workstation died.. urgent advice

[super gnu]

so, my motherboard vrm went up in smoke yesterday. left me stuckk in the middleily of a big project. its a hand build 64 core threadripper (3990x) with 128gb ram.. not sure what to do to be honest.. the motherboard is no longer availabe new, so im left buying a "used, as new" off ebay, from china. hardly ideal, especially since itll take 2 weeks to arrive, and assuming its good, there is a real possibility ive fried my 4 grand processor and ram.

id also need to strip down whole machine and rebuild, which i dont have time for. i also dont have anywhere near the cash to build an equivalent machine.

currently working on crappy laptop via remote desktop to clients spare machine, to get renders out.

so least worst option is to buy a cheap midrange machine i can work on, hopefully transfer the ram and gpu from current machine assuming they are good. id then try and render via chaos cloud rendering, although that brings issues itself.

given a budget of no more than say 2000 euros, for a machine with no gpu, what is the best cpu choice? any other suggestions?

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, thanks for posting. Your thread is in the wrong section. Here we discuss only V-Ray for 3ds Max related issues. I will move it to chaos common hardware.
For rendering you could use the Chaos Cloud.

[super gnu]

ok yes sorry ive not had much sleep!

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Hi super gnu

Sorry to hear about this situation
I would say 7950X + B650 board (Asus ProArt for example) + 128 GB of DDR5 memory
This will get you 60% of the performance of your 3990X, plus a much better single threaded performance
I suggest a new power supply as well, it might have been part of the issue on the older machine

On another note, I have a spare machine at the moment you can remote to. it has a 4090 + 5950X CPU and 128 GB of RAM, until you have time to sort out this issue. Message me if this could work for you

All the best,
Muhammed

[super gnu]

thank you very much Muhammed that is very kind of you.. the second lovely offer i have recieved.. if i carry on like this i can put together a nice renderarm anyway, iill probably buy a complete machine from a seller, no time to diy at the moment! that cpu seems to be a good choice.. better than the current intel ones? ive been amd for years so happy to go with your advice. in the meantime ill order a replacement motherboard for my old machine and cross my fingers it works.. when i have time ill try to fix it. do you have any experience of blown vrm? as i understand it its basically a lottery if it has destroyed the cpu and ram or not. regarding the psu, its a nice expensive one 1600w corsair... i was really hoping it was that which had blown.. but disconnecting it and running its "self test" mode it reports to be working fine.

[super gnu]

does the 7950x really hit 60% of a 3990x?! im surprised.

[super gnu]

So ive hit another issue. im remoting into the spare machine of my client its clunky but lets me work and the files are all stored locally there. however his vray licenses are all needed so if im rendering somebody there has to stop. this is obviously unacceptable.

i have a vray license which i obviously cant use here as my pc is dead. how would i go about using my license there without messing up their licensing setup? i dont want to cause them any more hassle than i have already.

Out of interest, do people normally always have a decent backup machine? i did but its now an antique, and i could never justify the expense of a second machine capable of rendering my heavy scenes, that spent 99% of its life turned off.. i now regret this very much.

[glorybound]

I moved across the country a couple of years ago and worked out of my RV for months. I purchased a beefy laptop, which worked so well that I didn't take my desktop out of storage. The Laptop died, and like you, I was screwed. The warranty replaced the laptop (an updated model), which took a month to arrive, and it is now my backup machine; I purchased a desktop because I couldn't be without a machine for a month. I agree; having a backup machine sitting there just in case doesn't make much sense. The laptop is a slave and sits beside my desktop. The PC I put into storage would have taken too much to get up-to-date, so my advice is to have a working laptop good enough to be a backup that you can use and keep current. There are online services where you can rent remote PCs, but they are insanely expensive. I priced one a few years ago, and low-end PCs (four of them) were $800 a month.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

if i carry on like this i can put together a nice renderarm

better than the current intel ones?

There are a lot of issues with Intel these days, stability issues. The Intel motherboards are a lot more expensive than the AMD ones because of the power draw on the Intel side
I suggest staying away from Intel

do you have any experience of blown vrm? as i understand it its basically a lottery if it has destroyed the cpu and ram or not

I have a 3990X and 3970X they worked well, you are unlucky
There is a chance other components are affected, best is to send it to a shop so they can swap parts and check what is working and what is not before you spend money on a new motherboard
If this is not possible, buy a used motherboard and try a single memory stick with the CPU to see if it works

i have a vray license which i obviously cant use here as my pc is dead. how would i go about using my license there without messing up their licensing setup? i dont want to cause them any more hassle than i have already.

You cannot use 2 accounts at the same time, you either use your account or his account. You will need 2 licenses on that account, send me his Email privately I can add a temporary license to his account. What products is he using? V-Ray premium?
And my offer is still there if you need my spare machine

Out of interest, do people normally always have a decent backup machine?

Usually no when I used to freelance in the past

Best,
Muhammed

[Muhammed_Hamed]

does the 7950x really hit 60% of a 3990x?! im surprised.

This is what happens when you have 16 cores running at 5 GHz, this CPU is an engineering miracle
Check the comparison from V-Ray Benchmark 6

Best,
Muhammed

[Nejc Kilar]

Just in case it is helpful to know... There apparently are some TRX40 boards still out there that are brand new - https://smicro.eu/asrock-trx40d8-2n2t-1 .

Not affiliated or anything and I'm as surprised as you are lol.

[super gnu]

just a quick update to say, Asrock were absolutely fantastic! i mailed them, and despite my board being well out of its warranty period, they offered an RMA with a reconditioned board in return. i just had to pay for shipping. i sent my old board to them, a week later i got a board back, which, while obviously not new (some traces of heatsink compound around the cpu clamp) looked basically new...

i was franky crapping mystelf when i plugged it all together, as when the vrm blows its highly likely it fries either cpu or ram or both, and the thought of throwing a 3990x in the bin was too much. i connected it up and.... it worked immediately! so i now have 2 workstations. a 7950x for daily use, and a gas guzzling 3990x when i need to render fast. obviously i could really have done without the expense of a new workstation, but the end result was the best possible outcome of a crappy situation.. thanks Asrock!!

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Thanks for sharing! I'm glad there is use to the old workstation
Probs to Asrock!