Hey all!
I’m looking to build a custom Flame rig and would like to use AMD’s 3rd Gen ThreadRipper CPU. It’s currently a toss-up between the 3970X and the 3960X.
Has anyone used either CPU with Centos 7.6 and Flame 2021.2? I have read online that you can bypass the CPU check at bootup by turning mce=off, which should boot Linux without it freaking out.
Any info/help would be greatly appreciated 
Thanks!!
Andrew
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor, my dear Sir. It is possible. Yet, if you need assistance @Jack might help you out.
Why would you go with CentOS 7.6?
Hey Alan,
From my understanding Flame 2021.2 won’t work with Centos 8.2.
What would you recommend?
Thanks,
Andrew
Hey Sinan,
Anything I should look out for that might hinder my endeavor? I’d like to think I’m quite Linux savvy (with the help of google) haha.
Thanks,
Andrew
Oh you want to run an old version. All bets are off then. Sack up and start paying some renewal fees.
i’d say (based on my experience on Friday) that you are correct. Flame 2021.2 will not work with 8.2 It fits like a glove in 7.6 though!
We are @ALan. Don’t forget some of us work with a lot of studios and need to drag along a couple old versions.
Afternoon all!!
Just thought I’d post an update as the new systems is up and running.
Final specs:- amd 3970x, Nvidia a5000, 128gb on an Asus motherboard.
It’s super responsive, and has cut my 10min renders down to 2-3mins. (I have also updated the Benchmark spreadsheet).
It’s definitely night and day over the z840.
Installation of centos 7.6 was pretty straightforward with the mce bypass, and haven’t run into any issues with flame (apart from ML not working with the a500).
I’m also happy to help anyone looking to upgrade.
Cheers,
Andrew
thanks for report. Which motherboard model?
I went with this one:- PRIME TRX40-PRO S｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global
If money isn’t an issue and you need more 16x slots you could get this instead:-
Paired with:- Corsair iCueH150i RGB Pro XT cooler - I did change the fans to these:- Phanteks Innovative Computer Hardware Design
Hope this helps,
Andrew
For 39x0x this gigabyte is pretty interesting. It includes one pcie card for thunderbolt/usb 3.2 and one card for 4 nvme/M2 ssds.
Threadripper are rectangular and bigger than usual cpus. Most of air/liquid coolers are squared (the contact plate). Other are even circular. There are some models specially adapted for threadripper. That Corsair iCue is squared. How about that threadripper’s heat?
Again, it comes down to funds and any extras you require. For me the board came with enough pcie slots and I don’t have a need for thunderbolt ports, especially when it has USB3.2 ports.
The cooler is actually recommended by AMD and comes with the relevant plate to fit the CPU.
As for temps, the cooler seems to be holding up nicely. Idle temps are running at 30c -35c and under some load it has gone as high as 50c, but quickly drops, which is pretty darn good for such a power processor. I also went for a larger case with all the fans I could comfortably fit into it to maximize air flow.
Also, if you’re going for NVME storage I’d go for a pcie4.0 expansion card with 4.0 NVME drives. You just have to make sure the slots on the motherboard will support 4x4x4x4x raid so it recognises all the drives.
Hope that helps.
Andrew
Hi Andrew. I finally bought the gigabyte asus trx40 designware. It comes with a pci 4.0 pcie expansion card (AORUS Gen4 AIC), what was a little tricky setup (bios options, pci slot instalation, etc. Btw, one important setting was the 4x4x4 bifurcation. I learnt a lot from this gentleman in youtube..
Well, after set up the machine under windows, I get my raid working with 4 nvme into the aorus card, throught the fakeraid of the motherboard. But now is the turn of linux. Amd has raid drivers for linux and trx40 socket, but well, I think my linux skills are a bit above average, but when kernel build come into play, it becomes simply martian for me. I wonder if you are using fakeraid, (maybe sof traid ?) , and how you got it.
thanks!
Unless you are also booting from your raid (which I generally would not recommend anyway…), It might be worth avoiding using the BIOS’s raid setup and instead set one up using mdadm in linux instead.
It’s very straightfoward to setup, you may need to install mdadm from the repo though.
No. My system is installed in one single nvme, sure. That’s one of point I can’t understand, because all how-to or guides describe how include the driver during the installation assuming that the target drive is the raid. They rarely include the “normal” (and most usual, I think) installation ot the driver to use the raid like a secondary drive. And what I could find, didn’t work.
Soft raid is my plan-b, but it would be a pity lost the raid for windows boot. 
Hi Kily,
I’m using this tutorial to set up my flame raid:- Solved: NVMe M.2 RAID Framestore on LINUX - Autodesk Community - nicely detailed.
I’m using a 120gb SSD as the boot drive btw.
As friendlyape pointed out I wouldnt recommend using the raid configuration via the bios.
Also, you might need to choose which OS get the use of the raid card.
Shout if you get stuck.
Thanks,
Andrew
I finished my test. Finally, I go with soft raid.
I could get raid bios was seen by rocky but with a very esoteric way 
. The problem is official AMD drivers for threadripper chipset raid controller are for rh/centos/rocky 8.4 kernel version. The mistmach with rocky 8.5 kernel gives unintelligible messages. The document says that it can be installed in non supported kernel versions, but how?. Who knows.
Then I thougt “What happens with P620, officially certified for flame?” And bingo. P620 support page has a driver for 8.5. Installed via same simple rpm than amd driver, and pum. Raid shows up. The problem is next reboot the boot is completey screw up 
. It’s like when you change the sata mode from achi to raid mode and windows doesn’t boot anymore. In windows it can be fixed. In linux… well you know
So I stopped to useless experiments and I decided use soft raid. Easy with mdadm and new volume is ready. I don’t use lvm, luns. Simply I did all with gparted. Working. Perfect. I can’t use it under windows, but … Keep it simple 
. I getting old for this crappy things. 