Consolidation ideas!

[rory4881]

Hi guys and gals!

 

Not such a dilemma, but a stumbling block of deciding what to do with my kit these days!

Also, being pressed a little by the missus to reduce the amount of individual computers I have in the house.

 

Currently I have the following:

 

1x HTPC in living room - G3420 (Brand new build)

1x Main Rig - Hackintosh - i7 4770K - watercooled, 16gb Ram with 2x Benq 24" monitors

1x 2U Unraid Server - i5 4460, 32gb ram - 14 tb - 7HDD, Plex docker + Win10vm for download and iTunes server, LinuxMint VM

1X 4u Man cave - Win10 Gaming machine - i5 4440, AMD r9 380 on 55 inch LED (not doing much gaming at all)

 

Missus is saying the HTPC has to go as the Roku is perfect for her needs!

 

I am thinking of shifting on all 4 machines (sequentially due to data of course) and building a hefty Xeon machine that will run Unraid as stated above with the 2 vm's, with a Hackintosh GPU passthrough VM replacing my main rig (doing V little video work these days), and a gaming Win10VM with GPU passthrough.

 

Do you think that is possible?

Any and all ideas welcome....

 

[SpaceInvaderOne]

Yes definately possible.

I run a xeon server 14 cores and 64 gig ram which allows me to run a few vms together fine.

A windows 10 gaming vm from which i stream the games to an nvidea shield tv and raspberry pi 3 using moonlight.

I use a osx vm which works very well. If i allocate 12 cores to that vm i get a geekbench 3 score of 33,000. For these i passthrough a 1070 watercooled msi seahawk for gaming and an older radeon 6450 for the osx. Also run a openelec media vm which also uses the 6450.

My other vms have no gpu passthrough. Those are a ubuntu vm, windows 7, winxp and a win 98 vm (just for fun).

In addition to vnc i use splashtop desktop to connect to the vms from my laptop as it is crossplatform and works much better than vnc or rdp and splashtop allows connection outside the lan over the internet.

Good luck with your build

[rory4881]

Not one to be easily swayed but done a quick price up.

£2k on a chip! Ouch!

[rory4881]

In all seriousness, any build, minus drives, would need to come in at around £1K

[SpaceInvaderOne]

Not one to be easily swayed but done a quick price up.

£2k on a chip! Ouch!

 

I didnt pay £2k  as i bought the engineering sample version of chip for under £500! Intel Xeon E5 2690 V4 QHVE which you can get from https://world.taobao.com/item/527986158371.htm?spm=a312a.7700714.0.0.qcjouK#detail  but please note engineering samples are not meant to be sold as they are given to manufacturers by intel for developement of their products , motherboards etc

[rory4881]

Certainly worth looking into.

 

Did you find creating the Hack VM difficult? And, its GPU passthrough?

[SpaceInvaderOne]

Not at all. Its harder than setting up a windows vm using the gui as you have to make all changes in the xml. But archedrafts guide is very straight forward and you will find plenty of help here should you get stuck. But just like when building a baremetal hackintosh its best to use a gpu that is natively supported by osx

[rory4881]

Cool. I see the 650ti I have in my hack currently is a struggler to pass through.

 

Any non-chinese charactered websites for Xeon's?

Could definitely do with one with multiple higher-threaded cores.

[SpaceInvaderOne]

Cool. I see the 650ti I have in my hack currently is a struggler to pass through.

 

Any non-chinese charactered websites for Xeon's?

Could definitely do with one with multiple higher-threaded cores.

 

Use the website http://taobaofocus.com/  they are a shipping agent and will do the process for you and ship it to you. I use them and they are good. It should translate the listing too. Check ebay too you can find them there sometimes, but some i have seen there have not been as good as taobao. If getting an es chip make sure you get a motherboard that will support it. Some boards will not, mainly server boards from hp dell etc. Asus asrock msi all seem to be okay.

[rory4881]

Have you done many transactions with them? Somewhat reserved when parting with hard earned cash on third party sites.

Reviews seem a bit hit and miss also.

[SpaceInvaderOne]

Have you done many transactions with them? Somewhat reserved when parting with hard earned cash on third party sites.

Reviews seem a bit hit and miss also.

 

I have done 3 with http://taobaofocus.com/ As a shipping agent they are reliable. They will order whatever you like on the chinese site. When it arrives to them they will send you photos so you can check item before they ship it to you. Then they will repackage it  to make it smaller for shipping if you require.

I use them because they are one of the only agents i have found who except paypal, so i guess there is some protection from paying that way.

[rory4881]

Will take a closer look when it comes to purchase time.

 

Looking across the Xeon range, how many cores/threads should I be looking at if I was running a Win10 Gaming VM with gpu passthrough, Hackintosh as main daily rig with gpu passthrough, An openelec/htpc with gpu passthrough, and a linux and Win10 regular vm's, with Plex serving 7/8 family members/friends?

[rory4881]

Many thoughts on dual X5670?

[SpaceInvaderOne]

Many thoughts on dual X5670?

 

the passmark score of that cpu is 8101. It supports both vt-d and vt-x. But the single core speed is 1343 which is a little low in my opinion. It would be fine for plex but you may not get quite the performance you want from gaming which likes higher single core speeds. The chip was released in 2010 so is 6.5 years old now. Personally i would look for something a bit newer with a higher sigle core speed.

 

 

[rory4881]

Still reading and procrastinating, and reading some more.

All I want is loads of cores, at a decent clock speed, at a decent price. Surely it's not that hard?

 

I initially came to Unraid via Linus, so spent a couple mins that way.

 

The dual e5 2670 build looks interesting.

Not top notch on gaming, but still decent fps on most newer games, and all the cores for vms and dockers galore!

[garycase]

... the passmark score of that cpu is 8101. It supports both vt-d and vt-x. But the single core speed is 1343 which is a little low in my opinion. It would be fine for plex but you may not get quite the performance you want from gaming which likes higher single core speeds. The chip was released in 2010 so is 6.5 years old now. Personally i would look for something a bit newer with a higher sigle core speed.

 

Note that the single core speed of the much newer E5-2690v4 you're looking at isn't all that much higher ... PassMark of 22550 / 14 cores => 1610/core.    But you can, of course, assign multiple cores as needed to boost performance in any individual VM.

 

Note also that while ES versions are indeed bargains, you need to carefully check the precise stepping of the chip you're looking at and be CERTAIN it has all of the features you need.    Some ES chips do NOT include vt-d [As a few folks have discovered in the thread on the very low-cost E5-2670's that recently flooded the market].    Also, the PassMark scores are based on the shipping retail chips; and ES chips are often lower performance, as the final "tweaks" haven't yet been completed and/or the clock speeds are often lower than the final versions of the chips.  Unless you run your own PassMark test, you really have no way of knowing the actual value for any specific chip you may get.  [but it will still be a VERY nice chip ... certainly worth it at the ~ $500 range you're looking at]

 

[SpaceInvaderOne]

... the passmark score of that cpu is 8101. It supports both vt-d and vt-x. But the single core speed is 1343 which is a little low in my opinion. It would be fine for plex but you may not get quite the performance you want from gaming which likes higher single core speeds. The chip was released in 2010 so is 6.5 years old now. Personally i would look for something a bit newer with a higher sigle core speed.

 

Note that the single core speed of the much newer E5-2690v4 you're looking at isn't all that much higher ... PassMark of 22550 / 14 cores => 1610/core.    But you can, of course, assign multiple cores as needed to boost performance in any individual VM.

 

Note also that while ES versions are indeed bargains, you need to carefully check the precise stepping of the chip you're looking at and be CERTAIN it has all of the features you need.    Some ES chips do NOT include vt-d [As a few folks have discovered in the thread on the very low-cost E5-2670's that recently flooded the market].    Also, the PassMark scores are based on the shipping retail chips; and ES chips are often lower performance, as the final "tweaks" haven't yet been completed and/or the clock speeds are often lower than the final versions of the chips.  Unless you run your own PassMark test, you really have no way of knowing the actual value for any specific chip you may get.  [but it will still be a VERY nice chip ... certainly worth it at the ~ $500 range you're looking at]

 

Garycase i dont think he is looking at the 2690v4 now, he is considering dual 2670.

 

Regarding the es chips i totally agree you have to be careful what you get and research the chip that you are getting. I have used 2 es chips recently and both have been fine. I was worried before they arrived but always thought i could resell on ebay for the same as i got them for, had any not been what i needed.

 

I dont think the X5670 is not a capable chip. But it is nearly 7 years old. I personnally wouldnt want to build a new rig with such an old cpu. Because if you want newer features of modern motherboard such as usb 3.1 etc you need a newer cpu.

Plus for me ,i would always rather use 1 cpu rather than 2 if i can get similar performance, because of the energy saving and the avoiding the cost of a dual cpu board.

Yeah e5-2670 single core is 1614, whilst the X5670 is 1343. But that isnt small, its 20% quicker. Yeah its no 6700k speed (2331) but to me 20% is quite a good increase 

[rory4881]

All good points!

 

My main concern is cost, as it can be in this game!

Basically the majority of the proceeds will come from selling the water-cooled G5 modded Hackintosh i7 4770k, 1x 4440 win10 rig, 1x 4460 (current unraid runner) and a new but low spec htpc.

 

I can put a couple hundred to this, but not much more.

 

I kept coming back to this build: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=46077.msg470590;topicseen#msg470590

 

It seems to have all the cores I want for VM's, and is 'good enough' for gaming.

I checked fps out on youtube gaming runs and seemed more than good enough to me.

 

Power is another slight drawback, but I would be reducing 4 machines to 1, so would cover the power tradeoff easily.

 

As HVM and IOMMU should be fine with these, can you envisage any issues in pass through?

 

For my requirements, I can't think of a better build for the price point that would deliver what I need in terms of single core speed and volume of cores.

 

Is there a better build out there for the money?

[rory4881]

....And I have done some reading on ES chips. I'm pretty sure, that whilst it can be a cracking ROI, that it's not something I want to get involved in.

 

 

[SpaceInvaderOne]

All good points!

 

My main concern is cost, as it can be in this game!

Basically the majority of the proceeds will come from selling the water-cooled G5 modded Hackintosh i7 4770k, 1x 4440 win10 rig, 1x 4460 (current unraid runner) and a new but low spec htpc.

 

I can put a couple hundred to this, but not much more.

 

I kept coming back to this build: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=46077.msg470590;topicseen#msg470590

 

It seems to have all the cores I want for VM's, and is 'good enough' for gaming.

I checked fps out on youtube gaming runs and seemed more than good enough to me.

 

Power is another slight drawback, but I would be reducing 4 machines to 1, so would cover the power tradeoff easily.

 

As HVM and IOMMU should be fine with these, can you envisage any issues in pass through?

 

For my requirements, I can't think of a better build for the price point that would deliver what I need in terms of single core speed and volume of cores.

 

Is there a better build out there for the money?

 

I think that its a good build. The cpus are definately a bargin. There should not be any probs with passthrough as the 2670s supporrt vt-d and vt-x. Asrock boards are very good too. Should make a great server!

[garycase]

The 2670's are definitely a bargain, as long as you don't mind building

 

 

Note that in a dual-core configuration the effective Passmarks/CPU is only 1166, which is lower than you had indicated you were trying to achieve.  [A dual-CPU 2670 configuration has a PassMark rating of 18654]

 

But with 16 cores available, you should easily be able to get the performance you want by simply assigning additional cores to any VM that needs them.    In addition, the memory you need for that system is also available very inexpensivly, so you can load it up with 64GB, or even 128GB, of RAM, which will let you be very generous in the amount of RAM you assign to your VMs.

 

 

 

[SpaceInvaderOne]

The 2670's are definitely a bargain, as long as you don't mind building

 

 

Note that in a dual-core configuration the effective Passmarks/CPU is only 1166, which is lower than you had indicated you were trying to achieve.  [A dual-CPU 2670 configuration has a PassMark rating of 18654]

 

But with 16 cores available, you should easily be able to get the performance you want by simply assigning additional cores to any VM that needs them.    In addition, the memory you need for that system is also available very inexpensivly, so you can load it up with 64GB, or even 128GB, of RAM, which will let you be very generous in the amount of RAM you assign to your VMs.

 

I dont think that is actually true. Yes the passmark is 18654 for dual 2670 but you dont divide by the number of cores to get a single thread speed.

When a core turbos up there is an all core turbo speed and single core, two core speed etc aswell, which is higher than the all core speed.

The single thread passmark speed for a single 2670 is 1614 yet its passmark score is 12454, but 12454 divided by 8 is 15556 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2670+%40+2.60GHz

 

Note that the single core speed of the much newer E5-2690v4 you're looking at isn't all that much higher ... PassMark of 22550 / 14 cores => 1610/core.    But you can, of course, assign multiple cores as needed to boost performance in any individual VM.

 

The single thread passmark of the 2690v4 is actually 1968  http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2690+v4+%40+2.60GHz

 

Although you can assign multiple cores to a vm this is only good when the software on the vm you are using, can use multicores effectively. Alot of games will not do this so puting 8 cores instead of 4 will give no real benefit to the vm in that use case.

 

Gary i hope i dont sound rude in contradicting what you say, as i have read alot of your posts and you are very knowledgable and what you have written has helped me in the past. i just thought i should point this out. 

 

 

[garycase]

You're correct as long as all cores aren't active.  If you're running a single core thread, and the CPU is largely idle on the other cores, then you will indeed get better performance -- that's what the single core results on PassMark show.

 

But if all cores are active, then you won't get that level of performance.  So if your application mix is stressing the CPU (admittedly probably not likely with this many cores), you'll get closer to the lower value/core.

 

The simple fact, however, is that a dual 2670 system will almost certainly have PLENTY of performance for what the user wants to do here 

[rory4881]

So I am on the lookout for pieces.

Struggling for a rackmount case that will fit the larger board.

 

Looks good to me, but always good to get a second opinion, but how does this Ram look?

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-64GB-8x8GB-605313-071-PC3L-10600R-ECC-DDR3-1333MHz-HP-DELL-IBM-Lenovo-/131855768729?hash=item1eb3375c99:g:HygAAOSwnNBXaouw

 

 

[garycase]

The memory looks fine.  It's really amazing how much RAM you can get for the money if you buy the previous generation !!