Work PC

[ramp]

Hi everyone,
I am looking to replace my old work PC (it is a Dell Precision workstation) with something new. I have had it for a while now and it is starting to show its age especially with the latest VM image that I need to use on it.


Budget - Not really an issue as it is a work expense, but would prefer not to spend money that I don't need to. That said hopefully it can last me 5+ years so I am happy to spend more if it will mean it will last me longer.
Resolution - Two 1920x1200 monitors
System Purpose (gaming, workstation, HTPC, etc) - I need to run VMWare images for work, I have three images in total that I need to run. 50% of the time I am just running one of them, 30% of the time I am running two and 20% of the time I am running all three. Each image is running windows server (different versions), SQL server (different versions) and then a bunch of development tools (Visual studio, etc)
If a gaming system, what games and settings are desired? - N/A
Any other intensive software or special things you do (Frequent video encoding, 3D modeling, etc) - Programming and testing
Do you plan to overclock? - No
Country - Australia
Preferred Stores / Sites - pccasegear.com.au but only because I have always used them and they have provided me good service in the past
Parts that can be reused - No
Do you need an OS? - No (I will reuse my Windows license from my old machine)
Do you need peripherals (e.g. monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, etc)? - No

I have made the following list, but most of my choices are just based on brands I have used before and had no problems with:
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Processor
ASUS TUF Gaming B650 Plus Wi-Fi DDR5 Motherboard
G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 32GB (2x16GB) 6000MHz CL36 DDR5 EXPO
Samsung 980 PRO M.2 PCI-E Gen4 NVMe SSD 2TB
Samsung 980 PRO M.2 PCI-E Gen4 NVMe SSD 1TB
Crucial BX500 2.5in SATA SSD 2TB
be quiet! Dark Base 700 Case Black
Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360mm AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
be quiet! Straight Power 11 Gold Modular 750W Power Supply

I have a few specific questions, but also I just want to make sure that what I am picking makes sense for my needs. My questions are:
- A 7900X seems like a better choice than a 13900k for my purpose from what I have read but happy to hear different opinions on this.
- Is this the correct RAM to get? Seemed like 6000MHz is the 'ideal' but not sure about the other timings and what they mean in practice.
- My plan for storage is 1TB for the base system, 2TB for the the VM images and then the 2TB SSD for backup to store old images that I will most likely never use. Are these OK options, not sure if PCIe 4.0 is worthwhile for me or not?
- Should I get a video card? It sounds like I don't need one from what I can tell, but I am not 100% sure I will be able to drive both monitors without one.
- I have no idea about coolers, I just want something that will work and be quiet. Is what I picked OK?

Thanks very much in advance for any help you can provide!

[Kagthul]

Im not sure why a 7900X would be better than a 13900K, unless VMs dont like the E-cores for some reason. Unless that is a thing, the 13900K’s much larger core count (24 cores vs 12) should be WAY more beneficial to VMs. Most VMs would run extremely well spread across a single P-core and 4 or 5 E-cores, id imagine.

Even if it was just aggregate multicore performance, the 13900K absolutely demolishes the 7900X. I cant imagine it being better (again, barring some weird interactions with the E-cores, but ive never heard of anything like that and id imagine that would have been a big story). The 7950X (did you mean to use that instead?).. maybe? Again, though, id think the extra physical cores would be far more beneficial (Hyperthreaded threads are not as good as real cores), and the 13900K is still well ahead there (24 cores vs 16).

People have this… weird thought/belief that the E-cores on these chips are “weak”. They arent - they are roughly as performant as 8th/9th gen P-cores (at a tiny fraction of the power usage) and run over 4ghz on the 13900K.

Also, this SSD setup you have seems… weird. The sizes/configurations seem strange. Is there a reason for that particular setup? (edited: never mind, my brain glossed over the part where you explained it. I dont see why you wouldnt just use NVMe all the way around, though. Its not really any more expensive than a 2.5” drive).

[ramp]

Thanks for the reply!

I have been thinking about this upgrade for a couple of months and originally I was thinking of using a 12900K/13900K but I wasn't sure how the P/E core architecture would work with VMWare. I don't really know how it works in general, I assume the OS (Windows 11 in my case) knows about the two different core types and allocates the load accordingly (somehow knowing what is important to run on the P cores and what is not). But how is that information passed to VMWare and then from VMWare into the guest OS it is running, I have no idea? And some of my guest OSs are old (Windows server 2012 and Windows Server 2016) and I assume they wouldn't know anything about P/E cores even if that information was provided to them.
Anyway I did some 'research' and what I found give me much confidence:
communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Poor-support-for-Intel-12th-gen-processors/td-p/2899275
communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Workstation-16pro-on-alder-lake-system/m-p/2880327
I originally checked these posts earlier this month, and today when I went to find them I saw that a work around for the issues they raise has since been posted. So maybe it isn't an issue if I use the work around, I just don't know. It feels like a risk to me still, mostly due to my lack of understanding about how the cores are allocated by a guest OS.

In terms of benchmarks for the kind of things I want to do I wasn't able to find much. The best I found was:
techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-12900ks/12.html
techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-7950x/14.html
techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-7900x/14.html
But there is no methodology or even any description really of what they are doing in each test. I also don't know anything about this site in particular. So while they seem to favour the AMD CPUs, it could just be a random number generator for all i know.

And lastly in terms of hyperthreading, my understanding is that everything is presented to the guest OS by VMware as a virtual CPU. So if you have 2 cores with HT enabled, VMWare sees 4 vCPUs.

Sorry for the long reply, I am not at all confident in what I have written above either so more than happy to be corrected! Oh and thank you for the MVMe suggestion, you are right it was an odd choice, I will just use three MVMe drives then.

[Kagthul]

VMWare (at least the Mac version, which i used for a few Windows apps i needed, because i use my PC solely for gaming) allows you to assign VMs to specific cores.

So you could assign a VM to 1 of the P-cores, and X of the E-cores, manualy, AFAIK.

Never used the Windows version (nor Linux if that is a thing) so im not sure where you'd find that.

Outside of that, it seems -most- of the people having issues in at least the first thread, are trying to run on Windows 10 - which does not have the updated hardware scheduler for Alder Lake and later chips that have P and E cores.

Near the bottom of the first page of the first thread you posted, there appears to be a link to a beta version of the VMWare client that supports Windows 11 22H2 update, which seems to have the scheduler problem fixed. Also, the last post in that thread seems to have fixed most issues by simply altering Windows' power settings. (And the previous poster seems to have reported it no longer tries to run on simply E cores as of the 22H2 update.)

Techpowerup is... meh. Youll notice the 7950X is barely beating the 12900K, which isn't much of a surprise since they are both 16 core CPUs, but the 7950X has all 16 of those as full power cores. The 12900K is 8/8 P and E cores. The 13900K, however, has double the E-cores.

The 13th Gen CPUs were not just marginal upgrades to the lineup. When compared to each other in the same benchmarks, the new 13600K (6P/8E) matches or beats the 12900K. The 13900K vs the 12900K, the newer chip is significantly ahead.

If the problems are indeed fixed (they seem to be for some of the posters, which the power settings solution (like the "balanced" option is sending the VMs to the E-cores only to save energy, and the "performance" option is opening the P-cores up) and the update to the 22H2 build being the necessary steps - if those problems are out of the way, id have to imagine the 13900K would HANDILY out perform the 7900X (which is only 12 cores/24 threads) and probaby be ahead of the 7950X (16 cores/32 threads vs 24 cores/32 threads). The real physical cores will always provide more performance than the faux thread from SMT/Hyperthreading.

Also, the total platform cost of the Intel machine is going to be lower, though if Work is paying for this, its not an amount most companies would really quibble about (probbaly 400-500$ cheaper in total). But the 13900K is cheaper than the 7950X by about 130$, AND you can use 600 series motherboards, (AMD doesn't even HAVE affordable boards yet for AM5, with the bottom end B650 boards still all over 200$, much less X670 boards that are averaging like 400$), and DDR4 RAM if you want. (There havent really been shown to be any real substantial gains from DDR5 at least at current speeds and latencies except in a few specific workloads, but VMs may benefit, i dont know).

Again, though if work is paying for it... likely 400-500$ isnt going to break the deal either way.

I wish there was more concrete evidence that VM Ware's issues are fixed in the 22H2 beta build and by using "performance" power settings, but there ARE other VM suites out there. I used Parallels before VMWare on the Mac side, and their features were basically identical. I only switched because Parallels become significantly more expensive for upgrades.

[potis]

Despite if the E cores work with VMs properly (No reason why they shouldnt with all the things Kagthul mentioned) they will eventually be fixed to work therefor the 13 series is a better choice by default.

I mostly wanna point out, why only 32GB? You did mention a few SQL servers, depending on users and what you are doing i wouldnt trust only 32GB, again highly dependent on what your company does.

[ramp]

Thank you both for your replies. I will put together a build based on the 13900K and see what it looks like. Do you have any suggestions on motherboards and memory timings?

In terms of the 32GB choice, you are right it was on the low side. My reasoning was that the VMs are for development and testing and the SQL server instances aren't put under much load most of the time. But I think that reasoning was a mistake, I will look for 64GB to give me more flexibility going forward.

[Kagthul]

Unfortunately im not really up on the best speeds and timings for DDR5, or what Mobos are good or bad.

I know that for both platforms (AM5 and 600/700 series Intel motherboards) there have been some teething issues.

Youll just have to check reviews, unless someone else can offer recommendations.