We have not seen competition on the high end for quite some time. Starting in August for the first time in a long time AMD will have product stack to complete across the entire cpu stack.  While Intel have been key to show their bitter side towards AMD with marketing slides such as “4 glued together desktop dies. ” I tell you that is some serious mud slinging along with a dash of unprofessionalism.  So are comments like this from Intel warranted?

Well lets break down AMD Threadripper, a bit. First AMD has new tech they call Infinity Fabric. This is a high speed interconnect that handles all chip to chip communication.  It has a few advantages compared to traditional interconnects.  One of the major advantages is their ability to connect several packaged dies together. Instead of one large monolithic die, such as we have seen in the past.  AMD uses this fabric to place 2 separate dies on the same package.  So these dies are not glued together, but there are in fact 2 separate dies which connect to one another with Infinity Fabric. This process is further scaled on with AMD Epyc, which features 4 separate dies.

Ok so AMD Threadripper and AMD Eypc are not glued together dies. Will they be competitive in the market?

On the High end side of things AMD will have the R9-1998x which will feature 16 cores and 32 threads of x86 compute goodness.   Base clock of 3.5ghz and boost clock of 3.8ghz. Compared to Intel Core i9 7980XE which features 18 cores and 36 threads. Of course the later is slated to be much more expensive.  More to come on this later.

I decided to build a new computer. So what parts did I choose? and why?  Well more on that later in a separate article.  Here’s a photo and a spec sheet of the new rig.

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 + EK Supremacy Evo Waterblock

Asus Crosshair Formula VI Hero

Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 3000mhz 16gb (8gbx2)

Asus Rx-480 + Bitspower RGB Water Block

Mushkin Reactor 1TB SSD

Seagate BarraCuda ST4000DM005 4TB X2

OCZ Vertex 4 256gb SSD

Seasonic X-850 Gold Power Supply

Cooling: AlphaCool Xt 45 280mm Front Radiator ,AlphaCool Xt 45 240mm Top Radiator, EK-XRES 140 Revo D5 Water Pump, ThermalTake Riing RBG Fans

All Housed inside a Fractal Arc Midi

I haven’t updated the site in awhile and I apologize for that.  My day job has been eating up all my free time.  Anyway back to my rant. I contacted XSPC about my newly purchased replacement water pump.  I’ve owned this pump about little over 2 months now, and It started to vibrate and make noise.  First I thought it was just a loose mount, but I checked all of that and all seemed good. I contacted XSPC and they prompted me to record a video of the problem and so I did just that.

Here is the video I took.

XSPC responded and said to turn the fans off because that is all they could hear. I responded by saying the noise you hear is not the fans but the water pump and it is defective. It’s been almost  2 full weeks with out a response.  Rant over.  Pump noise has continued to get louder forcing me to remove the pump from my system, and install a different pump.

AVOID XSPC, and their products, they have very poor customer service, and do not stand behind their products.

“You guys likely know that synthetic benchmarks are not our favorites when it comes to evaluating and reviewing enthusiast PC hardware. That said, these synthetic benchmarks do certainly have a place in our community. First and foremost these benchmarks are easy to run, take little time, and probably most importantly allow for you to have the ability to make a solid comparison with your own system at home. While we are hoping to have a full review up covering the Intel i7-7700K up later this week, I wanted to give our readers a quick peek at what the new Kaby Lake processor looks like through the synthetic benchmark lens.”

The crew over at Hardocp have released their sneak peak. To read the full article check it out here

“The bigger news that has just dropped is that Intel and AMD have reportedly signed a new contract that will see AMD Radeon GPU technology inside of Intel’s next-gen CPUs. AMD would provide Radeon GPU technology for Intel’s integrated graphics, after years of Intel trying to make it work – and it looks like they just can’t get their GPU game up to scratch, so they’re going to their main rival… AMD.   The news is coming from HardOCP boss Kyle Bennett, who wrote on the HardOCP forums: “The licensing deal between AMD and Intel is signed and done for putting AMD GPU tech into Intel’s iGPU”. Bennett continued, saying that “Intel in no way wants this to be public”, but that’s kind of hard on a public forum – and now, here with this post”

Read more: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/55341/amd-radeon-gpu-tech-power-intels-next-gen-igpus/index.html

Of course with information not coming out about Kabby Lake, some of you are like well what about AMD’s upcoming zen cpus.  Thanks to WCCFTech for providing some early info floating around the interwebs. Apparently this engineering sample is clocked at 3.5ghz which is 500mhz faster than the sample AMD demoed a few months back matched Intel Broadwell-E clock for clock in a Blender benchmark.

Head over to WccfTech to find out more here

The guys over at Tomshardware got their hands on a I7-7700k and did some testing with overclocking and power consumption. They pitted it against previous mainstream flagship the 6700k.

Check out the article here

AMD has released new drivers today. Grab them here

Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.11.5 Highlights

Support For:

• Watch Dogs®2

New AMD CrossFire profile added for DirectX® 11:

• Dishonored™2

Fixed Issues

• The Division™ game world may flicker during game play when using AMD CrossFire technology.
• Battlefield™1 flickering may be experienced while using AMD CrossFire technology mode.

“Several years ago, water cooling was limited to high-end custom builds that enthusiasts with deep pockets would show off at all the tech shows. Remember the first time you saw a water cooling system on a computer? Talk about the “wow!” factor. I remember when I first saw one, and I remember thinking that one day I would have one whether I needed one or not. Since the beginning of the PC, air coolers dominated the PC market for the average Joe, but eventually CPUs became more powerful and generated more heat. Overclockers pushed CPUs even further, and a few system builders began to experiment with their own custom water cooling. Manufacturers caught on to the trend and took advantage of this new type of cooling method and developed the compact and afforable AIO or All-in-One systems. This took the guess work out of water cooling and allowed the average builder to enjoy the benefits (and bragging rights) of water cooling. Cost has come down and pretty much stabilized, and reliability has improved over the years. I think it is safe to say that liquid cooling is here to stay.”

Check out the full review here

This is a thing of pure beauty. Stay tuned