I want to put together a dual socket server to handle a few different things. One, freenas in a virtual machine (I'm aware of the caveats with that and what's required) Plex, and Ubuntu server to do some work-related tasks (web development/python/database work) and maybe some personal tasks like Teamspeak or whatever else.
I was originally thinking of going 1366 socket, given the price, and had settled on a pair of Xeon L5645's with a Super Micro X8DTE. This is an extremely low cost setup, but I'm thinking I want to instead go for something with a little more power. I don't want to buy all new hardware (except for maybe storage and ram)
I'm not well-versed in what all the chipsets/sockets are for dual-socket boards and what a good Xeon would be, but I know I want at least 6 cores per CPU. I've already got the server case (its a 4U ATX compatible case, so nothing proprietary) and rack, now I just need cpu's, board and ram.
I guess that's sort of my problem here. I don't know what "1 generation old" is. I don't know what chipset to look for, what socket that is, (2011v2? I assume?) and then of course what CPUs to actually get.
So I have built two machines recently with the Dual E5-2670 setups. One was the Dual E5-2670, intel Motherboard and 128gb of ram for around $450. It was from a server pull but it really worked out well. So well in fact I decided to build another for my home server. This time I got THIS and 1xE5-2670 and 64gb of ECC ram from ebay for a total cost of $460. The Asrock motherborad has more features than the Intel MB I got with the first kit. Plus it was brand new which is nice.
The first kit (2xE5-2670, intel Motherboard and 128gb of ram) I got was built into a workstation. Honestly I dont utilize the power of everything in the workstation. I am into photography and using lightroom and photoshop doesnt really utilize more than half the cores. Capture one pro does seem to utilize more cores than Lightroom. Using Autodesk applications (Civil 3D and infraworks) does use the cores but the ram is hardly touched. I think the most I have used has been 40-50GB of ram. That was a Civil 3D model with a very large survey and large surface. All in all its very hard to make it sweat.
Now my server I built I went with the 1xE5-2670 and 64Gb or ram because I cant see using anymore than that based off my experience from my previous build. I use Windows server 2012 and its mostly a file server, AD, DNS and Plex server. I have 2 VM running to help sandbox some things. Now the AD, DNS and File server takes like no CPU horsepower. But Plex will bring anything down to its knees. My previous server was an Haswell I5 with 16GB of ram and that handled it pretty well. It could handle 5 plex transcoding streams to external clients. With the new CPU I expect I could go to 7-8 transcoding streams external. Keep in mind that the dual E5-2670 idles at 120watts and peaks at 600watts (with a graphics card) going full out mode stressing everything including disks. One of the reason I went with a single E5-2670 as it will use less electricity.
When I first got this my first thoughts were 4 year old hardware yeah its on its way out. But when you think about that its skewed because this hardware is no where near what consumers can get even today. The only advantage new hardware has on this is clock speed and some instruction sets. The Sandy Bridge is still very much relevant today especially with 16 cores/32 threads and 128GB of ram.
Benchmarks: Dual E5-2670, 128GB or ram Passmark: CPU Markscore 19,300 Cinebench: 2000cb CPU-Z: 1200 Single/19700 Multi Thread AIDA64 Memory Read: 74,000 MB/s AIDA64 Memory Write: 76,000 MB/s Performed Memtest86 for 33Hours without Errors AIDA64 Stress Test Temperature: Idle 39°C, Load 68°C After 30Min.
Looking back at what I bought I purchased the E5-2670 (C2 stepping) for $65 back in April on Ebay, the 64GB of ram for $85 and the motherboard was $319 from Newegg (Back before they jacked the price up) so it was actually $470 for the total.