About three and a half months ago, we saw that the AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 Series Launched. At the time, it was an OEM exclusive with the first system being the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 we reviewed with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX. Now, AMD is opening the new series up to the DIY market as well.
AMD Threadripper Pro 5000 Series Goes DIY Market
The big news is that AMD is opening up the Threadripper Pro 5000 series to more than just OEMs like Lenovo and Dell. From what we have heard, the Lenovo P620 is dominating its class in the workstation market right now because of the massive core counts and PCIe connectivity offered.
The systems from these vendors utilize PSB, as we saw with the Threadripper Pro series in Lenovo is Using AMD PSB to Vendor Lock AMD CPUs. That feature makes the CPUs very exclusive to the OEMs that AMD allows to sell the chips first.
Not only does AMD sell the new CPUs exclusively to certain OEMs, but the CPUs cannot be used outside of systems from those vendors.
Luckily, with 3rd party OEMs and the DIY market opening up to the new chips, that means we can have non-PSB-enabled options (PSB makes little sense on a DIY system) in the market. This will bring effectively the AMD EPYC Milan (not Milan-X) to the workstation market.
The new chips do not necessarily increase core counts beyond 64 cores with the Threadripper Pro 5995WX. The one difference is that there is a new 24-core variant, the AMD Threadripper Pro 5965WX. Instead, we get a massive boost from the more unified CCD cache and the microarchitectural improvements that can give 20-30% more performance in many workloads on the server-side. We are excited to see how these fare on the workstation side, but we expect similar results.
Final Words
You are going to see more on this from STH in the coming weeks. We have a new Gigabyte MC62-G40 that just arrived and we will be testing that with the Threadripper Pro 5000 series. We are still awaiting getting Threadripper Pro chips, but we expect to be able to get our hands on some in July/ August to start testing. AMD says that we can expect the DIY chips in July, so we will be looking for them as soon as possible.
AMD also says that the new Threadripper Pro 5000 series is a drop-in (with BIOS update) upgrade for WRX80 motherboards that support it. It also mentioned CPU and memory overclocking in select systems. This is very exciting indeed.
Do we have more details on what CPU overclocking looks like? If it’s properly unlocked or at least full PBO+CO similar to Ryzen 5000, then that might explain the discontinuation of the TRX40 platform.
The new ASRock WRX80 board mentions memory OC, but I haven’t seen it on any other board. Anyone know more on that?
Nice to see this gigabyte board out on retail. Unfortunately, the first release of this board’s bios did not have support for 5000 series cpus. Does the server board have QFlash which allows users to flash bios without CPU like the non-server x570 boards?
Sad that AMD have essentially shafted the TRX40 buyer the same way as the first generation TR buyer. Would of been classy to release a Zen3 based SKU for the TRX40 crowd before deprecating the non PRO platform.
2950X and 3960X user here. The latter is my primary workstation, the former is my backup workstation in case the primary has issues and I don’t have time to fix them right away due to job-related emergencies.
I do not mind have to upgrade from mobo/socket/chipset to mobo/socket/chipset. These two machines are going to be used for many years. So upgrading the processor is relatively unimportant to me.
What I do mind about is the rising prices for HEDT: 2950X ($899.99 MSRP)(*) to 3960X ($1399.00 MSRP) to 5965WX ($2,537)(**)
(*) Where the needs are for around 16C32T or 24C48T. Starting with the 3rd gen, the 16C32T version was demoted to desktop, the 3950X and 5950X, kneecapped in terms of PCIe lanes and memory. AMD had finally decided how to segment its HEDT market.
(**) According to https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-threadripper-pro-5000-cpus-will-hit-the-diy-market-later-this-year
The non-PRO Threadripper was a gift for DIYer who wanted to build a powerful workstation while limiting cost (and I could not believe my luck when I got a used 2950X well under MSRP on eBay.)
The second thing I do mind about is Lenovo and Dell abusing AMD PSB to lock the 5000 TR processors to their brand. This means the second hand market is going to be kind of SNAFU if vendors do not track the CPU origin. Also using a used Lenovo or Dell workstation mobo? No thanks.
Because INTEL was (and still is) MIA in the HEDT market, AMD spent 3 generations searching for the most profitable way to sell HEDT processors. It looks like the Threadripper PRO is the answer they were looking for. Good for AMD, not so good in terms of pricing for DIYer, bugdet restricting start-up, SOHO power user, etc.
The non-PRO Threadripper series is dead. AMD marketing calls it “simplifying and unifying the platform”:
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Ref: https://community.amd.com/t5/business/design-build-accelerate-on-the-ultimate-workstation-processor/ba-p/530661
It’s always interesting to witness how marketing spins bad news in a positive way.
The conclusion is that when a DIYer builds a 16C32T or 24C48T workstation, he or she will spent roughly $1500 more.
Intel’s returning to the HEDT market by the end of this year. In the meanwhile I built a couple of 12900K based ‘workstations’, and have been fairly pleased with the results. After what AMD pulled with x399-TRX40 then abandoning TRX40 after 1 series of CPUs, I’m done with them, especially in the light of vendors platform-locking CPUs. AMD would have been far more successful had they been less greedy and more forward-looking.
AMD should not be praised for this release.
It should be berated for providing those CPUs only to Lenovo up to this point, effectively giving it a monopoly for so long. And for PSB. Both are extremely anti-consumer practices.