Lexxar Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 Hey, im planning to build my first unRaid-Rig. As for today i'm running an i5 2500k which sadly isnt capable of vt-d. My main purpose of the Rig will be for Gaming on a Windows 10 (or Mac) VM. Additional Tasks will be an Openelec or Plex Docker and full NAS-Backup operations. Maybe some more Docker will be added in the future. My question now. Will an i5 6600k be enough for my project or are the ht-cores of an i7-6700k or even the 2 more real cores of an 5820k be handy. In addition im planning to use my nvidia gtx770 and 16gb of ram. Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 personally, I would probably choose the i7-6700k. Not only is hyperthreading available, but the cache is larger. It's also a top clock speed. 4 full cores at 4ghz would be great for anything you are virtualizing. For virtualizing, I always choose a CPU with the largest cache and fastest clock speed that is affordable. The 5820k has more cores and more cache, but that may not come into play unless you plan on having 3-4 virtual machines running at the same time and require top speed for each. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 Basically agree with WeeboTech that a 6700k is a good choice if you're only planning on one VM, but if you're planning on running multiple VM's with pass-through video cards and want maximum performance from those cards, the additional PCIe lanes in a Socket 2011-based setup will provide higher performance. In addition, the quad channel memory architecture in the 2011 boards provides an appreciable bump in memory performance. I suspect this would easily offset the advantage of the higher clock speed in the 6700 [Not to mention that you could always assign more cores to the VM, since you'd have 6 real cores to work with] Quote Link to comment
tdallen Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 personally, I would probably choose the i7-6700k. +1 Quote Link to comment
wedge22 Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 I was wondering the same but have a 4790k on hand which I could use or sell and replace with a 6700k. My intention is to run one Windows 10 VM and then Unraid running Plex, Sabnzbd and Sonarr. My apologies for asking in this thread but it's a similar question. Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 In general I'd always say get the best you absolutely can stretch to financially. I've only ever regretted saving a little money to start with and wishing I hadn't sometime later on... Hence my i5... Quote Link to comment
mr-hexen Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 I was wondering the same but have a 4790k on hand which I could use or sell and replace with a 6700k. My intention is to run one Windows 10 VM and then Unraid running Plex, Sabnzbd and Sonarr. My apologies for asking in this thread but it's a similar question. What geo-location are you? I'm looking for a haswell i5/i7 right now! Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 ... In general I'd always say get the best you absolutely can stretch to financially. I've only ever regretted saving a little money to start with and wishing I hadn't sometime later on... Agree. You'll never miss the extra $$ once you've spent it, but you may very well wish you had more "horsepower", more memory; more storage; or a higher-end graphics card as your usage evolves. As I noted earlier, the 6700k is a good choice if you're SURE you won't want to run multiple high-end VM's, but a Socket 2011v3 setup will have much higher PCIe bus bandwidth; significantly better memory bandwidth; and more physical cores [e.g. the 5820k has 6 cores supporting 12 thread with hyperthreading]. ... and while it's easy to upgrade a video card, or add more storage, it's not so simply to replace the basic infrastructure [CPU, motherboard, and memory] => so think carefully before making that choice. Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 ... and while it's easy to upgrade a video card, or add more storage, it's not so simply to replace the basic infrastructure [CPU, motherboard, and memory] => so think carefully before making that choice. I agree with gary, wish I'd done this.... And after seeing his first computer in another thread, I can definitely confirm he's one wise old man.... Sorry Gary. Couldn't resist.. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 "old" is, of course, a very relative term. I can confirm from experience that your perception of that term will change as you age I still remember when I thought 30 was "old" ... and 40 was ANCIENT !! Needless to say, I no longer have the same perception of those ages Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 I can only add that 30 is not old, nor is 40.... I'm only winding you up.... I may not have kids of my own, but I've met plenty of folks from my area who are grandparents by the time they're my age.... and all legally created... Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 I can only add that 30 is not old, nor is 40.... I'm only winding you up.... I may not have kids of my own, but I've met plenty of folks from my area who are grandparents by the time they're my age.... and all legally created... Yes, I knew it was all tongue-in cheek. Looking at your profile, I can see you're truly a YOUNG whippersnapper !! But at least I have all my hair :) Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 Yes, I knew it was all tongue-in cheek. Looking at your profile, I can see you're truly a YOUNG whippersnapper !! But at least I have all my hair :) All my hair is my own, it's just there's not so much of it anymore lol.... But to make up for my follicular sparseness on top of my head I can now proudly boast of far better growth in my nose, ears and on my butt than I ever had when I was a younger man... Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 ... In general I'd always say get the best you absolutely can stretch to financially. I've only ever regretted saving a little money to start with and wishing I hadn't sometime later on... Agree. You'll never miss the extra $$ once you've spent it, but you may very well wish you had more "horsepower", more memory; more storage; or a higher-end graphics card as your usage evolves. As I noted earlier, the 6700k is a good choice if you're SURE you won't want to run multiple high-end VM's, but a Socket 2011v3 setup will have much higher PCIe bus bandwidth; significantly better memory bandwidth; and more physical cores [e.g. the 5820k has 6 cores supporting 12 thread with hyperthreading]. ... and while it's easy to upgrade a video card, or add more storage, it's not so simply to replace the basic infrastructure [CPU, motherboard, and memory] => so think carefully before making that choice. This is a great choice if running multiple windows instances with their own video cards each. Lots of cache, lots of lanes. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 I was wondering the same but have a 4790k on hand which I could use or sell and replace with a 6700k. My intention is to run one Windows 10 VM and then Unraid running Plex, Sabnzbd and Sonarr. My apologies for asking in this thread but it's a similar question. 4790K is no slouch either. Not sure I would sell it for a 6700k unless I were wishing to swap out the underlying infrastructure. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 ... 4790K is no slouch either. Not sure I would sell it for a 6700k unless I were wishing to swap out the underlying infrastructure. Agree => In fact the 4790k actually scores higher on PassMark than the 6700k [11218 vs. 11009]. The only advantage you'd get with a 6700k is about 33% higher memory bandwidth (thanks to DDR4 vs DDR3) and about a 50% bump in graphics performance => but the graphics improvement is only relevant if you're using the on-chip graphics. If you only have the 4790k chip and need to buy both a motherboard and memory anyway, it may be worth selling it and upgrading to the 6700k; but if you also have a motherboard and memory it's probably not worth the bother. Quote Link to comment
antoinecampeau Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 4790K or 6700K. As unraid support virtual machines, theses hyperthreaded cores will be used if you buy an I7. It's worth it. Quote Link to comment
wedge22 Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 Thanks for the response guys, I currently only own the 4790k and it is brand new. The other option that is appealing is going the X99 route and getting a 5820k. I just need to figure out which motherboard would be a good choice as they are all expensive and have many features. I think any board with more than 6 Sata ports would be great. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 It's not just the # of SATA ports => those are easily added. What you can't add is support for additional PCIe lanes. Your 4790k supports 16 lanes; a 2011 motherboard will support 28-40, depending on the CPU. In this case the 2820k supports 28 [if you stepped up to the 5830k you'd get 40]. So basically the 5820k would give you 6 hyperthreaded cores, quad channel memory capable of 68GB/s bandwidth, and 28 PCIe lanes of bandwidth for add-in cards; compared to 4 hyperthreaded cores, dual channel memory with a bandwidth of 25.6GB/s , and 16 PCIe lanes of bandwidth for add-in cards. The real question is whether or not you need that added PCIe lanes and/or want to pay for the higher memory bandwidth. Quote Link to comment
wedge22 Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 Not sure I do need all of that throughput as I only intend to run one VM of Windows 10 as my main rig,no other VMs are required. I only have one gtx 970 which would be for the windows 10 VM. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 Agree -- if you're only going to have one passed-through video card and run a single VM instance then the 4790k you already have is just fine. Quote Link to comment
Adam64 Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 It's not applicable to these two processors but if you're considering buying new shouldn't something that supports ECC RAM be part of the discussion? I recently bought a new motherboard and 32GB of RAM but didn't consider ECC RAM and now I'm regretting it a bit. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 It's not applicable to these two processors but if you're considering buying new shouldn't something that supports ECC RAM be part of the discussion? I recently bought a new motherboard and 32GB of RAM but didn't consider ECC RAM and now I'm regretting it a bit. Agree => if I was building this for myself I'd absolutely use a server-class motherboard (Cxxx chipset) and a Xeon E3 or E5 with ECC memory (in the E5-case it'd also be buffered, which is even better). But in this case, he already has an i7 chip, so there's no option for ECC support. Quote Link to comment
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