TR 9970x RAM advice

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I’m looking to upgrade my workstation to a Threadripper 9970x system and am eyeing this bundle from Microcenter: https://www.microcenter.com/product/5007094/amd-ryzen-threadripper-9970x,-asus-trx50-sage-pro-ws-wifi-ceb,-kingston-fury-renegade-pro-128gb-ddr5-5600-ecc-registered-kit,-computer-build-bundle

The pricing is pretty good on this but the one issue I see is the lower than I was looking for speed of the DDR5 memory at 5600MT/s vs what I was initially looking for at around 6400MT/s. Compounding that, the bundle is with 128gb of RAM which I really don’t think I need that as I’ve been on 64gb and running just fine. The problem that if I buy the components separately (CPU and MB) and get 64gb of faster RAM it ends up costing more than the bundle with 128gb of RAM. With RAM pricing being what it is today buying the faster ones could easily add $500 or more plus stock is very limited while everything is in stock at my local MicroCenter.

So…faster RAM (that costs a little more) or larger RAM (that I don’t really need right now but is cheaper). Any advice? I realize the 5600 is not “slow” (in fact it seems to have lower latency) but it’s definitely “slower”. Would I realistically notice a difference?

Thx.

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I honestly wouldn’t worry about ram speeds. You probably will never notice any difference. I am working on threadripper from 6 years ago on DDR4 with 3200Mhz ram and its pretty damn fast still. Your main bottle neck will always be the ssd/nvme, or network reading.

For this system in particular I see it has 32 core cpu, which to me is slower, especially if you want to have it last you for next 5 years. I wouldn’t get anything less than 64 core. For the ram it self, yes its more expensive now, but I build all our systems with min 256Gb of ram. The reason being is that, sure you can live with 64, but to us its painful as we often run multiple mayas, houdini, nuke etc all at once. We also deal with heavier scenes some times running up to 150Gb of ram.

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Thanks Dmitry. I’m leaning towards the 128GB for exactly the reasons you mention. I just don’t think I’ll notice a difference unless I run a benchmark, and even then just a couple of percent (it will always be in the back of my mind though :rage:). I’d love to go for the 9980 but the 9970 with the bundle pricing is a little bit of a splurge already. A 9800 system would almost double the cost of the build due to losing the bundle price and the CPU being twice the cost. I’ve been relying on a 3970x for 5 years now but I could really use a speed increase so I’m hoping to at least double what I’ve got. Of course I have lofty goals of doubling our productivity as well but I know that’s not the case. I’m looking forward to a good bump in single core score as well.

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Last year I build two threadrippers 7890x 64 cores and they are twice as fast as my 64 core threadripper 3 3990x, I just looked up this cpu you have there, its comparable to 7890x though with x2 less cores. So I think its a good choice. Make sure you get nvme for main storage and you should be good!

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Thanks. I’m planning on at least doubling my rendering speed based on the vray benchmark. The cost of RAM these days is pushing this build by about $1k but I’ve got a big job right now that requires a bit of a bump in proc speed.