Happy Holidays!

We’d like to wish all of you who stumble across this page a very safe and happy holiday season. The recent video from Jayztwocents regarding the timing of upgrading a PC inspired the procurement of the following components:

• Ryzen 9 3900X
• ASUS TUF Gaming X570 Plus (Wi-Fi) Motherboard
• Corsair 1TB Force MP600 PCI Express 4.0 NVMe SSD

While our experiences with gaming on the tandem of the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 motherboard and Ryzen 5 3600X combo didn’t leave us wanting for more performance, the more CPU intensive workloads did take longer to complete in comparison to the Threadripper 1950X. Going back to the drawing board involved shifting our priorities for what would result in a more serviceable system. The backside-mounted NVMe slot on the ASRock board wouldn’t play nicely with the more robust heatsinks found on some of the PCI Express 4.0 NVMe SSDs.

While we’re still sold on the benefits of Thunderbolt 3, especially when it comes to the Mac ecosystem, the transition from a Mini-ITX board with a single Thunderbolt 3 port to a standard ATX board with more expansion slots and more SATA ports enables us to better realize current and future expansion requirements. 10Gb Ethernet continues to become more cost-efficient. ServeTheHome’s recent reviews on the Mikrotik 4-port 10Gb switch, 8-port 10Gb switch, and 12-port 10Gb switch demonstrates how much progress has been made along with performance-related caveats related to moderating expectations for lower cost and lower power devices. The actual need for greater-than-1Gb connectivity within the home will most likely manifest within the next decade. The capability to purchase a gently used PCI Express NIC of choice continues to be more cost-effective than the existing 10Gb network connectivity options which interface via Thunderbolt 3.

Initial synthetic benchmark testing using Cinebench (R15 and R20) and Blender align with established reviews from a number of sources. The Ryzen 9 3900X is putting up superior numbers with fewer cores and lower power consumption. The competition between Intel and AMD should heat up in 2020 with a benefit for enterprise and home consumers.

If you’re in the market for a GPU upgrade, taking Jay’s advice and purchasing sooner than later may be a good idea if the potential price increases noted over at HotHardware are realized. There are a number of hot deals to be had on 2019 AMD GPU’s (Radeon VII, RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT) as well as a number of GeForce GTX/RTX cards. The discounts we’ve seen fall between $30-$200 USD off.