Desktop I7 vs Xeon for plex and a few VMs

[wisem2540]

I was looking really heavy at an E3 or an E5 Xeon.  I slowly started learning more toward an I7.  Not only do I get a similr passmark score over 10,000 with an I7-4790, but I can use a Sub 100 dollar board.  My question is, is there really any advantage to a Xeon assuming the passmark is almost identical?

[JonathanM]

I was looking really heavy at an E3 or an E5 Xeon.  I slowly started learning more toward an I7.  Not only do I get a similr passmark score over 10,000 with an I7-4790, but I can use a Sub 100 dollar board.  My question is, is there really any advantage to a Xeon assuming the passmark is almost identical?

I could be wrong, but I think any advantage you might get with a Xeon wouldn't be available with a cheap motherboard. All the good stuff like registered memory, proper PCIe ACS, and IPMI are all only available on server boards starting at $200 and up. So, the question is, how much is the ability to have huge amounts of reliable RAM and multiple VM's with full passthrough running simultaneously worth to you? The i7 is probably a better choice (faster, cheaper) for a single user gaming setup, the E5 better for serious multitasking.

[wisem2540]

Thats what I was thinking as well.  I am not sure the Xeon is actually worth the extra cpu cost and board cost

[isvein]

I wonder if there is any say supermicro boards for xeon that is in micro-atx

[garycase]

As Jonathan noted, the Xeon-based systems are oriented towards those looking for more reliable systems with advanced server technologies.    You get error-correcting memory support with the E3-based systems; and buffered RAM support (with ECC of course) with the E5 based boards.    The chipsets and motherboards have better bus features, IPMI capabilities, and are simply more reliable than the consumer grade chipsets and boards.  It's all a function of what you want.    Many folks building UnRAID systems opt for server-class boards ... which is easy to understand => if you want a fault-tolerant server, then it's reasonable to want it to be tolerant of memory faults in addition to disk faults.

 

[garycase]

... Although the text of your question didn't note how you planned to use this system, the title clearly does [Plex and a few VM's].    I'd think with that utilization the better virtualization features in a quality server-class board would easily weigh towards using a Xeon=based system.