AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1900X BOX (YD190XA8AEWOF)

The youngest among the elders

At first glance, the AMD 1900X processor, the youngest from Threadripper, is practically no different from the 1800X model, which represents the lower-ranking Ryzen 7 family. The same eight physical cores and sixteen SMT threads. Unless the guaranteed frequency of the 1900X is 200 MHz higher, which, however, is most likely compensated by manual overclocking. On its own, the 1900X costs only 10 percent more, but with a motherboard with a specific TR4 socket and no cooler included, the overpayment is as much as 60 percent. But in fact, the functional differences are much more serious.

There is not much memory

First, the Threadripper 1900X has a quad-channel memory controller instead of two. This not only improves system performance, but also allows you to install a maximum of not 64, but 128 GB of RAM (eight 16 GB DDR4 modules). However in the case of using such numerous memory sticks, and even dual-rank (with two virtual channels), the frequency will automatically decrease from the original 2667 to 1866 MHz.

Card bundles and disk arrays

Secondly, even the younger Threadripper 1900X supports 64 PCI-E 3.0 lanes. Four of them are responsible for synchronization with the X399 motherboard chipset, while the rest can be distributed as you wish: a bunch of four video cards (x16 + x16 + x8 + x8) and a RAID array of several high-speed NVMe SSDs. As a result, the Threadripper 1900X could be recommended to everyone as an alternative to the Ryzen 7 1800X, if not for the expensive motherboards for the TR4 socket. With that in mind, the 1900X is only worth buying if you need more than 64GB of RAM and two or three full speed graphics cards. Or if you plan to upgrade to a 12-core Threadripper 1920X or a 16-core 1950X in the future, which will remain relevant for many years to come.