i7-4790k vs E3 Xeons........and then what Mobo

[speedbal]

Hello Unraid world!  Time has come for me to update my system (i have one of the repurposed servers from ebay that were popular here a few years ago).  Now I want to come into the v6 world and be able to run virtual machines, etc.  Now to my questions...

 

1)  I was able to procure a i7-4790k from Fry's today (11/25/2015) for 250$US.  They were running a promo sale today (91$US off) and I didn't want to miss out.  Is this suitable for my purposes described above?  I was going to get one of the 1150 v3 xeon's, but the performance on this one seem to be significantly higher.  I think I loose ECC support (which could be a big deal in a data environment), so I wanted to check with you guys on you thoughts and if other trade offs I am missing.  I certainly can take the processor back, but I didn't want to miss out on the deal.

 

Link to the sale for those curious:  http://images.frys.com/art/email/112515_wed103wpz/wed_web.html?site=cemail112515#set0

 

2) Motherboards:  Seems like what everyone is using is the supermicro boards.  Just curious if I stay with the 4790k, should I go with one of those or one of the many z97 chipset boards from asus/gigabyte.  Linus used an asus for his build in that video that was posted, so just curious on your thoughts.

 

Thanks in advance for your help. 

 

speedbal

 

[speedbal]

After doing a bit more research, the Xeon E3 processors I would consider are these:

 

E3-1276v3 - 280US$ - http://www.microcenter.com/product/442357/Xeon_E3_1276V3_36GHz_LGA_1150_Boxed_Processor

 

E3-1246v3 - 240US$ - http://www.microcenter.com/product/442356/Xeon_E3_1246V3_35GHz_LGA_1150_Boxed_Processor

 

By the way - Microcenter also has the 4790k for the same price as Fry's (250US$):  http://www.microcenter.com/product/434176/Core_i7-4790K_40GHz_LGA_1150_Boxed_Processor

 

Appreciate any thoughts you have to help me land on a decision.

 

speedbal

[garycase]

There's little performance difference between an i7-4790k (Passmark 11227) and an e3-1276v3 (Passmark 10223).  Personally, I'd use the Xeon so I'd have ECC memory support => but if you choose not to then it's fine to use a Z97 based board, since you won't have ECC support anyway.  The only reason to use a SuperMicro board with the i7 would be for IPMI ... so if you're willing to lose both ECC support and IPMI you can save a few $$ with an H97 board.

 

 

[speedbal]

Thanks gary for the response. 

 

I have IPMI on my current setup and very rarely use it (I have my setup hooked up to a monitor/keyboard all the time).  ECC.......i read that this is very important for a data system (to help prevent errors due to memory, I think).  Looks like most on this board do get ECC ram if it is supported by processor/mobo.  The cost difference in the ram itself isn't that significant, so that wouldn't be a driver either way.  I guess the biggest call is whether or not to spend the extra $100US on a motherboard that supports ECC (the supermicro SL7 that is recommended on here is about 250US$ vs. most of the good z97/h97 motherboards being 150US$ish).

 

Decisions decisions.......

 

System today is a data storage repository for all my media.  I also use a few dockers today that I would continue to use in the future.  I haven't been able to use virtualization on my system, but I do see using a W10 and/or a linux VM for various tasks I have running on other machines.  Not sure my use case needs all this horsepower.........yet.

 

speedbal

[JonathanM]

Not sure my use case needs all this horsepower.........yet.

My computer is too fast.

 

Said nobody ever.

 

(except for 286 users with CPU frequency timed games written for the 8088)

[TUMS]

OP, you might want to consider getting a skylake xeon e3 v5 instead of a haswell chip.  Newegg has already started to sell them.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100008494%20601116093

[HellDiverUK]

On the ECC thing.  The neckbeards over in the FreeNAS 'community' have a bug up their respective asses about ECC.  Apparently, the world will implode and all the unicorns will die, if you don't use ECC RAM on ZFS. 

 

Well, at work here I have 6 Dell workstations.  They were powered on in November 2007.  Most of them run 24/7/365.  They all have ECC RAM.  The BIOS records instances of when ECC makes an error correction.  As of today, none of the 6 machines has ever encountered a single ECC error in production.

 

[speedbal]

OP, you might want to consider getting a skylake xeon e3 v5 instead of a haswell chip.  Newegg has already started to sell them.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100008494%20601116093

 

Appreciate the recommendation.  These take new 1151 motherboards........ and I think require DDR4 ram (vs DDR3).  Are you aware of any advantages in moving to this generation vs. staying with the last generation?  At one time I always had to have the newest/best....now (in my old age of ~40) I try to make sure there is a reason to do it.  Here is the comparison of the processors I am considering from ark:

 

http://ark.intel.com/compare/80915,80807,88177

 

On the ECC thing.  The neckbeards over in the FreeNAS 'community' have a bug up their respective asses about ECC.  Apparently, the world will implode and all the unicorns will die, if you don't use ECC RAM on ZFS. 

 

Well, at work here I have 6 Dell workstations.  They were powered on in November 2007.  Most of them run 24/7/365.  They all have ECC RAM.  The BIOS records instances of when ECC makes an error correction.  As of today, none of the 6 machines has ever encountered a single ECC error in production.

 

Yeah I have only started my research on ECC.  Seems it is one of those things that everyone recommends, but is very rarely used.  Currently leaning toward not going the ECC route (although my research continues).  Seems like many people on this board do not have it in their systems....haven't heard of any issues.

 

Thanks for the responses.....keep them coming.

 

speedbal

 

 

[TUMS]

OP, you might want to consider getting a skylake xeon e3 v5 instead of a haswell chip.  Newegg has already started to sell them.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100008494%20601116093

 

Appreciate the recommendation.  These take new 1151 motherboards........ and I think require DDR4 ram (vs DDR3).  Are you aware of any advantages in moving to this generation vs. staying with the last generation?  At one time I always had to have the newest/best....now (in my old age of ~40) I try to make sure there is a reason to do it.

 

speedbal

 

DMI 3.0 and support for up to 64GB DDR4 ECC.

14nm chip vs 22nm.  Means it should run cooler and faster.  Probably draw slightly less power.

I haven't seen any passmark scores on them yet.  If I was buying an E3 today it's what I would buy.  Supermicro should have motherboards out soon if not already.

[speedbal]

 

DMI 3.0 and support for up to 64GB DDR4 ECC.

14nm chip vs 22nm.  Means it should run cooler and faster.  Probably draw slightly less power.

I haven't seen any passmark scores on them yet.  If I was buying an E3 today it's what I would buy.  Supermicro should have motherboards out soon if not already.

 

Supermicro boards just announced quite a few 1151 boards.  Can't seem to find much availability on them at the moment in the states.  Quite a few options.... some with many sata/sas connections.  Too bad they aren't more readily available at the moment. 

 

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/#1151

[garycase]

On the ECC thing.  The neckbeards over in the FreeNAS 'community' have a bug up their respective asses about ECC.  Apparently, the world will implode and all the unicorns will die, if you don't use ECC RAM on ZFS. 

 

Well, at work here I have 6 Dell workstations.  They were powered on in November 2007.  Most of them run 24/7/365.  They all have ECC RAM.  The BIOS records instances of when ECC makes an error correction.  As of today, none of the 6 machines has ever encountered a single ECC error in production.

 

I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure the BIOS only records ECC-detected errors; not instances when a single-bit error was corrected.    So there's no way to know how many of those have occurred.    Modern DDR3 and DDR4 modules are very reliable, but a large-scale study by Google found that 8% of DIMMs have errors every year.    The vast majority of these are correctable on ECC systems, but can cause very random effects on non-ECC systems (corrupted data; system crashes; display glitches; etc.)

 

The Google study is here:  http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/35162.pdf

[HellDiverUK]

 

I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure the BIOS only records ECC-detected errors; not instances when a single-bit error was corrected. 

 

Normal DDR3 is single-bit error corrected anyway, on any motherboard.  Which makes ECC even less important.  It's only useful in mission-critical DB servers IMHO.

 

Now, I have to admit I do run ECC RAM in my UnRAID box, but that is only because I have the RAM left over from another project, and it happens to be nice RAM (1.35v DDR3-1600 Kingston) and the motherboard happens to support ECC (AMD 970 chipset).

[garycase]

... Normal DDR3 is single-bit error corrected anyway, on any motherboard ...

 

  Absolutely NOT true !!

 

Standard (non-ECC) modules are only 8-bits wide ... there's no error-correction information available  That's the whole purpose of ECC.

 

[speedbal]

Appreciate all the discussion.  Is there a reasonably priced ECC supported motherboard?  The extra $100ish seems hard to justify for ECC (my data isn't mission critical by any means).  Seems like the 1150 motherboards that support ECC are 200-250$US and a reasonably good Asus/Asrock/Gigabyte is 100-150$US.

 

I don't mind paying extra for ECC support.....just 20-25% total upgrade premium seems a bit much (motherboard + ram....processor cost is negligible).  Want to spend around 500-600$US for this upgrade (if possible) with 32mb of ram.

 

Thanks, in advance....

 

speedbal.

[garycase]

ECC in an Intel based solution requires a C2xx based motherboard and a CPU with ECC support (some i3's and any Xeon).

 

There are several AsRock and SuperMicro boards under $200 with this support.

 

e.g. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182819

 

 

[Medwynd]

Was just doing some research for my first rig and this is my take on things.

 

After doing a bit more research, the Xeon E3 processors I would consider are these:

E3-1276v3 - 280US$ - http://www.microcenter.com/product/442357/Xeon_E3_1276V3_36GHz_LGA_1150_Boxed_Processor

 

First, I wish I had a microcenter near me for that price on the E3-1276v3.  Do you want/need integrated graphics on your cpu?  It seems your chip selections all include it.

 

2) Motherboards:  Seems like what everyone is using is the supermicro boards.  Just curious if I stay with the 4790k, should I go with one of those or one of the many z97 chipset boards from asus/gigabyte.  Linus used an asus for his build in that video that was posted, so just curious on your thoughts.

If you were to go with an z97 board and keep your i7-4790k, I liked the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 @ only 110$ after rebate.

 

Plenty of sata connectors as well:

6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by Intel Z97

2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by ASMedia ASM1061

1 x SATA Express 10 Gb/s Connector

1 x M.2_SSD (may never be needed)

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157500&cm_re=ASRock_Z97_Extreme6-_-13-157-500-_-Product

 

Appreciate the recommendation.  These take new 1151 motherboards........ and I think require DDR4 ram (vs DDR3).  Are you aware of any advantages in moving to this generation vs. staying with the last generation?  At one time I always had to have the newest/best....now (in my old age of ~40) I try to make sure there is a reason to do it.  Here is the comparison of the processors I am considering from ark:

 

http://ark.intel.com/compare/80915,80807,88177

 

DMI 3.0 and support for up to 64GB DDR4 ECC.

14nm chip vs 22nm.  Means it should run cooler and faster.  Probably draw slightly less power.

I haven't seen any passmark scores on them yet.  If I was buying an E3 today it's what I would buy.  Supermicro should have motherboards out soon if not already.

 

I was tempted to go with the E3 v5, but in reality, it wasn't worth it for a couple reasons:

1) A bit of extra cost for DDR4 and personally wont need 64GB of RAM

2) The new motherboards will surely be more expensive

2) Limited availability currently of 1151 motherboards

 

[speedbal]

Thanks all for the feedback..... here is what I ended up with (will build it next weekend).  I was able to purchase all this from my local microcenter and ended getting a pretty good deal in my opinion.

 

Asus z97-E:  $109.99 - $20.00 (processor bundle) = $89.99  http://www.microcenter.com/product/446625/Z97-E_LGA_1150_ATX_Intel_Motherboard

 

Intel i7-4790k:  $249.99  http://www.microcenter.com/product/434176/Core_i7-4790K_40GHz_LGA_1150_Boxed_Processor

 

2x Crucial 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 Memory:  $69.99 - $10.00 (processor/motherboard bundle) = $59.99 x 2 = $119.98  http://www.microcenter.com/product/385182/Ballistix_Sport_16GB_DDR3-1600_(PC3-12800)_CL9_Dual_Channel_Desktop_Memory_Kit_(Two_8GB_Memory_Modules)

 

Total = $459.96 + Tax

 

When I compared the cost, ECC just didn't make the cut (hopefully I won't regret this cost vs. benefit analysis).  Again....thanks for all the help.

 

speedbal

[garycase]

What did you do with the 4790k you bought at Fry's ??

 

Agree you saved a bit by not using ECC.  A nice motherboard/CPU bundle with a SuperMicro motherboard and E3-1241v3 CPU costs $428.98 at Newegg.    You're only paying about $32 (plus your sales tax) more than that to get a Z97 system with your memory.

 

Not a bad tradeoff if you don't need care about the "insurance" that ECC provides.

 

One thing you may want to consider:  Your memory subsystem will be FAR more reliable if you only install two modules instead of four.    The bus loading is FAR higher with 4 modules installed, and the likelihood of random memory errors increases significantly.    That's true with or without ECC, but at least with ECC the additional errors are automatically corrected.    I'd just install 16GB on an unbuffered system without ECC protection.    An alternative is to use a pair of 16GB modules, but these are currently very expensive.

 

 

 

 

[speedbal]

garycase...

 

Took back the one from frys (saved more by bundling at microcenter).

 

As far as the supermicro board/xeon combo......I couldn't find a board under 200 that would support 2 video cards (planning to run VMs and i want the option to run at least 2 VMs needing video) and support from my 2 sata cards (my rig has 20 sata drive slots).  Maybe I missed it.  Plus the price I mentioned included memory.  I don't believe the mobo/processor combo you mentioned from newegg included ram.  Mine did (more delta).  Am I missing something?  If the price delta was really on $32, I would jump on it quickly (this is all still unopened, so not afraid to return if I am wrong).

 

Thanks, in advance, for the help.

 

speedbal

[garycase]

Clearly the Newegg combo doesn't include RAM ... that's why I noted you were only effectively paying $32 plus the sales taxes for your RAM ... thus it was a nice savings over buying ECC.

 

The main point I was making above is that if you're going to use non-ECC RAM in an unbuffered system it's a far better choice to only install 2 RAM modules.    If you install 4 modules, the address and data bus signaling waveforms are significantly degraded, which notably increases the likelihood of random memory errors [This is true in any unbuffered system -- but at least in those with ECC those added errors will be corrected].

 

[c3]

... Normal DDR3 is single-bit error corrected anyway, on any motherboard ...

 

Standard (non-ECC) modules are only 8-bits wide ...

The above is

 

  Absolutely NOT true !!

 

But this is correct.

 

there's no error-correction information available  That's the whole purpose of ECC.

DIMMs are 64/72 bits wide, 72 in the case of ECC.

[speedbal]

Clearly the Newegg combo doesn't include RAM ... that's why I noted you were only effectively paying $32 plus the sales taxes for your RAM ... thus it was a nice savings over buying ECC.

 

The main point I was making above is that if you're going to use non-ECC RAM in an unbuffered system it's a far better choice to only install 2 RAM modules.    If you install 4 modules, the address and data bus signaling waveforms are significantly degraded, which notably increases the likelihood of random memory errors [This is true in any unbuffered system -- but at least in those with ECC those added errors will be corrected].

 

Thanks for the clarification and education.  These forums are always helpful to me since this is not my background.

 

speedbal