That 5950X (and its predecessor) seem like voodoo with the core count, clock frequency, and TDP (yes, I know TDP is a flawed, flawed number - it's still impressive).
In practice the 3950x pulled up to ~225w running maxxed out avx2 workloads, ~300w if you overclocked it. The 3900x pulls up to ~190 watts at stock boosts. Both are called "105w TDP" parts.
Here's the critique you should use! https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3525-amd-ryzen-tdp-explai...
Nevertheless, for a given manufacturer, TDP is useful as a coarse grouping of power consumption.
The definition AMD uses is absolute nonsense, given how much the θca values differ from model to model. If they fudged any harder the higher end CPUs would start having "TDP" lower than the weak CPUs.
You'll also go way beyond 300W with heavy overclocking.
The limit can be lifted in the BIOS (or e.g. Ryzen Master) but that would no longer be stock operation. And there was a defect in the initial BIOS of ASRock X570 and maybe other motherboards, which broke PPT but that was running the CPU out of spec, not stock operation.
From my personal experience, my Threadripper 3970X will happily maintain ~4.4GHz all-core (rated for 4.5GHz max single-core) so long as I can keep the temperature in or below the 70s, with no overclocking.[0] There are power limits as well, but rated performance numbers are within the power limits. Overclocking can put you past the marked power limits, and certainly needs ample cooling.
[0] Granted, I need to pump cold air into the case to maintain the temperature, but that's a limitation of my current thermal solution. At some point I'll probably upgrade to an excessive water cooling solution (:
Additionally, a loop with a large volume of liquid offers much more thermal buffer before reaching a steady state temperature.
Most air coolers will be heat saturated within a minute or so. A water cooling loop may maintain lower temperature for minutes to tens of minutes. So even with two solutions that otherwise reach the same steady state temperatures (and therefore throttle equally), you may see better real world performance out of the water cooling solution.
I'll note, I would be building an open loop, not using an AIO/closed loop cooler. My case has room for 7x140mm of radiator in a couple of configurations. I would probably use 5x of that in one 420mm radiator and a 280mm radiator. This should offer much more cooling capacity than any tower cooler.
Initially I used the stock cooler, but it idled at ~45C, and the moment I did anything approaching a load it immediately shot to 90C. This was in a room with ambient at around 23C.
After getting annoyed for a while I swapped for an AIO Liquid cooler and hey-presto it now idles at 30C and when maxed out - 75C.
I guess what I'm saying is that you might be interested in exploring some of these options in Ryzen Master. You have some thermal headroom, so if your motherboard has good power delivery, you can max out the power limits and boost clock limits, and probably squeeze out a little extra performance. Power (and therefore heat) is going to scale quadratically with core voltage, and frequency is going to scale less than linearly with voltage, so you might not see much gain (and might prefer not spinning your fans up to full speed under load). But, it's an option that's available if that sort of thing interests you.
I got about 6% more real-world speed out of my Threadripper 3970X by switching from OC off to Automatic Overclocking; with air cooling. AMD's technology here is pretty impressive.
I had no idea what Ryzen Master was until you mentioned it - seems it's some AMD utility for Windows.
I'm running a stock hardware configuration, no overclocking, and running Pop! OS 20.04.
*Heat capacity = how many joules of energy the whole system takes to raise the system's temperature by 1C.
So, the CPU is generating x Watts of heat = x Joules of heat energy per second. Watercooling can absorb a LOT of Joules before the cooling system's temperature increases, thus helping in keeping the CPU away from its MaxTemp.
Plus when attached to a sizable radiator, watercooling system can release all those energy to the environment faster, thus reducing the effective energy absorbed by the system.
The heat cannot leave the silicon itself quick enough with modern chips.
Since I don't run into Threadripper owners very often, I'm wondering if yours also has a pretty high idle power? Mine idles at 80-90W (reported; 200+W from the wall) which is surprising to me coming from the Intel world. So much electricity wasted simply because I am too lazy to turn off my computer.
I have 5x140mm intake fans, with a Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 cooler. That runs with push-pull 140mm fans, 2000RPM in/1500RPM out.
This reaches steady state within a few minutes under load. With an open case, it will clock down to ~4.2GHz after 5-10 minutes. With a closed case, that is faster. For fun, I ducted the A/C vent in the room into the case and cranked it. It stayed reliably up around 4.4GHz all core. Technically, I think it would reach a lower steady state clock/higher temp if I left it for days, as it does noticeably warm the room.
I don't recall idle power, but yeah, it's warm.
I am very tempted to switch to water cooling. Seems like I could make it a little quieter, and get a little bit more performance. $1000 more performance? Probably not. But it would be a fun project.
(In general, I am blown away by the Threadripper's performance. I have C++ builds that took 15 minutes on my 6950X that now take 2!)
I lose millimeters of fan coverage (I have millimeters of fan peeking over the top of the tower), but I opted for this, since I get more airflow over the width of the cooler. The effect is probably measurable in single-digit percentage differences in a highly controlled test.
The big thing for me was the case airflow. That thing throws off so much heat that my case ambient temperature was growing to be 10C or more above the room ambient. Hence the 5x140mm intakes. The back of that machine is a nice heater when I'm crunching anything big.
My goal is to keep those fans, but attached to radiators. I think 5x140mm of radiator should give me much better heat transfer.
You could undervolt slightly, it usually results in less power consumption and higher performance as a result of lower temperature.
re: idle, you do have pstates enabled, right? ("Cool'n'Quiet") firmware likes to disable it when you overclock in the setup screen, have to turn it back on
I do have pstates enabled. Power and frequency scale up as you'd expect, in response to system load.
It's the miracle of chiplets. AMD isn't binning one 16-core CPU, they're binning two 8-core CPUs and then combining them together.
At the time, 3Dfx main competitors were Nvidia and ATI, Nvidia finally bought 3Dfx and AMD bought ATI. So technically, voodoo is on the side of AMD's competition.