RIPPING UP THE OPPOSITION
IT’S NICE to have a build that comes together so smoothly. No hassle, no mess. The most challenging part was installing the three front 120mm fans from the inside, instead of externally. The radiator bracket in the roof made AIO installation a dream. The motherboard, despite pre-routing the cables, fitted snugly in place, and the fully modular 1,000W Be Quiet! PSU reduced cable clutter.
It’s not flawless, but for all intents and purposes, it’s perfect for the job at hand. The biggest decisions came from swapping and changing the spec list, and little else. And that’s the problem: With Threadripper, AMD has introduced a way for mainstream consumers to gain access to HEDT features far greater than anything we’ve seen previously. With 64 PCIe lanes directly connected to the processor alone, allowing for up to fourway CrossFire or SLI at x16x16x16x16, it’s staggering what you can do.
Alongside that, the number of cores is unprecedented within the industry. And although Intel does have solutions in the pipeline, they’re coming in at a minimum of $700 more, as standard. And they don’t support the insane levels of PCIe lane connectivity we’ve witnessed here with TR.
This puts Threadripper in a unique position because, although the core architecture isn’t quite up to scratch compared to Intel’s wellhoned design right now, having that many cores, at such an affordable price, with a fairly weighty chipset behind it, makes it far more accessible and powerful than anything we’ve ever seen from Team Blue. For instance, ignoring our ridiculously pricey build here (thanks again, storage), you can knock up a fairly impressive 12-core, 24-thread, 32GB system for less than $2,500 relatively easily— check out our recommended build for that at http://bit.ly/ TRCheaper.
Going forward, bearing in mind that these processor parts are based on AMD’s EPYC server chips, it’s entirely feasible that we could see core counts reaching even higher than the 16 cores we have today. A 32-core part coming out to directly combat Intel’s 18-core Core i9-7980XE at the same price point may seem outlandish, but it’s definitely something that’s on the table for Team Red right now, and it would secure its absolute dominance in the high-end desktop domain.
Finally, let’s make one thing clear: You can game, very comfortably, on Threadripper, outside of gaming mode, at 1080p, 1440p, and above, with relative ease. The difference between Intel and AMD is definitely there, but it’s marginal (3–4 percent difference at most), and unless you absolutely must be at the cutting edge for frame rates, you’re not even going to notice.