Hey all, in the next few weeks I'll be upgrading my pc. Right now I'm on a older setup, an 8350. I know its no slouch, but I've been finding myself in need of more cpu horsepower and really overall in need of a more modern platform.
While I know that zen is right around the corner, I think that it would be pretty fun to do a dual xeon build, especially with the prices some of the chips are going for on ebay right now, as well as the ram.
http://pcpartpicker.com/list/TdbzkT
this is my working list now, I'll be bringing some parts over and then swapping out the others, but heres a short list of explanation for each part
cpus - for the money these are insane. This is going to offer a huge increase over my 8350 for my work, and offer a large boost even for gaming
cooler - this is more than enough for the xeons, cheap and easy
mobo - has lots of pci-e expansion, important to some ideas I have for this project going forward. Also has normal mounting brackets, not the narrow socket
ram - I'll be buying 64gb of ecc off of ebay, the ecc is important with some ideas I have going forward with this
storage - just bringing what I have over
gpu - bringing what I have over, this is plenty of gpu for me
psu - bringing the one I have over
case - reusing the one I have, i may need to cut the bend in the mobo tray out, but i really love this case
fans - the gentle typhoons arent as quiet as noctuas or others, but offer better performance as intakes with the r5's configuration, the noctua offers better airflow in unrestricted areas at lower sound
sound card - just the cheapest I could find to add some sound to this
tv tuner - honestly I just have this because I picked it up for a steal and it's nice to be able to use my computer like a dvr, and watch without having to get a tv
usb pci-e card - again, cheapest i could find to add some connectivity
I'm also considering adding a fan controller and maybe another front panel in the 5.25 bay with more usb, etc. but other than that this really the finished list for the first version of this
anyone have any suggestions? any advice with doing a dual xeon build? I've never built anything like this, so I'm pretty excited to get started. anything I might have forgotten? I just want to make sure everything goes swimmingly with this upgrade
what kind of usage? also watch out for ES chips.
video editing, audio production, and some large scale statistics and data use. A wide variety, I know, but audio is my hobby, video is to help a friend out, and for me moving forward, and the stats and data is for school. Why watch out for es? whats the deal there?
Looks awesome! In regards of the cpus, the gotchas are:
- Engineering samples does not clock above 2,6 ghz (Source: Brian at Tech City)
- There are 2 versions of it where one has a bug fix that allows passthrough for virtualization. SR0KX is the one you want.
awesome, thanks for the heads up. I'll need to look for the ones with virtualization, while it doesnt matter for me now it's something I'm interested in for the future. Thanks for the heads up, I didnt know that not all cpus supported virtualization or wouldnt clock up.
looks good, psu says it comes with dual 8pin eps
otherwise would try to make sure no issues with clearance for stuff, if say the 2 sockets were too close together to have the 212's both facing up, or if it would block ramslots if they were both facing front to back etc. that the motherboard will fit http://img.bhs4.com/89/a/89ae41793f0672b64f4ec5761ae47ac0c5c86f73_large.jpg
etc
will want good airflow for the vrm/chipset whatever heatsyncs as servers usually have quite a bit across the whole board in rack cases, so if they decided to cheap out a bit in the assumption it would be in that scenario. but you were talking about fans so probably not running a bare minimum configuration so should be good.
yeah, airflow is something that I've done a lot of experimenting with especially in my r5, so I'm not too worried. and as far as I can tell there shouldnt be any issues with blocking ram slots (its lower profile ram typically and they 212 doesnt really tend to have issues). I had intended to keep both coolers facing the rear to see what kind of temps I would have, and if temperatures became an issue then facing one or both upwards, however I would like to keep as much of the ceiling covered for sound dampening.
And yeah, the PSU does have 2 cpu pins. I knew that because my motherboard has an 8 pin and 4 pin and I've got bot connected but I had forgotten to check! thanks for the heads up
ye usually 1 8pin eps per socket, but psu listed a 4+4 eps and a 8pin eps so should be good :p