[epc1]

Originally Posted by tombo

Yes, I'm still waiting for the dust to settle on the memory/motherboard compatibility issues before making a selection. 32GB of 3200 ram (2 sticks) is not officially supported on any motherboard I have access to. There are BIOS updates filtering through that look encouraging though. I do have an R7 1700 on my desk at present, it makes a good paperweight for now!

Which motherboard are you planning to buy?

[tombo]

I will most likely choose between the ASUS PRIME B350M-A (currently supports 2x16GB@2666) or the Asrock AB350M Pro4 (currently supports 2x16GB@2400). These are both inexpensive, and available in Australia, and in my preferred mATX form factor. If it becomes available I'll add the Gigabyte AB350M-G3 to that list.

[epc1]

Originally Posted by tombo

I will most likely choose between the ASUS PRIME B350M-A (currently supports 2x16GB@2666) or the Asrock AB350M Pro4 (currently supports 2x16GB@2400). These are both inexpensive, and available in Australia, and in my preferred mATX form factor. If it becomes available I'll add the Gigabyte AB350M-G3 to that list.

Great! please post some benchmarks as soon as you can.

Out of curiosity, is that build personally financed? or your workplace
is paying for it?

I'd been seriously considering getting a 1700 with a X370 motherboard with
my money, but so far i've been able to withstand the "hype". I'll try to wait
until the new X intel processors are released and then make a choice.

I'm currently using an i7 4770k (not overclocked) in my home computer.

[tombo]

It's a personally funded build, hence the penny pinching! But also, from a philosophical point of view, I also don't like paying for things I don't need! I'll definitely share my benchmarks when I'm up and running.

[Pndsc]

Originally Posted by tombo

It's a personally funded build, hence the penny pinching! But also, from a philosophical point of view, I also don't like paying for things I don't need! I'll definitely share my benchmarks when I'm up and running.

What kind of simulation & cell count are you hoping to run with a Ryzen and 32GB ram setup?

I've been watching this thread with a lot of interest that Ryzen can provide a cost effective hardware solution, but from what I've been reading I'm wondering about exactly what scale of model you or I would be limited to.

[tombo]

My interests are in multiphase transient simulations with meshes in the 10 - 25 million cell range. I've always worked on the 1GB per million cell rule of thumb. Through my work I have access to some capable clusters, so this system will mostly be for learning, testing, programming, and perhaps Civ 6 (if I have time).

[epc1]

Any updates on your setup tombo?

[Pndsc]

I couldnt resist temptation any longer so today I bit the bullet on a Ryzen 1700 based machine on the basis that I can overclock to something near the level of an 1800X with appropriate water cooling.

I ended up grabbing the MSI B350M Gaming Pro motherboard, not because of gaming part (or apparently the large number of red LEDs it comes with) but because it supports 3200 speed memory, of which I'll have 32GB.

[tombo]

Good stuff! In the end I went with the ATX version of the Asrock Pro4. It's all put together but I'm still waiting for my Ram to arrive. I wanted the G.Skill F4-3200C14D-32GTZ (2x16) kit, which I needed to import from the States. It seems that there is a Bios update coming this week that will reduce memory latency by around 10%, so keep an eye out for that.

[Pndsc]

I'm in a similar situation - turns out that motherboards with capability of 3200 ram dont get delivered to the UK until the 7th of April, so I'm probably now looking at something like the 10th before I get my hands on it.

[flotus1]

If you still want to buy a Ryzen 7 CPU for CFD here is a hint: use dual-rank DIMMs. You will not be able to get the same memory frequencies as you would with single-rank DIMMs. But as benchmarks have shown, Ryzen 7 performs better in memory-intensive applications (7-zip for example) with DDR4-2666 dual-rank than it does with DDR4-3200 single-rank and identical memory timings.

[Pndsc]

Originally Posted by flotus1

If you still want to buy a Ryzen 7 CPU for CFD here is a hint: use dual-rank DIMMs. You will not be able to get the same memory frequencies as you would with single-rank DIMMs. But as benchmarks have shown, Ryzen 7 performs better in memory-intensive applications (7-zip for example) with DDR4-2666 dual-rank than it does with DDR4-3200 single-rank and identical memory timings.

I thought the prevailing wisdom was that there should be as higher speed ram as possible to prevent bottlenecking. I can understand if you were recommending instead that I go for 4x16gb @ 3200; but the recommendation of lower speed RAM is mystifying to me.

[flotus1]

You must have misunderstood my comment. I did not recommend slow memory.

[Pndsc]

Originally Posted by flotus1

You must have misunderstood my comment. I did not recommend slow memory.

Is DDR4 2666Mhz ram not slower than DDR4 3200Mhz ram? Or am I simply going to get better bandwidth with 4x8GB of 2666Mhz compared to 2x16gb /3200?

EDIT:

What is the benchmark to which you are referring to? All I've managed to find is this article stating that my current setup of 2x16GB 3200 should obtain better performance:

http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-ryze...mance_192960/5

[tombo]

Well I don't know if anyone is still following this thread, but I have my R7 workstation set up at home. I am using the 'stock' (free) CPU cooler and have the cpu overclocked to 3.6 GHz at 1.2V. This is well within the 1.35V limit that AMD recommends, and the temperatures are good (<65 degrees). I think with a bigger cooler I could probably reach 3.8 or 3.9GHz but on balance I don't think it's worthwhile as it would add $100 to the build and about $100/year to my power bill, as well as the noise. At present it is effectively silent.

On the memory side, I have 32 GB (2x 16GB modules) of ram running at 3200 MT/s. I had to loosen the ram timings to make it stable at this frequency. There is another BIOS update coming later in May that is supposed to improve this. That could have an impact on memory bandwidth, so until then the configuration probably isn't final. The RAM was the most expensive component of the system and if you can get away with 16 GB you'll be a lot better off, I can tell you that!

In general, this is a wonderful workstation. I've been using it for non-CFD work for a couple of weeks and it's a joy to use. A big part of that is probably the NVMe SSD, which helps with responsiveness. It is very, very fast at compiling code. I'm looking forward to trying out some CFD benchmarks on it over the next few weeks. If you have suggestions, please let me know. I have Win 10 and Linux Mint installed.

[epc1]

Originally Posted by tombo

Well I don't know if anyone is still following this thread, but I have my R7 workstation set up at home. I am using the 'stock' (free) CPU cooler and have the cpu overclocked to 3.6 GHz at 1.2V. This is well within the 1.35V limit that AMD recommends, and the temperatures are good (<65 degrees). I think with a bigger cooler I could probably reach 3.8 or 3.9GHz but on balance I don't think it's worthwhile as it would add $100 to the build and about $100/year to my power bill, as well as the noise. At present it is effectively silent.

On the memory side, I have 32 GB (2x 16GB modules) of ram running at 3200 MT/s. I had to loosen the ram timings to make it stable at this frequency. There is another BIOS update coming later in May that is supposed to improve this. That could have an impact on memory bandwidth, so until then the configuration probably isn't final. The RAM was the most expensive component of the system and if you can get away with 16 GB you'll be a lot better off, I can tell you that!

In general, this is a wonderful workstation. I've been using it for non-CFD work for a couple of weeks and it's a joy to use. A big part of that is probably the NVMe SSD, which helps with responsiveness. It is very, very fast at compiling code. I'm looking forward to trying out some CFD benchmarks on it over the next few weeks. If you have suggestions, please let me know. I have Win 10 and Linux Mint installed.

Thanks for the update.

Yes, I am still interested in this topic. I don't have any specific tests but please do update us whenever you do some benchmarking.

What RAM memory model did you select?

[tombo]

I went with the g.skill f4-3200c14d-32gtz.

[L3munoz]

Dear all,

again hearing about the AMD Naples server, a good choice for those who, like me, would like to have a workstation at a reasonable price... Nevertheless, still waiting for it, any new?

[tombo]

I don't have too much faith in that benchmark as far as AMD CPUs go. I'm finding the single core performance slightly better than Broadwell (for the same clock speed) for reasonable size cases (>10M cells), but that the scaling isn't that impressive to 8 cores with the AMD. Not terrible, but definitely not as good as the intel CPUs I have access to (which are quad channel or dual cpu quad channel).

AMD have just released an extension to the Clang compiler specifically for RYZEN so it'll be interesting to see if that makes any difference. I am getting best performance with OpenMPI (compared to intel and platform) but it is marginal.

[tombo]

To anyone considering putting a workstation together based on the new AMD platform (and going for maximum value for money): don't worry too much about getting premium ram.

The last firmware update has at last allowed me to run my 2x16 Gb kit at the specified 3200 MT/s as well as the rated timings (14-14-14-14-34). I had previously been able to run at 3200 MT/s at looser timings (18-18-18-18-38). Performance using OpenFOAM (10m cell case, interFoam) was virtually identical between the two configurations. As a check I also checked 20-20-20-20-40 timings and again, differences were extremely marginal.

My conclusion: save your money and get CL 16 or CL 18 ram that is capable of 3200 MT/s (or greater).