the distant future for upgrades there are plenty of options to update the CPU.

• 7950X is a solid, already proved itself solution [will be dirt cheap in a couple of years]
• 9950X is quite dubious option currently [but i suppose AMD will fix issues with upcoming BIOS updates]
• 10950X is the most likely upgrade path for me

I suspect that 11950x will be incompatible with Windows 7 due to the AM6 socket and
entirely different chipset logic standing aside from the one used in x670 chipsets.
If for some obscure reason i’ll hit the jackpot i’ll surely build Threadripper system with 256 threads,
192Gb of octa memory, NVME raid0 to push h/w limitations Windows 7 to the absolute maximum.
So, don’t even question it.

That’s it for today & enjoy Friday!

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