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I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

michael.stapelberg.ch

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Re: I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

#71

Post by swinglock »

c0l0 wrote: post #65

I realize this has not much to do with CPU choice per se, but I'm still gonna leave this recommendation here for people who like to build PCs to get stuff done with :) Since I've been able to afford it and the market has had them available, I've been buying desktop systems with proper ECC support. I've been chasing flimsy but very annoying stability problems (some, of course, due to overclocking during my younger yea…

Excellent point. It's a shame and a travesty that data integrity is still mostly locked away inside servers, leaving most other computing devices effectively toys, the early prototype demo thing but then never finished and sold forever at inflated prices.

I wish AMD would make ECC a properly advertised feature with clear motherboard support. At least DDR5 has some level of ECC.

Re: I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

#72

Post by ttyyzz »

Ekaros wrote: post #67

Seems like failure in choosing cooling solutions. These high-end chips have obscene cooling needs. My guess would be using something that was not designed for TDP in question. Sufficient cooler, with sufficient airflow is always needed.

Agree. Also, use good thermal paste. 100 °C is not safe or sustainable long term. Unfortunately, I think the manufacturer's specifications regarding the maximum temperature are misleading. With proper cooling, however, you'll be well within that limit.

Re: I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

#73

Post by dijit »

c0l0 wrote: post #65

I realize this has not much to do with CPU choice per se, but I'm still gonna leave this recommendation here for people who like to build PCs to get stuff done with :) Since I've been able to afford it and the market has had them available, I've been buying desktop systems with proper ECC support. I've been chasing flimsy but very annoying stability problems (some, of course, due to overclocking during my younger yea…

> only a minority of them enables ECC support in their firmware, so always check for that before buying!

This is the annoying part.

That AMD permits ECC is a truly fantastic situation, but if it's supported by the motherboard is often unlikely and worse: it's not advertised even when it's available.

I have an ASUS PRIME TRX40 PRO and the tech specs say that it can run ECC and non-ECC but not if ECC will be available to the operating system, merely that the DIMMS will work.

It's much more hit and miss in reality than it should be, though this motherboard was a pricey one: one can't use price as a proxy for features.

Re: I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

#75

Post by ACCount37 »

Jolter wrote: post #49
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #40

Why is the author showing a chart of room temperatures? CPU temperature is what matters here. Expecting a CPU to be stable at 100C is just asking for problems. Issue probably could have been avoided by making improvements to case airflow.

I would expect the CPU to start throttling at high temperatures in order to avoid damage. Allegedly, it never did, and instead died. Do you think that’s acceptable in 2025?

Thermal throttling originated as a safety feature. The early implementations were basically a "thermal fuse" in function, and cut all power to the system to prevent catastrophic hardware damage. Only later did the more sophisticated versions that do things like "cut down clocks to prevent temps from rising further" appear.

On desktop PCs, thermal throttling is often set up as "just a safety feature" to this very day. Which means: the system does NOT expect to stay at the edge of its thermal limit. I would not trust thermal throttling with keeping a system running safely at a continuous 100C on die.

100C is already a "danger zone", with elevated error rates and faster circuit degradation - and there are only this many thermal sensors a die has. Some under-sensored hotspots may be running a few degrees higher than that. Which may not be enough to kill the die outright - but more than enough to put those hotspots into a "fuck around" zone of increased instability and massively accelerated degradation.

If you're relying on thermal throttling to balance your system's performance, as laptops and smartphones often do, then you seriously need to dial in better temperature thresholds. 100C is way too spicy.

Re: I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

#76

Post by uniqueuid »

Ekaros wrote: post #67

Seems like failure in choosing cooling solutions. These high-end chips have obscene cooling needs. My guess would be using something that was not designed for TDP in question. Sufficient cooler, with sufficient airflow is always needed.

For what it's worth, I have an i9-13900K paired with the largest air cooler available at the time (a be quiet! Dark Rock 5 IIRC), and it's incapable of sufficiently cooling that CPU.

The 13900k draws more than 200W initially and thermal throttles after a minute at most, even in an air conditioned room.

I don't think that thermal problems should be pushed to end user to this degree.

Re: I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

#77

Post by onli »

Ekaros wrote: post #67

Seems like failure in choosing cooling solutions. These high-end chips have obscene cooling needs. My guess would be using something that was not designed for TDP in question. Sufficient cooler, with sufficient airflow is always needed.

No, those processors clock or shut down if too hot. In no circumstances should they fail because of insufficient cooling. Even without airflow etc.

Re: I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

#78

Post by consp »

c0l0 wrote: post #65

I realize this has not much to do with CPU choice per se, but I'm still gonna leave this recommendation here for people who like to build PCs to get stuff done with :) Since I've been able to afford it and the market has had them available, I've been buying desktop systems with proper ECC support. I've been chasing flimsy but very annoying stability problems (some, of course, due to overclocking during my younger yea…

Isn't it mostly an ease of mind thing? I've never seen a ECC error on my home server which has plenty of memory in use and runs longer than my desktop. Maybe it's more common with higher clocked, near the limit, desktop PC's.

Also: DDR5 has some false ecc marketing due to the memory standard having an error correction scheme build in. Don't fall for it.

Re: I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

#79

Post by perching_aix »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #40

Why is the author showing a chart of room temperatures? CPU temperature is what matters here. Expecting a CPU to be stable at 100C is just asking for problems. Issue probably could have been avoided by making improvements to case airflow.

> Expecting a CPU to be stable at 100C is just asking for problems.

No. High performance gaming laptops will routinely do this for hours on end for years.

If it can't take it, it shouldn't allow it.

Re: I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D

#80

Post by microtonal »

homebrewer wrote: post #47
encom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>M4 is faster than a lot of desktop CPUs Yea, but unfortunately it comes attached to a Mac. An issue I've encountered often with motherboards, is that they have brain damaged default settings, that run CPU's out of spec. You really have to go through it all with a fine toothed comb and make sure everything is set to conservative stock manufacturer recommended settings. And my stupid MSI board resets everything (every…

Also be careful with overclocking, because the usual advice of "just running EXPO/XMP" often results in motherboards setting voltages on very sensitive components to more than 30% over their stock values, and this is somehow considered normal. It looks completely bonkers to me. I overclocked my system to ~95% of what it is able to do with almost default voltages, using bumps of 1-3% over stock, which (AFAIK) is withi…

Also relevant in this context:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2024/08/02/puget-systems-p...

to;dr: they heavily customize BIOS settings, since many BIOSes run CPUs out-of-spec by default. With these customizations there was not much of a difference in failure rate between AMD and Intel at that point in time (even when including Intel 13th and 14th gen).

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