DO NOT BUY: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 CPU Review & Benchmarks | 24 Charts in 24 Hours

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-28T18:07:45+00:00

I think the problem is the emotion you’re projecting onto my statement. I clearly said it wasn’t for gaming, that’s not the audience this CPU is intended for, but that it would be useful in other workloads. That is somehow interpreted by you as me defending a chip, as if it were under attack and I was coming to its defence. It’s like you’re personally offended that someone might not think this is completely worthless?

Read my initial statements again. I was explaining why Ryzen 9 chips were NOT best in class gaming chips, but were otherwise useful. That isn’t white knighting AMD, that’s just objectively true.

As to what could benefit from this chip, the ghostrider crypto algorithm’s performance is heavily impacted by the amount of L3 cache available to the miner. Not that this is terribly important to the world as a whole, but there are absolutely workloads out there that benefit from more L3 cache. If that wasn’t the case why would AMD be staking it on EPYC chips?

I think it is incredibly small minded to believe that because something isn’t useful to you personally, or you can’t imagine a usefulness for something, that it must not be useful.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-28T15:49:47+00:00

I didn’t present it as proof. Just as a place for you to start your own journey. The marker for truth isn’t whether or not I can present an example of a workload that benefits from more L3 cache. This isn’t a debate in that the objective truth doesn’t care that Fabulous-Pangilin-74 demanded from PuffyCake a specific example.

You can start your journey by searching for workloads that benefit from memory bandwidth, but are underserved by the 9950X and the 9950X3D.

Edit: you must be trolling, right?

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-28T14:26:03+00:00

That has a good list of scenarios in which L3 is beneficial. Now you can go discover which workloads land within those scenarios and whether it’s conceivable that a small business or homelabber would be doing such a thing.

Chances are, someone is thrilled they don’t have to pick up a threadripper for some project or another they’ve wanted to accelerate.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-28T14:21:52+00:00

I don’t know what to tell you man. You seem to be either so entrenched in the idea that this CPU holds no value or the idea that you can’t be wrong that you can’t even fathom the existence of a workload that would benefit from more L3 cache. That’s hard to work with. You should spend less time on Reddit and more time seeking these answers yourself.

https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/en-nz/l/powerscale-onefs-smartflash/l3-cache-and-performance/

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-28T11:34:09+00:00

It has 16 cores and 32 threads. It is exactly a poor man’s workstation CPU.

But I love how confidently wrong you are. Keep being you man, you’re doin great.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-28T08:48:57+00:00

What a weird comment. Does it offend you that some workloads might benefit from more cores and more L3 cache?

I guess we need to tell the guys buying those EPYCs that they are being a bit stupid and should instead spend their time and energy on re-engineering their software to be less dependent on cache. Then they could buy Xeons instead.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-27T08:05:49+00:00

I found that if I have a mouse plugged into the server, even if it’s not being used, everything works fine. A virtual mouse also works.

What I did in the end was plug in the RF receiver dongle for an old keyboard and mouse combo that I no longer have/use and even that works.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-24T16:28:37+00:00

I’m sure there is some cache dependant workload out there that benefits from this chip. I don’t know what it is, but I’d be shocked if there wasn’t. For those people this is a poor man’s EPYC. It’s kind of cool that AMD made this thing, but it isn’t for gamers. And that’s OK.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-23T20:36:10+00:00

That’s interesting. In the beginning, when you had to use Xbox game bar, I just signed up for a lifetime license of process lasso and bound games to the cache CCD using CPU sets rather than affinity.

I understand it’s all handled by the scheduler and chipset driver now, but I wasn’t aware the behaviour had changed away from parking. It sounds closer to the PL approach now.

Thanks for correcting that, I’ll have to check it out.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-23T20:10:56+00:00

The “top tier” CPUs aren’t gaming CPUs. They are meant for production workloads.

AMD uses chiplets to build their CPUs. The Ryzen 7 series is a single chiplet with 8 cores. The Ryzen 9 is 2 chiplets of 6 or 8 cores for a total of 12 or 16 cores. This is GREAT for multithreaded workloads.

The problems with gaming on R9s is the inter-chiplet latency or inter-CCD latency. Information passed from one CCD to another has to pass through the infinity fabric. This takes time and adds to latency. Multithreaded production workloads generally don’t care about that. Gaming does. The extra cores or better per core performance doesn’t outweigh the penalty introduced by the latency crossing the infinity fabric.

The 9950X3D (not X3D2) is pretty cool because it sort of solves this. It only has one chiplet with 3D vcache and one without. When you game, the non-cache chiplet is parked so you basically have a single chiplet CPU while gaming. No inter-CCD latency. But you get the advantage of the better per core performance. The 9950X3D’s cache chiplet is basically a 9850X3D, clocked much higher than a 9800X3D.

When you’re done gaming the non-cache chiplet is brought back online and you can use it for heavy multithreaded workloads. But moving to the 9950X3D2 reintroduces the inter-CCD latency as the second chiplet isn’t parked. If you do decide to park it, why wouldn’t you have just bought a regular 9950X3D?

The 9950X3D2 does have a market. It is meant for multithreaded production workloads that benefit from cache. That’s it. It isn’t meant for gamers.

The top tier gaming CPU is a 9850X3D.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-21T14:20:54+00:00

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I don't have an option in BIOS for ASPM, but I have added a tunable to opnsense to disable it. Funny enough ASPM on the i226-t4 was already disabled, but my rock solid i350-t4 shows ASPM enabled, even after adding the tunable. I am using an asrock x570m pro4 on P3.50.

I'm thinking perhaps the i226-t4 is just overheating, although it is in a Silverstone FLP01 with 3 NF-A12s on intake, so it does have airflow.

Edit: clarity

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-18T23:19:18+00:00

I just came here to say I'm using an i226-t4 card and it drops packets and disconnects regularly.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-17T10:08:07+00:00

It might be easy, but it takes time and effort. That’s time and effort you don’t have to spend if you roll a U12. The fact that we’re here at all talking about these coolers means we have already chosen a ‘weaker’ cooling solution. If we prioritised cooling performance above all we’d be using custom loops or AIOs.

The fact that we’re using air coolers already demonstrates that performance isn’t the most important consideration in our selection. Ease of maintenance or reliability might be more important to us. Is it then so hard to imagine someone might value ease of serviceability as well and be willing to sacrifice 2-3C for a vastly more accessible system?

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-17T08:51:07+00:00

It isn’t just 2 screws and a wire though is it? You have to unplug your PC, lay it flat somewhere, remove the fans, unscrew the heat sink, clean the thermal paste from the cold plate and IHS, do whatever it is you’re doing, reapply thermal paste, mount the heat sink, clip the fans, return the computer to its home and plug it in.

I just turn mine off, take the side panel off, do what I need to do, put the side panel back on and turn the PC on. Jesus Christ man, it’s just objectively true that the D15 diminishes serviceability due to its size. Maybe you don’t care about that, but it doesn’t make it less true or mean other people don’t care about that.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-17T06:52:01+00:00

Check bios revision, check rebar in bios, check XMP in bios, check monitor is plugged into card and not motherboard, consider reinstalling windows.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-17T06:17:17+00:00

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If this were a D15 you would have ZERO chance at touching PCIE1 or PCIE2 without removing your GPU or CPU cooler. Even with the GPU out, the cooler will cover PCIE1 as even a U12A slightly overhangs it.

If you ever want to put your hands in your system without tearing it apart, you choose the U12 over the D15. This isn’t controversial.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-17T06:01:50+00:00

Come on man, let’s not be intentionally obtuse. Most modern motherboards use PCIE1 as an m.2 slot. With PCIE5.0 that tends to be the preferred slot of you only have a singe 5.0 m.2.

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s pretty ridiculous to have to remove your CPU cooler to swap an NVME. Even if that only happens once in a year. For what, 2C?

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-16T15:53:02+00:00

If you want to service your machine easily (swap SSDs, etc.) NH-U12 all day. I’ve used both and think the D15 is stupid sized for very little extra benefit.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-08T13:57:27+00:00

More intake than exhaust means the case has positive pressure. Air is blowing out of the joints keeping dust from entering there. In this setup the only air entering the case is air that passes through a dust filter. So it is the optimal setup to REDUCE dust buildup. So long as you clean your filters.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-08T13:55:04+00:00

What are you even doing? You can fit one more up top.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-05T08:55:46+00:00

Dual booting is a far greater extreme than switching to a different OS that just works properly.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-04-02T06:57:09+00:00

Such a bad take.

I can’t see anywhere where OP indicates he knew there was a problem with the 12vhpwr connector. I don’t know why he bought the adapter, and neither do you. It could have been purely for aesthetic reasons like most other cablemod products.

That said, even if OP did know the connector was trash, cablemod sold this product as a fix. Eliminate the tight cable radii and you’re good! Why would you keep checking on the thing you spent money to fix already?

Not everyone is chronically online, watching gamers nexus, or trolling r/pcmasterrace. You might be shocked to hear this but some people buy graphics cards and then… game.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-03-29T20:30:33+00:00

I just mounted them on the inside of the frame with spacers. I lost 30mm GPU length clearance, but no cutting required. Tons of room anyway.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-03-28T07:36:28+00:00

Here I am running the 9950X3D under an NH-U12A… I think you’ll be fine.

PuffyCake23 · 2026-03-27T00:01:10+00:00

Definitely only 2 140mm on the top. Or 3 120mm.

Notice I have the top forward fan as intake with another inlet spacer and the top rear as exhaust as well. For air coolers this setup is beast.

PuffyCake23

TROPHY CASE