Building a Dual-CPU Behemoth from Used Server Parts, ft. CaseLabs & Old Xeons
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Date: 2020-05-06
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Comments and reviews: 9
Royameadow
While the discussion on the 9900K is very fresh in our minds right now, thanks to this program and as we come into the final week before the launch of Ryzen 3000/Zen II, I do feel that the fact that Intel came out with the No Suffix counterparts for Generation IX Coffee Lake recently on Newegg and Amazon is in store to make a program about, at least to see how they fare up as cheaper units: Especially with the 9900 (No Suffix) now effectively making the 9700K become virtually pointless to get at its pricetag due to the former's super performance, it ultimately makes us wonder what we will be expecting going into Quarter III of the year, especially if what we're currently seeing goes anywhere good anytime soon. The 9900 (No Suffix) is currently being sold at 0399 USD, down from its 0439 Launch Price; when compared to the 0409. 99 for the 9700K and 0489. 99 for the 9900K, the 9900 (No Suffix) is ultimately the best Intel CPU of the current generation for its value, you get what is essentially a 7820X but in Coffee Lake Refresh form with that architecture's optimizations at a 065 Watt TDP and for roughly 065% of the current Newegg listings for the Skylake X chip; the 9900 (No Suffix) also might see as much as a 033% price drop from its current tags when Intel decides to make the move, based on preliminary European sales of the chip, where some customers (most notably HaKN! of the Tom's Hardware Forums) managed to get the chip at as low as 026I. 20 USD, so if this is any indication of what to expect here in the states, then I have a good feeling about what's to come, definitely would give everybody a reason to do some decent Benchmark testing of the No Suffix chips to see how well they hold up against the current and future foes.
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While the discussion on the 9900K is very fresh in our minds right now, thanks to this program and as we come into the final week before the launch of Ryzen 3000/Zen II, I do feel that the fact that Intel came out with the No Suffix counterparts for Generation IX Coffee Lake recently on Newegg and Amazon is in store to make a program about, at least to see how they fare up as cheaper units: Especially with the 9900 (No Suffix) now effectively making the 9700K become virtually pointless to get at its pricetag due to the former's super performance, it ultimately makes us wonder what we will be expecting going into Quarter III of the year, especially if what we're currently seeing goes anywhere good anytime soon. The 9900 (No Suffix) is currently being sold at 0399 USD, down from its 0439 Launch Price; when compared to the 0409. 99 for the 9700K and 0489. 99 for the 9900K, the 9900 (No Suffix) is ultimately the best Intel CPU of the current generation for its value, you get what is essentially a 7820X but in Coffee Lake Refresh form with that architecture's optimizations at a 065 Watt TDP and for roughly 065% of the current Newegg listings for the Skylake X chip; the 9900 (No Suffix) also might see as much as a 033% price drop from its current tags when Intel decides to make the move, based on preliminary European sales of the chip, where some customers (most notably HaKN! of the Tom's Hardware Forums) managed to get the chip at as low as 026I. 20 USD, so if this is any indication of what to expect here in the states, then I have a good feeling about what's to come, definitely would give everybody a reason to do some decent Benchmark testing of the No Suffix chips to see how well they hold up against the current and future foes.
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kordm
Quick note for viewers: when dealing with enterprise equipment you really need to pay attention to qualified compatibility lists for everything to work smoothly. While you can argue the SR-X is a consumer version of enterprise hardware, the same compatibility rules apply when using Xeon processors and ECC memory. It's times like this, where people try to DIY a bunch of enterprise hardware, where things just don't work. Generally when using Xeon platforms, always stick to registered ECC memory and make sure you read the compatibility lists. Consumer hardware is built with maximum compatibility in mind. So, even if something isn't explicitly verified by the vendor, chances are it will work fine and the vendor may even support it if you ask nicely. Enterprise hardware is different: if it's not tested and validated, it just DOESN'T WORK. This allows the vendor to guarantee reliability in most cases and also to refuse support for unqualified configurations. This alone probably saves them millions of dollars. I had a problem recently when trying to use an Intel X520-DA2 adapter in a Dell server with SR optics. While the X520-DA2 has normal SFP+ connectors, it simply won't work with anything but direct-attach cabling (which is what the DA means, although I did find a workaround in FreeNAS. If you want to use the X520 with optics you need a different SKU, despite the fact that they're almost the exact same card. This despite the fact that I plugged in the exact same card with the same SR optics into my Ryzen desktop with Windows 10 and it worked perfectly with no issues.
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Quick note for viewers: when dealing with enterprise equipment you really need to pay attention to qualified compatibility lists for everything to work smoothly. While you can argue the SR-X is a consumer version of enterprise hardware, the same compatibility rules apply when using Xeon processors and ECC memory. It's times like this, where people try to DIY a bunch of enterprise hardware, where things just don't work. Generally when using Xeon platforms, always stick to registered ECC memory and make sure you read the compatibility lists. Consumer hardware is built with maximum compatibility in mind. So, even if something isn't explicitly verified by the vendor, chances are it will work fine and the vendor may even support it if you ask nicely. Enterprise hardware is different: if it's not tested and validated, it just DOESN'T WORK. This allows the vendor to guarantee reliability in most cases and also to refuse support for unqualified configurations. This alone probably saves them millions of dollars. I had a problem recently when trying to use an Intel X520-DA2 adapter in a Dell server with SR optics. While the X520-DA2 has normal SFP+ connectors, it simply won't work with anything but direct-attach cabling (which is what the DA means, although I did find a workaround in FreeNAS. If you want to use the X520 with optics you need a different SKU, despite the fact that they're almost the exact same card. This despite the fact that I plugged in the exact same card with the same SR optics into my Ryzen desktop with Windows 10 and it worked perfectly with no issues.
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MrFahrenheit
Steve, if I knew you were having so much trouble getting that to work I would have offered you my help. First, to confirm, yes, registered memory (not necessarily ECC, but registered - most ECC is registered) is required when using dua socket Xeon. Additionally, the stepping must be the same on both CPUs to boot. These two things are key, and the reason you had so much trouble. I know a lot of work is involved in these 'old hardware' videos, but it would be nice to see a video such as this, done with v3 and v4 Xeons, which can still be had for a deal compared to their retail pricing. I put together E5-2698 v3 dual and E5-2696 v4 dual myself, and I plan on testing to see if it can bottleneck at gaming. Some Xeons can be had for 200 and have 12 cores and can run at 3. 5Ghz all cores. These are the ones it would be nice to see compared to even the new Ryzen 3x000 series coming out later this year. My guess, for gaming, a 12-core Xeon at 3. 5Ghz could easily compete with the highest Ryzen. Thoughts?
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Steve, if I knew you were having so much trouble getting that to work I would have offered you my help. First, to confirm, yes, registered memory (not necessarily ECC, but registered - most ECC is registered) is required when using dua socket Xeon. Additionally, the stepping must be the same on both CPUs to boot. These two things are key, and the reason you had so much trouble. I know a lot of work is involved in these 'old hardware' videos, but it would be nice to see a video such as this, done with v3 and v4 Xeons, which can still be had for a deal compared to their retail pricing. I put together E5-2698 v3 dual and E5-2696 v4 dual myself, and I plan on testing to see if it can bottleneck at gaming. Some Xeons can be had for 200 and have 12 cores and can run at 3. 5Ghz all cores. These are the ones it would be nice to see compared to even the new Ryzen 3x000 series coming out later this year. My guess, for gaming, a 12-core Xeon at 3. 5Ghz could easily compete with the highest Ryzen. Thoughts?
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Kostas
My build as follows: Base system: Lenovo C30 Workstation (C600. 4GB Ram (DDR3-10600R. No HD. 2 X E5-2609 (4 Core, no HT. 172. 86 (Ebay) RAM: 4 X 16GB DDR3-10600R ( Can 120, local Surplus dealer, also on eBay) CPUs: 2 XE5-2680 (8 Core, with Hyperthreading) Storage: 1 X 500GB Samsung 860 EVO ( CAN 120) SSD, 1X 2TB WD Gold ( CAN150) Graphics: 1 X MSI GTX1050ti 4GB mini, ( CAN 180) System is fully operational, runs well, and works great for anything other than gaming. Only things that I would have liked would have been a way to boot from faster storage (as in M. 2 NVME (PCIe X4. Lenovo C30 has severe height restrictions due to the reduced form factor. The graphics card used is a half height card to fit within the small chassis. Any graphics cards that have a height higher than the backplate (including the the 6/8 Pin auxiliary power cables) will not fit. There is a Lenovo D30 that doesn't have the height restriction.
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My build as follows: Base system: Lenovo C30 Workstation (C600. 4GB Ram (DDR3-10600R. No HD. 2 X E5-2609 (4 Core, no HT. 172. 86 (Ebay) RAM: 4 X 16GB DDR3-10600R ( Can 120, local Surplus dealer, also on eBay) CPUs: 2 XE5-2680 (8 Core, with Hyperthreading) Storage: 1 X 500GB Samsung 860 EVO ( CAN 120) SSD, 1X 2TB WD Gold ( CAN150) Graphics: 1 X MSI GTX1050ti 4GB mini, ( CAN 180) System is fully operational, runs well, and works great for anything other than gaming. Only things that I would have liked would have been a way to boot from faster storage (as in M. 2 NVME (PCIe X4. Lenovo C30 has severe height restrictions due to the reduced form factor. The graphics card used is a half height card to fit within the small chassis. Any graphics cards that have a height higher than the backplate (including the the 6/8 Pin auxiliary power cables) will not fit. There is a Lenovo D30 that doesn't have the height restriction.
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Reed
Gamers Nexus all this madness is why I just went with a a SuperMicro X9DRi-LN4F+ for the extra PCIe x16 slots (albeit not all of them have 16 lanes) to pair with my E5-2680v2 Xeons, and the fact that it has 24 slots for DDR3 so it s stuffed with 192GB of memory and 40 threads is plenty with my server workload, and has allowed me to virtualize many of my previously disparate machines. I put everything in a 4U SuperMicro SAS846TQ case with a direct-attach backplane for its 24 hot-swap bays, and my OS runs from a mirrored pair of Samsung SSDs (Proxmox VE now, but initially was running FreeNAS, but after dealing with the lack of working hardware passthru on BHYVE, I now run Proxmox VE for KVM s superior passthru support, and run FreeNAS as a guest OS with my HBA passed through to my FreeNAS VM and my storage pool unaltered.
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Gamers Nexus all this madness is why I just went with a a SuperMicro X9DRi-LN4F+ for the extra PCIe x16 slots (albeit not all of them have 16 lanes) to pair with my E5-2680v2 Xeons, and the fact that it has 24 slots for DDR3 so it s stuffed with 192GB of memory and 40 threads is plenty with my server workload, and has allowed me to virtualize many of my previously disparate machines. I put everything in a 4U SuperMicro SAS846TQ case with a direct-attach backplane for its 24 hot-swap bays, and my OS runs from a mirrored pair of Samsung SSDs (Proxmox VE now, but initially was running FreeNAS, but after dealing with the lack of working hardware passthru on BHYVE, I now run Proxmox VE for KVM s superior passthru support, and run FreeNAS as a guest OS with my HBA passed through to my FreeNAS VM and my storage pool unaltered.
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Junker
Well, ignoring the gaming comments (nobody in their right mind games on a 2-socket system. I'm happy to see you guys doing compiler benchmarks on the larger server-like systems. Your 2697v2 system comes in just about where I thought it would. Those CPUs were incredibly expensive at introduction. something like 2600 apiece, but on the used market 6 years later they are a more reasonable 300 or so. You actually chose a really excellent used CPU with the 2697v2, that's a great value part. The modern equivalent is the E5-2690v4 which is basically the same thing but packs 14 cores instead of 12, AVX2 instead of AVX, and supports DDR4 with 30% more memory bandwidth. probably about the same price on the used market. (requires a 2011-3 socket, not the original 2011 socket. -Matt
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Well, ignoring the gaming comments (nobody in their right mind games on a 2-socket system. I'm happy to see you guys doing compiler benchmarks on the larger server-like systems. Your 2697v2 system comes in just about where I thought it would. Those CPUs were incredibly expensive at introduction. something like 2600 apiece, but on the used market 6 years later they are a more reasonable 300 or so. You actually chose a really excellent used CPU with the 2697v2, that's a great value part. The modern equivalent is the E5-2690v4 which is basically the same thing but packs 14 cores instead of 12, AVX2 instead of AVX, and supports DDR4 with 30% more memory bandwidth. probably about the same price on the used market. (requires a 2011-3 socket, not the original 2011 socket. -Matt
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Hard
I built a computer like this to use for a simultaneous 10 core windows and Linux OS machine. That part was a pain in the ass, not worth it. On the other hand, these machines give you a huge flex off your bros. 2697v2 is dummy expensive for the aftermarket. For anyone looking to get something like this, 2650v2 or 2670v2 are good options. I put together a similar setup using an ASUS Z9P16DE serverboard which was around 150. With 16 Ram slots you can cram a respectable 256GB of ram using 16gb sticks. It is dummy thick with SATA ports and has an alright onboard storage controller. Mine came with remote management. One downside on all these boards is PCIE allocation between CPUs effecting airflow.
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I built a computer like this to use for a simultaneous 10 core windows and Linux OS machine. That part was a pain in the ass, not worth it. On the other hand, these machines give you a huge flex off your bros. 2697v2 is dummy expensive for the aftermarket. For anyone looking to get something like this, 2650v2 or 2670v2 are good options. I put together a similar setup using an ASUS Z9P16DE serverboard which was around 150. With 16 Ram slots you can cram a respectable 256GB of ram using 16gb sticks. It is dummy thick with SATA ports and has an alright onboard storage controller. Mine came with remote management. One downside on all these boards is PCIE allocation between CPUs effecting airflow.
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Michael
So cool to see this posting now considering it is very similar to my exact build that I made in November of 2018 when I saw newegg run a sale on the ASROCKRACK EP2C602-4L/D16 for 200 during black friday. Asrockrack EP2C602-4L/D16 ( 200) Intel Xeon E5-2697v2 x2 ( 274. 5 x 2) 128GB DDR3 1600Mhz (8x16GB) ECC Registered ( 240) Phanteks Enthoo Pro TG PH-ES614PTG_BK ( 109) Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO x2 Refurbished ( 17 x 2) ADATA SU800 1TB 3D NAND SSD x2 ( 119 x 2) Shucked WD 10TB White Label x 6 ( 179 x 6) WD Red Label 4TB x 4 (already had) EVGA Supernova 1200 P2 80+ Platinum (Had to upgrade to fix power issues 239) I'm running UnRAID on it and loving every minute of using it.
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So cool to see this posting now considering it is very similar to my exact build that I made in November of 2018 when I saw newegg run a sale on the ASROCKRACK EP2C602-4L/D16 for 200 during black friday. Asrockrack EP2C602-4L/D16 ( 200) Intel Xeon E5-2697v2 x2 ( 274. 5 x 2) 128GB DDR3 1600Mhz (8x16GB) ECC Registered ( 240) Phanteks Enthoo Pro TG PH-ES614PTG_BK ( 109) Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO x2 Refurbished ( 17 x 2) ADATA SU800 1TB 3D NAND SSD x2 ( 119 x 2) Shucked WD 10TB White Label x 6 ( 179 x 6) WD Red Label 4TB x 4 (already had) EVGA Supernova 1200 P2 80+ Platinum (Had to upgrade to fix power issues 239) I'm running UnRAID on it and loving every minute of using it.
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Transformed
WHAT! there is NO WAY new hardware is cheaper than old server hardware. I picked up a Supermicro CSE-847 case (36x 3. 5 hot swap bays) with a Supermicro - X9DRi-LN4+ / 2x Xeon e2648-v2 and 256gb ECC DDR3 1866 for 400. 00. Also grabbed a SuperMicro CSE-505-203B with a SuperMicro a1sai-2750f (2. 4ghz 8core Atom C2758 20w) and 32GB of Kingston ECC DDR3 1600 RAM for 250. those two COMPLETE SERVERS together are less than the cost of a 9900k, and I got a 20w 8 thread system and a 140w 40 thread system. the big system can still upgrade the CPU's for cheap. but power consumption on those 2648L-v2's is less than a single 9900K and still gives 14, 000 passmark
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WHAT! there is NO WAY new hardware is cheaper than old server hardware. I picked up a Supermicro CSE-847 case (36x 3. 5 hot swap bays) with a Supermicro - X9DRi-LN4+ / 2x Xeon e2648-v2 and 256gb ECC DDR3 1866 for 400. 00. Also grabbed a SuperMicro CSE-505-203B with a SuperMicro a1sai-2750f (2. 4ghz 8core Atom C2758 20w) and 32GB of Kingston ECC DDR3 1600 RAM for 250. those two COMPLETE SERVERS together are less than the cost of a 9900k, and I got a 20w 8 thread system and a 140w 40 thread system. the big system can still upgrade the CPU's for cheap. but power consumption on those 2648L-v2's is less than a single 9900K and still gives 14, 000 passmark
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