Xeon D & Supermicro X10SDV vs Xeon E3-1200 series & Supermicro X10SL7-F

[kolepard]

Like many, with the introduction of unRAID 6 final, I'm going to take the plunge on a building a new unRAID server, with my current aging Core 2 Duo/Supermicro C2SEA server being moved to backup server duties.

 

The SuperMicro X10SL7-F seems well liked here, but the other board I'm considering is the SuperMicro X10SDV-TLN4F, which uses the Xeon D1540 instead of the Xeon E3-1200 series.

 

I'm interested to hear if anyone has used a Xeon D board like this one.

 

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/D/X10SDV-TLN4F.cfm

 

With the support of Dockers, I'm tempted to think the greater number of cores in the Xeon D would offer more advantages than the higher clock speed of the E3.  My primary interest is in running unRAID with Dockers for Plex (which will need to be doing transcoding), as well as SABnzbd, Sick Beard, and Logitech Media Server.

 

Is the E3-1200 series simply so powerful that 4 cores/8 threads is more than enough, or would the slower 8-core/16-thread processor a better choice?

 

I know that it's not necessarily a question with a black and white answer, but I would appreciate hearing what some of you also think, and I thank you for sharing your thoughts.

 

Kevin

 

[HellDiverUK]

Xeon D seems very niche.  It's expensive for the board, and it must have ECC DDR4 which is also expensive. 

 

I don't see any reason to go for it over an E3/DDR3 machine.

[kolepard]

Thanks for your thoughts.  I hadn't considered the DDR4 memory issue.

 

Kevin

[garycase]

While the D4 board is pricey, it's a VERY nice board with an excellent processor.  The D-1540 outperforms ANY  E3 series Xeon, and does so with a TDP of only 45w ... just over half of the typical E3 CPU.

 

DDR4 memory has come down quite a bit in the past year, so the price differential isn't as bad as it was, although it is still somewhat more expensive.    On the other hand, the X10SDV-TLN4F supports registered modules, so you'd have a notably more reliable memory subsystem than with a board using unbuffered memory.

 

Bottom line:  If you compare the X10SDV-TLN4F to the X10SL7-F with the top-of-the-line E3's, the price differential isn't as bad as it may seem at first glance (only $200 or so) ... so even with the DDR4 memory it's only about $300 extra to use this board.  Considering the total cost of the new server you're contemplating, that's not really much difference ... and it's definitely a better setup than an E3.    You have to get into the E5 Xeon range to find CPU's that will outperform it ... and then the cost difference melts away 

 

 

[JimPhreak]

I'm using the SuperMicro X10SDV-TLN4F.  I bought this unit and I love it.  Yes it is pricey compared to an E3 + m/b combo but you really are getting a much better system performance wise than an E3 build plus a lot of flexibility for the future, especially if you are planning to do any virtualization.  16 vCPUs is clutch.  I have 64GB in my system right now but the abililty to go up to 128GB in a mini-ITX system is pretty incredible. 

 

Power usage is important to me as well being that it's a home server and my system pulls less than 100w on full load (all 8 cores at 100%, 4 spinning disks, 3 SSDs, etc.) and it idles at under 40w.

 

One thing to note is that the two 10gig NICs do not currently work with VMware but that should change in the near future as a lot of people have complained about it so I expect someone to create a VIB package for ESXi soon.  Hasn't been an issue for me yet since I still don't have a 10gig switch but I'd like to get one in the next year or 2.

 

P.S.  Here is a very good review on the system I bought.

[garycase]

Jim => Thanks for the excellent feedback.    Always nice to have feedback from an actual user rather than having to simply depend on the specs (which, as I noted earlier, are VERY nice for that board).    I think the X10SDV-TLN4F is a superb board that is actually relatively inexpensive when you compare it to the E5 series Xeon systems that it's really closer to than the E3's.

 

 

[JimPhreak]

Jim => Thanks for the excellent feedback.    Always nice to have feedback from an actual user rather than having to simply depend on the specs (which, as I noted earlier, are VERY nice for that board).    I think the X10SDV-TLN4F is a superb board that is actually relatively inexpensive when you compare it to the E5 series Xeon systems that it's really closer to than the E3's.

 

Considering the features it provides, I think it's well worth the price.  I'm very happy with my purchase and I'm amazed the power this sucker packs for it's size every day.  I'm adding more and more functionality to it every day.  I've got 10 Dockers up and running now (Plex Media Server, PlexWatch, PlexPy, PlexRequests, Subsonic, Sonarr, CouchPotato, NZBGet, DelugeVPN, ruTorrent) and that's just my unRAID VM.  I've got 5-6 other VM's running I'm I've got more headroom to add more.

[HellDiverUK]

£809 in the UK for the X10SDV-TLN4.  That's a LOT of money.  Add another £110 for 16GB RAM, you're not far off £1k. 

 

That's firmly in E5 Xeon territory, and AsRock do a very nice little MiniITX E5 board now, too...

[JimPhreak]

£809 in the UK for the X10SDV-TLN4.  That's a LOT of money.  Add another £110 for 16GB RAM, you're not far off £1k. 

 

That's firmly in E5 Xeon territory, and AsRock do a very nice little MiniITX E5 board now, too...

 

Yes it's in E5 territory both price and performance wise but half the power.  That's kind of the selling point of the Xeon D series.  I haven't seen the price of the ASRock Rack EPC612D4I anywhere yet but I can imagine coupling that with an E5 is going to put you in the same ballpark as the SuperMicro Xeon D-1540 boards.

[garycase]

£809 in the UK for the X10SDV-TLN4.  That's a LOT of money.  Add another £110 for 16GB RAM, you're not far off £1k. 

 

That's firmly in E5 Xeon territory, and AsRock do a very nice little MiniITX E5 board now, too...

 

Agree the new EPC612D4I lets you use an E5 series Xeon with mini-ITX ... but to get performance equivalent to this board you need an E5-1650 or better => which gets you up to as much or more than the X10SDV-TLN4; and that's a 140w Xeon, compared to 45w for the D-1540.    For a mini-ITX system I really think the X10SDV-TLN4 is a far better choice.

 

[garycase]

... Yes it's in E5 territory both price and performance wise but half the power.

 

You were clearly writing at the same time I was, but you got one thing wrong -- the D-1540 is 1/3rd the power ... not half 

[JimPhreak]

... Yes it's in E5 territory both price and performance wise but half the power.

 

You were clearly writing at the same time I was, but you got one thing wrong -- the D-1540 is 1/3rd the power ... not half 

 

I was thinking more of the E5-2600's (non-L series) which are 85w.

[garycase]

... Yes it's in E5 territory both price and performance wise but half the power.

 

You were clearly writing at the same time I was, but you got one thing wrong -- the D-1540 is 1/3rd the power ... not half 

 

I was thinking more of the E5-2600's (non-L series) which are 85w.

 

touché 

[HellDiverUK]

... Yes it's in E5 territory both price and performance wise but half the power.

 

You were clearly writing at the same time I was, but you got one thing wrong -- the D-1540 is 1/3rd the power ... not half 

 

Don't take ThermalDesignPower to have anything to do with power consumption. 

 

I'm pretty sure an E5 Xeon will power through a job quicker and therefore return to idle sooner than the Broadwell-DE.  Current thinking in Enterprise and all the papers I've read about building power efficient data centres is, microservers aren't the answer.  Multi-core CPUs that can race through a job and return to idle fastest are the most efficient.

 

If you remember back to my UnRAID Eco thread, I compared an AM1 machine to a Haswell i3.  The i3, despite being a 55W CPU idles lower, and because it has 6 times the processing speed was able to get it's job done much quicker, and used less power as a consequence.

 

Also, spending £1k on a board/CPU that saves a few watts doesn't make financial sense.  How long would you have to run the Xeon-D compared to a fast E3 to pay for itself via reduced power bills?

[garycase]

...  How long would you have to run the Xeon-D compared to a fast E3 to pay for itself via reduced power bills?

 

My point isn't the energy cost savings (although that's real);  it's the lower power consumption and thus cooler running system.    And as for how long it would take a Xeon D to do the same job as a "fast E3" ==> LESS time -- the Xeon-D outperforms ANY E3 Xeon => The D-1540 scores 11166 on PassMark;  NO E3 series Xeon scores over 11000  [An E3-1285L v3 has the highest PassMark score of all E3's at 10722].

 

As I noted above, the D-1540 is more comparable to the E5 Xeons ... supporting quad-channel registered RAM and with E5-level performance.  [And it even outperforms many of them]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[HellDiverUK]

Fair enough, I didn't realise the performance of the Broadwell-DE was as high as that.  I'll shut up now.

[gfjardim]

...  How long would you have to run the Xeon-D compared to a fast E3 to pay for itself via reduced power bills?

 

My point isn't the energy cost savings (although that's real);  it's the lower power consumption and thus cooler running system.    And as for how long it would take a Xeon D to do the same job as a "fast E3" ==> LESS time -- the Xeon-D outperforms ANY E3 Xeon => The D-1540 scores 11166 on PassMark;  NO E3 series Xeon scores over 11000  [An E3-1285L v3 has the highest PassMark score of all E3's at 10722].

 

As I noted above, the D-1540 is more comparable to the E5 Xeons ... supporting quad-channel registered RAM and with E5-level performance.  [And it even outperforms many of them]

 

 

Fair enough, I didn't realise the performance of the Broadwell-DE was as high as that.  I'll shut up now.

 

It has the double CPU cores, but single thread performance is still behind Xeon E3.

 

There's the cost too; a X10SDV-TLN4F board is US$ 900,00 and a X10SL7-F plus a Xeon E3-1270 is about US$ 560,00.

[c3]

Also, spending £1k on a board/CPU that saves a few watts doesn't make financial sense.  How long would you have to run the Xeon-D compared to a fast E3 to pay for itself via reduced power bills?

 

In Texas, about 20 years in a home. In an at scale data center, even longer.

[spylex]

Considering the release of the new 1541 CPU and the ability to do SR-IOV, is there purpose for putting pure unRAID on this? Will the 10gbit network be supported?

 

Is there an elegant 6 drive case that will fit this? I'd look for 6x8TB drives...

 

I'd be looking to put a 16x PCI-I GPU in here also...

[Russ Uno]

A lot of theses servers are used only for Streaming Media and if that is the case with media being delivered in real time, watching a 2 hour movie will take the same amount of time no matter what processor is used. So they won't really get the job done any faster except for a monthly parity check and preclears which are limited on top speed by other factors. So does it really matter how fast the CPU gets the job done. Even when used just for file storage, uploading / downloading other factors like network speed & etc. limit the top speed a job can be done.

The only thing I can see that makes a difference is if the server is doing a lot of processing for other reasons.

 

Am I correct on this?

If so what then is the best processor for a Media server based on a Supermicro MB that may or may not have to transcode 2 1080p streams while writing 4 1080p all in real time and possibly running Kodi or Plex Right.

[garycase]

It's true you don't need a lot of "horsepower" for simple NAS functions -- if that's all you use the server for just about any modern CPU will do.

 

But if you're going to run VM's, Dockers, and want to support multiple streams with transcoding, then your CPU needs grow very rapidly.  One thing that's pretty universally true, however:  It never hurts to have extra "headroom" in your CPU 

 

[spylex]

Exactly, slot all that into a nice small power efficient case/psu and you've potentially got 40TB powerhouse!