What are the considerations when buying an older cpu?


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Hi, 

 

I'm looking into getting a "new" for my machine with either 2xe5 2690 v1 or an amd thread ripper 1950x.

 

Besides TDP and maybe fewer pci e lanes, what would be the difference à newer cpu and an older cpu? 

 

I plan to use this computer as a workstation with the vm running on top of unraid. 

 

Thanks

 

 

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Power consumption is the main consideration.  You might also consider the lack of features, like does the processor or motherboard support Vxd, and Iommu for creating virtual machines, and passing through devices, like video cards, network cards and such.  Personally I went with a low end Xeon, with 32gb ram and I have been absolutely thrilled with it.  I never thought I would need that much RAM, but I am glad I have it now.  I run Plex media server, PFSense, and spool up virtual machines from time to time and I am toying with creating a gaming VM and passing through an Nvidia graphics card so I don't have to have a workstation at my desk.  My suggestion is buy as much processor you can and match a motherboard to it, then build around that configuration like adding ram, hard drives case and so forth.

Edited by SidebandSamurai
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I will obviously duplicate a lot of comments from @SidebandSamurai's post but anyway - an incomplete list of improvements often common when going for newer processor generations:

- support for newer chipsets (might support more/faster RAM and have faster peripheral hardare - USB 3.0/3.1, SATA 3.0, ...)

- more dedicated instructions for fast encryption

- more dedicated instructions for media processing (compress/decompress)

- lower general power consumption for given computation load

- more low-power modes

- more cores or higher top frequency

- updated virtualization support

- better microcode support for defects/security workarounds

- incremental parallelism improvements - i.e. slightly more instructions/second at same clock speed

- if moving to newer socket type, often BIOS support for newer technologies

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On 6/9/2018 at 8:16 AM, thejinx0r said:

I'm looking into getting a "new" for my machine with either 2xe5 2690 v1 or an amd thread ripper 1950x.

If you can (or want to) hold out for a few months, you'll probably start seeing some deals on the TR 1950x, since TR2 is due to come out at the end of the year.

Very happy TR owner here, but I should be upgraded from a 3930K. :)

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