Ryzen Threadripper 3 3970x/3960x Workstation Solver Build (256GB RAM)
The following build will work for both the Ryzen Threadripper 3970x and the Ryzen Threadripper 3960x. We recommend this build for home users looking to study poker with the help of solvers. This build is suitable for the calculation of HU postflop game trees, small to medium preflop game trees, and small to medium multi-way postflop game trees.
The estimated cost of this build, at the time of writing and with the 3970x, is approximately $4,700. The cost of the build with the Ryzen 3960x is $3,900.
CPU
As mentioned above, this build is also suitable for the Ryzen Threadripper 3960x. The Ryzen 3970x and 3960x have similar specs. The 3970x has 32 cores with a 3.7/4.5 Ghz base/boost clock, and the Ryzen 3960x has 24 cores with a 3.8/4.5 Ghz base/boost clock. The power draw is rated the same at 280 Watts.
CPU Cooler
Deepcool’s CASTLE 360EX is a very solid, full coverage, 360mm liquid cooler that won’t bottle neck your system’s performance. Alternatively, if you prefer air cooling, you could opt for the Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3. The only issue that you may encounter with tower coolers, such as the Noctua cooler, versus liquid coolers, is that tower coolers for Threadripper can be fairly large and may cause RAM clearance issues with some taller RAM sticks. Threadripper 3 performance with both of these coolers will be adequate, though with the liquid cooler running quieter and cooler overall.
Motherboard
The TRX40 lineup of motherboards is overall very strong, so there are a lot of good options to choose from. This motherboard comes in at a relatively competitive price point, with some of the best overclocking outside of competitive overclocking. If you require additional features, such as 10 Gig LAN, you may need to review other options. We only recommend staying away from the Asrock TRX40 due to potential issues with it’s VRM cooling, which can be an issue if you decided to overclock your CPU.
Memory
32 GB RAM sticks have arrived to the mainstream. Ryzen can take advantage of this, and this enables us to access 256 GB RAM on our Threadripper 3 build. This kit is DDR4-3200, in accordance with AMD’s system specification for memory. At the time of writing, we believe this kit provides some of the best out of the box performance for an 8×32 GB RAM kit.
RAM speed and latency can have the biggest impact on how well your system runs, so it’s worth spending the extra money for good RAM.
Storage
The Corsair MP600 Force is a 1 TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD that takes advantage of Threadripper 3’s new PCIe Gen4 interface. Storage doesn’t greatly impact the performance of solvers, but if you plan on utlizing the integrated scripting feature that frequently saves files to the hard drive, a drive with fast write speed can save you time. PCIe Gen4 performs very well with write tasks, so a Gen4 drive, such as the Corsair MP600 will perform very well. Keep in mind that the performance of SSDs can degrade if they are near capacity, so we recommend having an additional drive for storage to keep your primary drive performing at it’s best. A reliable and spacious drive for this task is the Toshiba X300 8TB for example.
Video Card
Not a central part of build, as main stream poker solvers currently do not utilize the GPU for calculations. Here we have selected a decent entry level graphics card that can support output to multiple high resolution displays without issues. It is also a suitable graphics card for gaming at 1080p.
Case
One of our favourite cases to work with since it is roomy, which facilitates air flow/cooling and ease of building. Perfect for the larger TRX40 motherboards that are often eATX as opposed to the standard ATX that is more common on Ryzen (3950x etc.). If you go for an alternative case, consider the form factor of the motherboard before purchasing. The motherboard we have listed here is eATX
Power Supply
This build should draw approximately 800 Watts under full load, so we have chosen a power supply with a little more headroom, in case additional interface cards need to be installed.
Summary
Ryzen Threadripper just keeps getting better and better. Better than server grade performance can now be had within the convenience of your own home or office at attainable prices. We look forward to posting more updates on new hardware releases by AMD.
Please leave a comment below if you liked this build, and also let us know what other builds you might be interested in seeing in the future.
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Hey guys, what do u think about 3990 ? is it worth the extras ?
Do u have Benchmarks on Pio, Simple or Monker for different processors ?
Hi Artem. I don’t think I would personally recommend going down the 3990x route, simply because of the restriction in the amount of RAM that can be deployed. The TRX40 platform supports quad channel RAM up to 256 GB. For approx. $5,200 you can have 2×32 core on the AMD EPYC platform that supports octa channel RAM, and up to 8 TB of RAM hypothetically (with currently available DIMMs up to 2 TB realistically). The 3990x is a very powerful CPU, but for a 256 GB RAM Monker workload may be overkill, and not worth the $4,000 price tag. We will post an example of an AMD EPYC Rome build in the near future for comparison.
Sorry, we do not have the benchmark results you are looking for at this time.
Hi,
I`m curious about the price for 512GB/1TB RAM versions. You said you`ll post such examples, but I cannot find them in the blog. So how they can be built and what will be the approximate price of them with 3970x/3990x?
You can not build 3970x/3990x with 512 GB/1 TB RAM. This is only possible on the AMD EPYC platform. You can see an example of this here: https://solveoptimized.com/amd-epyc-solver-workstation-build/
This build is for previous generation AMD EPYC chips, we have not yet posted an updated build guide for AMD EPYC workstations. Please subscribe to receive a notification when we do.
Hello,
I have this work station and I’m also grinding poker on exactly this PC. But these days GGpoker and other poker rooms needs better GPU, I can’t play Stars on best parameters, Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8GB DDR5 seems little bit too weak. What would you recommend guys to get instead of Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8GB DDR5? Thanks a lot.
RX 580 is substantially above the recommended system spec from Pokerstars, which you can find here:
https://www.pokerstars.com/help/articles/tec-sft-req-all-mstr/214111/
If you are experiencing lag, I suspect this may be in part due to your specific setup. Perhaps you are running multiple sites at the same time, with a lot of tables open and possibly 3rd party software running. In that case it’s not easy to say what the recommended spec should be without knowing more details about your specific setup. That being said, if you simply wanted a more powerful graphics card, what you should get depends a bit on your budget and market availability. You might want to consider getting at least an RTX 3060 as an upgrade option, or RX 6600XT. Both of these cards should be available under 1k USD and are significantly faster than a RX 580.
I play like 8-10 tables at the same time on 4 different poker rooms, and yeah, I use Hand2note, Stars caption and Intuitive tables (all 3rd party software to help multitabling) and I’m listening music on Spotify or watching twitch, when few tables are left.
The problem most often starts when I play more tables, especially on ggpoker, it’s not exactly about lagging (on Pokerstars it lags little bit though), but more about when I want to take action on one table, it somehow drags other table from the table, kind of freezing and lagging at the same time. I use one monitor, old Dell U3014 with 2560×1600 resolution, if it’s important here. All other my computer specifications are as recommended here: Threadripper 3970x, Gigabyte TRX40 AORUS MASTER EATX motherboard and etc.. Which parameter in GPU is most important for speed without how much GB it has? Mhz? I would consider even more expensive GPU, if it would solve my problems in the future.. but RT3060 looks good. Thank you one more time.
Thanks, I am trying to build 32 core 512RAM system and was looking at dual AMD Epyc from Titan for 9000$ is it possible to build one cheaper and how dual Epyc compare with single 32 core Threadripper?
Please refer to this post for our latest Threadripper build. A configuration with a 3975wx and 512GB RAM would likely fair better than a dual Epyc configuration of same core count, depending on the workload. The cost is similar.