CPU for an "everything" machine?


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I am currently in the process of designing my next server. I would like it to not only be a media server, but also be a backup for several other machines. I plan on dipping into VMs for the first time and learning more about that side of unraid. I also plan on using it for home automation, and for home security (but that will be saved to a UD drive). Finally, I would also like to use it for some gaming as well. I would like it to be able to run just about anything, though I am not as into gaming as I used to be I would like it to be capable of a good experience and not be completely useless in the coming years. And I would like to stay on the cheaper side if at all possible. So, I have currently narrowed it down to to seperate CPU's. I was hoping for opinions on these 2, or if you have a suggestion as to something else I am open to that as well. This is currently planned to be a dual CPU setup. 

 

Dual Intel Xeon E5-2690 v3 (Lower base speed, almost identical turbo speed, 50% more cores/threads) approx. $200 each.

Dual Intel Xeon E5-2667 v3 (Much higher base speed, minimally higher turbo, "only" 16/32 cores/threads) approx. $300 each. 

 

 

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Are you reusing parts e.g. an existing Xeon motherboard?

 

Otherwise, I don't see why you would opt for the dual 2014 Xeon. 5+ years is an eternity for tech stuff and old GHz is usually slower than new GHz.

In terms of cost, Ryzen / Threadripper should be in similar range to dual Xeon all things considered.

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15 minutes ago, testdasi said:

Are you reusing parts e.g. an existing Xeon motherboard?

 

Otherwise, I don't see why you would opt for the dual 2014 Xeon. 5+ years is an eternity for tech stuff and old GHz is usually slower than new GHz.

In terms of cost, Ryzen / Threadripper should be in similar range to dual Xeon all things considered.

I was not reusing stuff I already had, but the prices looked good. As for ryzen, I have no experience with them. But I wanted a lot of cores to toss around for VMs I'm case I get into it. That's why I was looking at dual xeons. From my understanding, you can't do dual ryzen without stopping up to their super expensive epyc series. 

 

Looks like a single threadripper with the same number of cores is around a grand. 

Edited by jebusfreek666
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43 minutes ago, jebusfreek666 said:

I was not reusing stuff I already had, but the prices looked good. As for ryzen, I have no experience with them. But I wanted a lot of cores to toss around for VMs I'm case I get into it. That's why I was looking at dual xeons. From my understanding, you can't do dual ryzen without stopping up to their super expensive epyc series. 

 

Looks like a single threadripper with the same number of cores is around a grand. 

 

You don't need dual ryzen, the 8 core 3800X has as much CPU power as either pair of dual Xeons you list and the 12 core 3900X /3950X  leave them for dust - times move on, those Xeons are a good few years old by now hence being retired from use in server farms.

 

You also don't need lots of cores for VM's, unless you are running specific workloads. VM's are idle or close to idle a lot of the time and most expansion is with docker for effiency. If you are passing through a GPU, you can only pass a single GPU through to 1 VM at a time. With the 'control' app you can start, stop, pause VM's at will from you phone so easy to flip between them and even if you have several VM's running, Linux will do a perfectly good job of sharing our the physical cores to many more partly used virtual cores. The exception to this may be gaming, but you can pin core to that VM when it runs.

 

The main issue with Ryzen is that as a destop platform, it has a limited number of PCI-E lanes , sure these are PCI-E 4.0 but you need a board that shares these out so you can run 10T Nic, SAS cards etc. Still if you pick a board with some of this integrated, it's less of an issue later.

 

 

Edited by Decto
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20 minutes ago, Decto said:

 

You don't need dual ryzen, the 8 core 3800X has as much CPU power as either pair of dual Xeons you list and the 12 core 3900X /3950X  leave them for dust - times move on, those Xeons are a good few years old by now hence being retired from use in server farms.

 

You also don't need lots of cores for VM's, unless you are running specific workloads. VM's are idle or close to idle a lot of the time and most expansion is with docker for effiency. If you are passing through a GPU, you can only pass a single GPU through to 1 VM at a time. With the 'control' app you can start, stop, pause VM's at will and even if you have several VM's running, Linux will do a perfectly good job of sharing our the physical cores to many more partly used virtual cores. The exception to this may be gaming, but you can pin core to that VM when it runs.

 

The main issue with Ryzen is that as a destop platform, it has a limited number of PCI-E lanes , sure these are PCI-E 4.0 but you need a board that shares these out so you can run 10T Nic, SAS cards etc. Still if you pick a board with some of this integrated, it's less of an issue later.

 

 

 

But assuming on a rare occasion I wanted to run 2 different windows VMs for gaming, wouldn't it be helpful to have 8 cores pinned to each? Then I would still need to have enough left over to run both unraid and possibly another VM for something like blue iris or something else. I just want to make sure I have enough to do what I want (even though I am not sure exactly what I am going to do with it yet).

 

Having said that, I could get the same number of cores, and probably better performance with a 2970wx. But again, that's about $1,000 vs $400-$600 for 2 of the ones above. 

Edited by jebusfreek666
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With the Xeons, 8 cores per VM likely not needed. You'll be limited by clock speed before number of cores in most 

games as they prefer a few high clocked cores to many low clocked cores hence why bulldozer was never competitive in gaming. 

 

4 ryzen cores would likely be better than 8 Xeon V3 cores though there are plenty of threads here with Ryzen issues so platform is a personal decision.

 

Likely a single E5 would do most of what you want even light dual gaming. Of the two choices I'd go for the 2667's with an eye to gaming as the higher base and normal clock speed will help. 4-6 cores per gaming VM plenty.

 

Just be aware that a modern CPU @ $400 does that on a third of the power and a lot less heat and noise.

 

Personally for dual gaming I'd have a small mitx/matx build in the cupboard that could transferred to any room in the house or even over to a mates / family at any time. Mines in a kolink satellite cube case not much bigger than a shoe box using an old matx board and I5 2600k.

 

 

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Let's use passmark as a guideline:

  • 2x E5-2690 v3 - 25587 - $400 - 24 cores
  • 2x E5-2667 v3 - 22626 - $600 - 16 cores
  • Ryzen 9 3900X - 31957 - $500 - 12 cores
  • Ryzen 7 3700X - 23839 - $329 - 8 cores

More core doesn't necessarily equal more performance.

 

In fact, apps (particularly Windows apps, and especially games) don't tend to scale linearly with core count.

Slapping 8 last-last-gen cores to a VM thinking it would perform just as well as 4 current-gen cores (especially with regards to games) is rather misguided.

 

 

 

 

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