Xeon 10-core or i7 6800k?


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Were building a pretty high end server, with a budget of about 2000 euro's.

Got a few questions though. At this moment were not sure which cpu to go for.

Option one is a 10-core Xeon E5-2630 V4. This would do about 14000 in passmark.

Option two is an i7 6800k 6-core. Already got the 5820k @4,5Ghz at home and that does a whopping 17500 in passmark.

 

So the idea is to overclock the i7 to about 4,5 Ghz, with an H100i V2 on it.

 

Only thing is, were running a plex server for about 7 people. Also there will be a VM with about 5 different user accounts running on it.

A few dockers for couchpotato, sabnzbd, sonarr, and maybe some game servers.

 

So the 6-core would perform better, but the 10-core would allow for more scalability for the different dockers and vm's were running.

 

The 10-core would be combined with  32GB of 2400 mhz ECC memory (X99 raider mobo, with ECC support).

The 6-core would be combined with 32GB of 3200 mhz Corsair vengeance memory.

 

There will be some "normal" storage like photo's, documents etc. on the array, which consists of 3x4 TB with one 4TB as parity disk.

The movies and series for plex will be stored outside the array using the unnassigned drives plugin with about 27TB's of HDD in there.

A 960 Evo 500GB PCI-E flash will be used as a cache drive, mainly for the vm to run smoothly on.

 

Main question is about the choice of cpu, but if anyone has any other tips or recommendations, please let us know!

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7 people - Direct streaming or Transcoding?

For transcoding: 14.000 Passmark Points can handle 7 1080p Movies in transcode - but then, the server has a load of 100%.

So you should plan spare CPU-load for other things or use only 6 Transcodes at 1080p (approx. 12.000 PMs) or better 720p (approx. 10.500 PMs).

So you have a spare to do things in the background (Server-mentainance or VMs).

Overclocking isn't a good idea on a server ;)

The i7-6800k is also strong and should be fine - but if you do lots of things in the background, take the CPU with more cores.

The Xeon has a max of 21.000 Passmark Points - not 14.000 - can handle 10x 1080p @ Transcode @ 100% Load but i think, your inet-upload will collapse ;D

The Xeon is maybe the better joice because of a lower TDP of 85W, more cores and more Passmark Points - the i7 has a TDP of 140W, but less expensive.

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Hmm, weird, my first reply got lost.

 

unRAID is many things but at its core it's a fault tolerant storage system.

 

Overclocking a CPU means pushing it to the edge of instability.

 

Instability and fault tolerant servers don't go well together.  If that means buying the E5 to meet your CPU needs then go for it.

 

Server based functions tend to be multi-threaded and like lots of cores/threads.  Gaming is different, games don't tend to be as multi-threaded and like faster cores.  Your use case sounds like a traditional server based profile to me, and therefore better suited to the E5.

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Thanks! The reason for asking is that we aren't sure either about overclocking. Not planning on doing it initially, but as performance needs increase having the possibility to easily increase performance by quit a bit without changing the hardware is always nice. Reliability is ofcourse the most important part. I have run a 2600k at 4,5-5Ghz for many years without a fault, so that's why I wasn't too concerned by the cpu failing.

 

@Zonediver. you said the E5 2630 V4 has a passmark score of 21.000, but all I can find is http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2630+v4+%40+2.20GHz

Because the E5 and i7 at stock perform almost the same (if the link above is correct) and the i7 is cheaper, we were thinking that was the right way to go.

So Unraid has more use for more cores with lower overall scores then less cores with higher overall scores?

 

@schamalamadindong, your first reply was in the same topic but I posted it double in another subforum, that's why it's not here.

 

Any idea how much better ECC memory would be for these kind of tasks? 5 users will store pretty much all their important data on here as well, so if possible we would like the system to as reliable as possible.

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  • 3 years later...

Hey I just came across this post and wanted to ask what you went with? 

i am in a very similar situation. I have a i7-5820K (non oc'ed) and a X99a raider mobo. 7 remote streamers of Plex, typical Sonnar, Raddar etc.. 

But i want to dive deeper into Unraids abilities. My dad's PC is right next to the Unraid box and is fairly high end, and all he does is browse, so questioning his need for it.. So I am considering a VM for him. 

So from what I understand here is that

 

1. Unraid and OC'ing is a no, for stability sake. (Fair)

2. A Xeon CPU requires ECC memory?

3. The Xeon is preferred in OP's scenario as its multi threaded and that works better for Multi Plex streams, and a side of VM?  

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2 hours ago, boianski said:

Hey I just came across this post and wanted to ask what you went with? 

1. Unraid and OC'ing is a no, for stability sake. (Fair)

2. A Xeon CPU requires ECC memory?

3. The Xeon is preferred in OP's scenario as its multi threaded and that works better for Multi Plex streams, and a side of VM?  

The OP hasn't logged in since 2017 so you are unlikely to get a response.

On your questions

1. Constant OC is a no. You can, however, rely on Intel / AMD certified automatic overclock aka boost clock.

2. Xeon does NOT require ECC. Some Xeon motherboards do. And even with ECC, there's buffered and unbuffered so make sure to check the manual.

3. For your case of 7 streams, are they 1080p streams or 4k streams? H264 or H265? 5820K should be able to handle 7+ 1080p H264 streams but probably not 7 1080p H265 streams. 7 4k streams, you are probably better off with Nvidia NVENC.

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