
40-Thread Xeon PC Build for Less Than the Price of a Broadwell-E Core I7 - Fjolsvith
http://www.techspot.com/review/1218-affordable-40-thread-xeon-monster-pc/
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GrumpyYoungMan
Their use of Intel ES (engineering sample) chips seems a bit questionable,
though I've read that people usually have success with them.

From
[http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/processors/00...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/processors/000005719.html):

-Intel ES Processors are the sole property of Intel.

-Intel ES Processors are Intel Confidential.

-Intel ES Processors are provided by Intel under nondisclosure and/or special loan agreement terms with restrictions on the recipient's handling and use.

-Intel ES Processors are not for sale or re-sale.

-Intel ES Processors may not have passed commercial regulatory requirements.

-ES Processors are not covered under Intel warranty and are generally not supported by Intel

They're also occasionally earlier steppings of the chip than the production
version and may have some hidden issues. _Caveat emptor_.

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yuhong
What would be interesting is the "NDA" spec updates for these chips.

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loeg
The trick is the Xeons are an older generation and/or Engineering Samples
rather than retail processors.

The result is more, slower threads.

For some workloads, that's a good trade-off. Probably not for videogames,
though, where single-thread performance is still very important. Games haven't
really utilized more than one CPU well until quite recently. Even a quad core
is overkill.

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attilak
I built one of the dual E5-2570 PCs, put in a GTX 1080 and all latest games
run very good on maximum graphics settings.

I get the same results as what I see in other tests with GTX 1080 and 6700K.
So I can't confirm that there would be any real performance impact on games
with such a setup... Even if I get lower results, it is marginal and way over
60FPS (2560 resolution)

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ido
You will probably get the same results with an i5-2500k too. Most games don't
use that many cores.

~~~
seanp2k2
Yeah, I still have a 2500k at 4.6 with no over-volting on air. I wish I had an
m2 SSD, but with the GTX1080 and a new 4K IPS TV which also does 120hz at
1080p (Vizio p55-c1, but read the rtings.com review about the lack of true
4:4:4 chroma if you're considering this one), it's been great for 4K and fast
action gaming at high frame rates. Has no problem holding 120fps at 1080 with
max settings in Overwatch, though I tone some effects down to make it less
distracting and easier to spot baddies.

It's crazy to me that this old CPU is still all I need, but the ROI from an
upgrade just wasn't worth it. Going from 2X Radeon 6870 to the GTX1080 was a
huge performance boost, though, and I'll never deal with multi-GPU again if I
can avoid it.

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virtuallynathan
I did this recently, costs/specs:

Case + Mobo + Heatsinks + PSU: $740

2x E5-2670v1 (8c/16t ea, not ES): $120

128GB DDR3 Ram: $240

6x 4TB 2.5in Disks: $650

Total cost: $1750

Motherboard has 2x 10GbE, 16x port LSI SAS/SATA controller. Case is a 2U, 24x
2.5in bay, with 2x 920W Platinum quiet PSUs. With a larger budget 256GB of ram
and 2x 14c/28t CPUs are pretty reasonable (~$1000 more)

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p1esk
128GB RAM for $270? How is this possible?

~~~
virtuallynathan
Go nuts: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-128GB-16x-8GB-
RAM-2RX4-PC3L-...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-128GB-16x-8GB-
RAM-2RX4-PC3L-12800R-DDR3-1600Mhz-ECC-Server-REG-
Memory-/371597641105?hash=item5684f20591:g:FCgAAOSwiylXC2II)

It was actually on sale for $237.50 when I bought it.

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zitterbewegung
According to Linus Tech Tips on the Wan Show the reason why the Broadwell-E is
so unattractive when compared to Xeon chips is that they don't want to
cannibalize their Xeon processors for workstation so the 6950X is something
that you don't get much of a tangible performance boost per $. See
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfj-
Rq9bX40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfj-Rq9bX40) and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-9N6rzQ_3M#](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-9N6rzQ_3M#)

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trhway
at 14nm Intel does 16 cores on the same silicon at it was doing 4 core at
32nm. If Intel had competition, those 16 cores would be at the same price of
$300 everywhere. Moore law just doesn't work that efficiently without
competition.

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ak217
On the other (far more practical, IMO) end of the spectrum, I'm impressed by
the $200 35W quad core i5-6600T
([http://ark.intel.com/products/88200](http://ark.intel.com/products/88200)).
To me that's the sweet spot in a home/workstation setting.

~~~
virtuallynathan
TDP aside, you can get a used E5-2670v1 (8c/16t) @ 2.6Ghz for $60... The low-
power "L" model Xeon's are also available.

~~~
ak217
Interesting option, especially if you live in a cold climate :)

Hard to imagine a cooling setup for these that is not at least a bit noisy,
especially since most affordable PSUs and fans will be meant for servers and
therefore noisy. Good if you have a ventilated closet nearby, not so good
otherwise.

~~~
virtuallynathan
I have 2 of them running in the closet next to my bed, can barely hear it if
I'm not maxing out the CPU. At max fan speed, sure, it's pretty darn loud. One
could do better with a large case and larger, quieter fans.

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gravypod
Does anyone know of any other high thread count builds on the cheap?

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EvgeniyZh
> a single copy of HandBrake can't fully utilize 40-threads

That's it. I prefer a few fast threads instead of bunch of slow ones. That's
why Xeons are server CPUs and workstation editions (W) ussually have much less
threads - it's hard to utilize all of them.

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bluedino
You could make a very nice 'private cloud' with this machine, or even a
20-core setup if 64GB of RAM is what's going to bottleneck you.

