build recommendation for around$400


Recommended Posts

Its time to upgrade my server and i was going to go with an asrock extreme 3 and a Intel Xeon E5-2658 V3 ES QEYF 2.0Ghz 12Core. however only cpus i can find on ebay are coming out of china and i dont want to run the risk of getting a bad cpu and be out $200ish dollars.

 

Looking for any recommendations on what would be the best setup Mobo+cpu+ram for around $400 budget. My only real requirement is that the mobo has lots of sata ports. Preferably 10+.

 

current setup uses a full atx board, full tower case, and an mv8 card. Would be ideal if i could run a few virtual machines to handle transcoding etc.

Link to comment

VMs like to have dedicated cores.  Everything E3 and below has at most 4 cores hyperthreaded.  There are a couple of (expensive) models of Core i7 with 6 cores hyperthreaded, but most are at most 4 cores hyperthreaded.  For your budget and the fact that you'd like to have several cores available, I'd keep looking on eBay for non-ES versions of the older E5's, like you've already been looking at.

Link to comment

I do think the Ryzen's look interesting at that price point, but since the OP wants to keep the Motherboard, CPU and RAM under $400 and still get the cores and clocks for VMs and transcoding - used is the only way to go.

 

Agreed, no way he gets what he wants new for under $400, but, the Ryzen chips will certainly alter the price/performance considerations many of us are used to.  If they deliver as promised at the prices quoted, I imagine there will be a lot of interest in the unRAID community in Ryzen-based single CPU (or dual) 8-core/16-thread systems for multiple VMs/heavy Docker use/transcoding.  I will certainly be keeping an eye on them.

Link to comment

The only way to meet $400 and run a few VM's would be by compromising. An option would be to use a quad-core AMD setup and over-commit the cores to the VM's. In other words, dynamically assign either 3 or 4 cores to all VM's and each VM uses the cores as they need them. It would work if the VM's are general use or only 1 VM is doing heavy lifting at a time.

 

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Virtualization_Administration_Guide/form-Virtualization-Overcommitting_with_KVM-Overcommitting_virtualized_CPUs.html

 

You could pull this off with a 4-core Intel setup too, but you'd be hard pressed to put together a 4-core Intel, motherboard and memory combo for under $400. You could do it going a little over your budget.

 

I have a i5 so I've been playing with this to see if I can run multiple multi-core hosts. The hosts I would use would generally not be doing anything too CPU intensive so it could work for me. Basically, turn this section of the XML

 

<vcpu placement='static'>2</vcpu>
  <cputune>
    <vcpupin vcpu='0' cpuset='2'/>
    <vcpupin vcpu='1' cpuset='3'/>
  </cputune>

 

into something like this.

 

<vcpu placement='static'>2</vcpu>

 

It still appears as a 2 virtual cores in the VM but 2 of my CPU cores are no longer pinned to the VM and unavailable for other uses. Doing this, I can run 3 VM's with 2 cores each on my 4-core i5. With pinned CPU's I could only run 3 VM's by pinning 1-core to each VM.

 

Just throwing this out there since the unRAID VM setup page requires you to pin cores so you may not know this is possible.

 

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

ok, lets exclude pricing for the moment. im seeing some of the older v1 / v2 cpus are more readily available and local to the us as well as substantially cheaper. give me some feedback on the following:

 

performance wise would you choose a single e5-2658 v3 or dual e5-2650

is it worth the significant price increase to go with say a v3 version over the same cpu as a v1 version. can be almost double the price in some cases.

 

Link to comment

Factor in the motherboard prices.  A single E5-2658v3 has 3/4 the horsepower of two E5-2650s, but only requires a motherboard with a single CPU socket.

 

Without factoring in price I would choose a single E5-2658v3 over dual E5-2650s unless you really need the extra few cores that the dual setup will offer.  I prefer the smaller, simpler motherboard with lower power utilization and lower cooling requirements.

Link to comment

so ive decided to forgo the budget. The idea is i can spend more on this machine and ditch the second dedicated gaming machine i was going to build. These are the two options im considering. Any feed back about gaming performance, etc.

 

supermicro x9drl-if-b
2x xeon e5-2670
128gb ddr3 1333 ecc reg

 

or

e5-2683v3
fatali1ty x99m killer
32gb 3200 ddr4 ecc

 

Also since budget is not a primary concern im open to other suggested configurations.

Link to comment

In addition to dedicated cores games like high clock speeds so slight advantage to the 2683.  However, you might be happier if you found something with still higher clock speed.  You really want to map out what you want to do with the cores before you start this project.  You also might want more than 32gb depending on how many VMs you run.

Link to comment

Have you looked at chips like the Core i7 Extreme Editions like the 6800k?  Socket 2011, 6 cores, hyperthreaded, 3.4GHz with turbo to 3.8GHz.  They've been available for the past few generations so there are a number of versions available.  These have fewer cores than you've been looking at, but the cores are much faster (and I think more suitable for gaming).  There are also some faster E5's like the 168x series - again, fewer cores but faster.

Link to comment
  • 6 months later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.