Ryzen 9 for RL tasks for a workstation

Budget:
6-8K

Expectations:
I want it to be able to handle training deep neural networks (DNNs) on the GPU efficiently. Tasks will take many iterations and so I need good performance in both concurrent and sequential processes.

Usage:
Parallelization, DNN training during reinforcement learning, weekend gaming

Special Needs:
Since the DNN will be trained on the cores (especially tensor cores) of the GPU, and because RL epochs are very often more sequential than concurrent, it seems to me that the efficiency and speed of the Ryzen 9 makes it better than the Threadripper.

I will be handling big jobs with a good amount of parallelization, but also big sequential tasks, and most parallelization will be done by the GPU.
That being said the Ryzen 9 (16 cores) is not offered for the Workstation, but that's what I want. Am I wrong?

Saved Ticket #:
These are the two saved configs I was looking at one with a threadripper and one with a Ryzen 9
1) 3564590
2) 3564574

Specifications:
My thinking is that the Threadripper would be better for DNN training on the CPU, but I'm not training on the CPU but the GPU. Also if I were doing more ML with concurrent data as opposed to the RL where data is realized sequentially (for the most part) then I'd want the Threadripper.
Because of the RL tasks which will run for some time I think a workstation is right. But for the CPU the tasks will be more sequential than parallel and so I think I want the Ryzen 9 in the workstation.

Should I have the Ryzen 9 in a workstation?




... fixed the title ...

Edited by Snaike - 21 Nov 2020 at 5:37pm

We are almost all gamers here, so I doubt you are going to hit on someone with a lot of expertise in your field. There is one glaring error (IMHO) in both builds, and that is the inclusion of a Digital Storm SSD as your primary drive. They are SSDs, yes, but either brand of NVMe SSD is easily five times faster than one of those. NVMes use the PCIe bus for many multiples of bandwidth more than SATA drives. The Samsung 980 Pro is best.

That said, DS has experts that will cut right to the heart of your questions. They do not engage much in upsell just for the heck of it, so you are safe consulting with them IMHO. Not everyone in sales is likely to know this area well, so it may take a call-back to get the right technical expert, but I'm confident they have them. Don't try to call on the weekend, and remember they are 9-5 on Pacific time.

Hope it helps.