theone Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 Hi, I have decided to upgrade my current build (ATOM D510). http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6712.0 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=27485.0 I was sure I was going with the XEON v3 series but then came across the ATOM C2750/C2550 CPUs. i need a total of 14 SATA ports. I have a M1015 PCIe board for additional 8 ports. I will be running at least 1 Windows VM (KVM or VirtualBox) in the backgound. I was considering: CPU: XEON E3-1226v3 3.3GHz (8 threads) $220 or XEON E3-1220v3 3.1GHz (4 threads) $200 Motherboard: SuperMicro X10SLL-F $155 Memory: 32GB $300 Total: $675 (8 threads) / $655 (4 threads) but then I came across the C27xx CPUs and now considering: CPU: ATOM C2750 2.4GHz (8 cores) or ATOM C2550 2.4GHz (4 cores) Motherboard: SUPERMICRO A1SAi-2750F $390 or ASUS P9A-I/C2750/SAS/4L $520 or ASRock Rack C2750D4I $350 (8 cores) Supermicro A1SAM-2550F $240 or ASUS P9A-I/C2550/SAS/4L $380 or ASRock Rack C2550D4I $240(4 cores) Memory: 32GB $300 Total: cheapest options $650 (8 cores) / $550 (4 cores) - How do they compare in performance? Will I feel a difference? - How do they compare in power usage? mainly in idle with VM running in background? - Compatibility with unRAID v6? - Any suggestions? Link to comment
jimbobulator Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 Check relative performance on the cpubenchmark website: What you have now: 667 - Intel Atom D510 @ 1.66GHz 7397 - Intel Xeon E3-1226 v3 @ 3.30GHz 6843 - Intel Xeon E3-1220 v3 @ 3.10GHz 3929 - Intel Atom C2750 @ 2.40GHz 2329 - Intel Atom C2550 @ 2.40GHz Some comparison points - You'll get a lot more performance out of the Xeon. - Idle power consumption probably won't be too different. Lower for the Atom, but we're talking single digits probably. - Max power consumption of the Xeon is going to be much higher, but you have that extra performance. - Atoms are fanless. - Search forums for examples of people using the Atom boards, I think there are some. Personally I'd go with the Xeon unless fanless/noise were a primary concern and you really don't need extra performance. That said, the Xeon with an aftermarket cooling solution can be VERY quiet. I find you can always use more performance though. If you plan to do any transcoding or anything, I'd just get the Xeon (in my opinion), although all the processors will handle some light transcoding activity. Never know what you might throw at it in the future. Edit: based on your use case description, any of the solutions you proposed will likely work fine, but it will depend on what you do with that windows VM. I ran a windows VM on unraid (early v6) on a processor with 1100 passmark score for testing and it handled it okay for basic use. Depends on what you want the VM to do really. Edit2: Another option, if you know you won't need the extra CPU performance, go for the Atom and take the savings and invest in an SSD for your VM and any other dockers/apps. You will feel this difference in the VM and any other applications. Link to comment
Kode Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 Depends also how well the programs you are running support multithreading as the C2750 single core performance with be significantly worse than the Xeons Single core performance source: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html D510 - 267 C2750 - 581 1220 v3 - 1,895 1226 v3 - 2,150 Link to comment
garycase Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 The key question is "... Will I feel a difference? " Answer is "It depends" For NAS performance, you won't notice any difference. If you're only running a single VM, it's also not likely you'll notice the difference (especially if you go with the 8 core Avoton) If you're going to tax your system a bit more ... multiple VM's, Dockers, etc. then clearly the higher performance of the Xeons is nice to have. The Avoton's will run cooler; use less power (I agree it won't be a LOT less, probably an idle of ~ 15-18w vs 20-25 watts for a Xeon system with a good C2xx chipset board => but in percentage terms that a reasonable difference. There's an even bigger difference if you're using a modest amount of power, but not enough to overtax an Avoton => they have max TDP's of 20w, so even at full power your board will still draw a very modest amount of power. A Xeon producing the same amount of power won't use its full TDP of 84w, but will like draw in the 40-50w range => so in this power range there's a significant difference in the power used between the two units. If I was building a backup server (NAS only) I'd definitely use an Avoton; if I wanted to do basically the same but have a single background VM (perhaps for running backups, downloads, etc.) I'd still use an Avoton; for a main server that I wanted to run several VM's and/or Dockers on I'd use a Xeon. Link to comment
theone Posted June 9, 2015 Author Share Posted June 9, 2015 Do any of the C2750/C2550 or X10SLL motherboards have any compatibility issues with unRAID v6? drives? frequency control? etc...? Is the idle power achieved also with a running VM at 20-30% CPU? Link to comment
garycase Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 Do any of the C2750/C2550 or X10SLL motherboards have any compatibility issues with unRAID v6? drives? frequency control? etc...? Is the idle power achieved also with a running VM at 20-30% CPU? Certainly very close to it ... remember these CPU's max out at 20w => and that's at 100% CPU utilization (compared to 84W for a Xeon at 100%). Link to comment
theone Posted June 9, 2015 Author Share Posted June 9, 2015 Do any of the C2750/C2550 or X10SLL motherboards have any compatibility issues with unRAID v6? drives? frequency control? etc...? Is the idle power achieved also with a running VM at 20-30% CPU? Certainly very close to it ... remember these CPU's max out at 20w => and that's at 100% CPU utilization (compared to 84W for a Xeon at 100%). And the XEONs? How do they perform power-wise with a running VM at 20-30% CPU? Link to comment
garycase Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 Do any of the C2750/C2550 or X10SLL motherboards have any compatibility issues with unRAID v6? drives? frequency control? etc...? Is the idle power achieved also with a running VM at 20-30% CPU? Certainly very close to it ... remember these CPU's max out at 20w => and that's at 100% CPU utilization (compared to 84W for a Xeon at 100%). And the XEONs? How do they perform power-wise with a running VM at 20-30% CPU? Don't know ... don't have a system handy to test that with. A Core i7 system, which should have similar behavior, ramps up about 20-25w at 30% CPU utilization. Clearly the Xeon will use more power than an Avoton ... but it will still be very efficient and can provide appreciably more "horsepower." As I noted above, it simply depends on how much CPU power you want. If you want the absolute lowest power consumption, use an Avoton; if you don't think the 4000 or so Passmarks that it provides is enough, go with a Xeon. It's really just that simple. Link to comment
Chugiak Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 The stock cooler on the Xeon E3-1231v3 is pretty darn quiet too. If you opt for the Xeon CPU I'd suggest trying the stock cooler and see if that's sufficient. Link to comment
garycase Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 Agree => ANY Haswell CPU's stock cooler is just fine. There's NO reason to buy an aftermarket cooler for these UNLESS you're going to overclock the CPU ... which I do NOT recommend. Link to comment
theone Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 After seeing the Category5 interview I realized that I can run my KODI in the living room on the unRAID box instead of the Android TV box I have. The question is: * Can I pass the internal CPU GPU of the E3-1226v3 to the VM? * If not then I will need a PCIe GPU and a free x16 PCIe slot on the motherboard - which exists on the X10SLL-F but I don't think exists on the C2750 motherboards... Link to comment
jonp Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 After seeing the Category5 interview I realized that I can run my KODI in the living room on the unRAID box instead of the Android TV box I have. The question is: * Can I pass the internal CPU GPU of the E3-1226v3 to the VM? * If not then I will need a PCIe GPU and a free x16 PCIe slot on the motherboard - which exists on the X10SLL-F but I don't think exists on the C2750 motherboards... No support for passing through integrated graphics devices, so you will need a discrete GPU. Link to comment
theone Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 So there is no advantage to have integrated graphics? Is it a current state that can change in the future or is it a hw thing? Link to comment
theone Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 According to this: https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2014/05/02/intel-graphics-virtualization-update http://www.techenablement.com/multios-gaming-media-and-opencl-using-xengt-virtual-machines-on-shared-intel-gpus/ http://lwn.net/Articles/624516/ There should already be a XEN option to virtualize intel integrated GPUs Intel® GVT-g and KVM is forthcoming... or am I missing something...? Link to comment
garycase Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 After seeing the Category5 interview I realized that I can run my KODI in the living room on the unRAID box instead of the Android TV box I have. You CAN ... but think carefully about whether you want to. Virtualization of multiple systems in a single box works very nicely for a lot of applications [e.g. multiple servers with varying "roles"]; but for those that require desktop interfaces (i.e. display, keyboard, mouse, and remote control) you need to consider how those functions will be implemented at the display end. As an example, with KODI you need a remote control; video; audio; etc. -- so if you run a virtualized instance of it you not only need to provide a video adapter to the VM, but need to get the A/V output to your TV and the remote control input (and perhaps a keyboard) to the server. There are not-too-difficult solutions to this [e.g. HDMI over Cat-6 and KVM over IP], but if you've already got a good solution (i.e. an Android box) be sure you recognize the tradeoffs in moving the computational resources to a single box. Link to comment
theone Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 After seeing the Category5 interview I realized that I can run my KODI in the living room on the unRAID box instead of the Android TV box I have. You CAN ... but think carefully about whether you want to. Virtualization of multiple systems in a single box works very nicely for a lot of applications [e.g. multiple servers with varying "roles"]; but for those that require desktop interfaces (i.e. display, keyboard, mouse, and remote control) you need to consider how those functions will be implemented at the display end. As an example, with KODI you need a remote control; video; audio; etc. -- so if you run a virtualized instance of it you not only need to provide a video adapter to the VM, but need to get the A/V output to your TV and the remote control input (and perhaps a keyboard) to the server. There are not-too-difficult solutions to this [e.g. HDMI over Cat-6 and KVM over IP], but if you've already got a good solution (i.e. an Android box) be sure you recognize the tradeoffs in moving the computational resources to a single box. Thanks, I am aware of this. I already have an MCE remote with USB connection for my android box. In addition my server is under the stairs, which are next to the living room, near my AV Receiver so I just need a very short HDMI cable between them and from there it is already connected to the TV. Link to comment
garycase Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 With that topology it's a lot more practical to virtualize, since there's no long-distance HDMI issue. Given that, it makes a lot of sense to do the virtualization bit, since the power to run your client is essentially ZERO, since the UnRAID box is always going to be on anyway when you're streaming video. Link to comment
jonp Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 According to this: https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2014/05/02/intel-graphics-virtualization-update http://www.techenablement.com/multios-gaming-media-and-opencl-using-xengt-virtual-machines-on-shared-intel-gpus/ http://lwn.net/Articles/624516/ There should already be a XEN option to virtualize intel integrated GPUs Intel® GVT-g and KVM is forthcoming... or am I missing something...? The project was reamed to KVMgt and its not yet merged into the base of QEMU or KVM yet. It would require manual patching for us to even try it, which we're not prepared to do right now. Link to comment
00b5 Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 If you want to virtualize your HTPC, I'd plan upfront for that, and use an external GPU to pass through. This leaves the onboard intel GPU for the server console/etc, should you ever need it (which you probably won't). Passing through intel GPU is doable, but its a lot of work. Passing through a 2nd card in a pci-e slot is much less work. Keep in mind, you'll also want to passthrough a USB controller (or port/device, i'd aim for one of the controllers though) and then add mouse/keyboard/remote/etc there. All of this is doable, but its also a lot of work, and as the info so far is noted about the intel gpus, a lot of it will require linux knowledge and specific hardware/etc. Or, you could just keep your android box (or replace it with a pi2, AFTV, chromebox, etc). I wanted to virtualize so much stuff with a new setup, but the pi (not even a 2) I have works so well for me that I just keep using it and don't worry about it. Plays 1080P, 23.9xxhz, DTS to my AVR. Done. Until I move to HD audio, no need for anything more really. If I wanted more speed, I'd just mod a $130 chromebox and use that. Link to comment
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