Current Best bang for buck 55XX or 56XX cpu ?..

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RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
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Hi,

I am building a game server (DayZ) from one of my C6100 nodes and the advice is that CPU power is better then masses of ram.

Fearing my poor L5520s may crumple under the weight, what is the best 55xx / 56xx series processor for around the US$200 mark currently available (second user).

Thanks
RB
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
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L5639s are nice - 50% more cores than the L5520 at the same TDP... but 5x the price at $120 each (eBay pricing here and below).

The $200 X5660 are a bit of a deal if you need even more speed, with Six cores at 2.8Ghz and 95 watts TDP. They are a tad slower clock than the also-reasonable x5670, but sell for less - sometimes much less. The speedy X5680 is too hot for the c6100, and too expensive anyway. Speaking of hot, has anyone seen an actual 4.4Ghz x5698?
 

RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
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Thanks DBA,

Had a look at the X5650 and X5660. I can get 2x X5650s for just over the price of a single X5660 so I may go that route. The X5660 may be just out of budget.

RB
 

PersonalJ

Member
May 17, 2013
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DayZ servers run fine on X5650s. The L5639 is a bit slow for larger servers as the Arma2oaserver.exe is single threaded.
 
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mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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esoisoinc is selling X5650's for $115 (offer accepted) now! very nice chips.
 

mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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yup! they also have L5640's which are slightly faster than the L5639 and power efficient.

Not quite the $75 L5639 deal but still a rocking cpu (X5650) for the money!
 

RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
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DayZ servers run fine on X5650s. The L5639 is a bit slow for larger servers as the Arma2oaserver.exe is single threaded.
Great to hear, thanks.

If you have experience setting one up and are willing, I could do with a few pointers getting the environment setup. Battleye is giving issues at the moment and there is a stack of half complete or old guides out there which are muddying the waters.


esoisoinc is selling X5650's for $115 (offer accepted) now! very nice chips.
Thanks for the lead. I found a couple for around $250 (for the pair) but that was about it.

RB
 

RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
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Did you counter offer mentioning that you know someone had an offer of $115 accepted ?.

Esoisoinc tend to be a bit random based on experience and reports here.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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I did $110 also today - counter to $125 - Did $112.5 - counter to $125 then I got on web chat and ended up 4 @ $115. I would put that in the offer message if I was making an offer.

CA sales tax added another $10 though :-/
 

cactus

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Jan 25, 2011
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OT: Ebay hasn't let me sign on today. Says password is bad, so I change the password and it says my password is bad...
 

bookemdano

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Jun 29, 2011
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Hi guys, sadly I missed the L5639 heyday--Their price has more than doubled from its apparent low a few months ago. Sucks to be me!

So I'm trying to decide between a pair of:

L5630 (cheapest yet slowest but also low TDP)
L5640 (only advantage I can see is low-ish 60W TDP)
X5650 (seems to be the best "bang" for the buck but 95W TDP)

My feeling is that most of these cores are going to spend the vast majority of their day idling. So I'm thinking TDP is less important for me than idle power consumption. I am leaning towards the X5650 because I hope to do some video encoding/transcoding with this server.

Has anyone made an offer on the X5650 in the last week or two? I'm curious if the prices are staying the same, dropping or rising at this point. Also anyone want to guesstimate the idle wattage of the L5630 versus the X5650?

Thanks! So much great info here.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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What are you using these for? That is a pretty important data point for this discussion.
 

bookemdano

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Jun 29, 2011
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What are you using these for? That is a pretty important data point for this discussion.
Sorry yeah should have stated. It's going to be my home server... replacing a Xeon X3440 16GB (maxxed out) setup... just really want something that will last me a while and has a lot of expansion, but something previous gen so it won't break the bank. So I picked up the Supermicro X8DTH-6F for $250 (pretty good deal I think, considering everything that board can do!) and a second-hand SM SC745 chassis. I've got 48GB of ECC Registered DDR3 ready to go.

I run (and will run) ESXi 5.1 and will use Vt-d to some extent.

My current VMs are somewhat memory-starved rather than CPU starved:

Pfsense
OI/Napp-it
Win7 x64 for media center (I use extenders on the TVs for viewing)
Windows Home Server 2011 to back up my windows machines
OS X Mavericks for my main iTunes & Aperture libraries
Couple of small FreeBSD VMs for various tasks

With all that (and due to memory reservations because of vt-d) my current server just can't do much of anything else. So I'd be running all those VMs, plus I want to prop up some Win8.1 VMs for testing, maybe a couple Server 2012 instances as well. I also want the ability to do some multi-threaded video encoding & transcoding (which is the main reason I'm looking at X5650).

Mainly I guess I my goal is to oversize just a bit so I'm not right back in the same situation in another year or two. Granted, the additional RAM capacity I'm getting with this setup will be the biggest factor but at the same time I don't want to feel like I took a step back CPU-wise (not everything I run will benefit from multi-threading).

It looks like I could get a pair of L5630s for <$130 or a pair of X5650 for <$250. Just trying to decide if the extra four cores and higher clock speed are worth the extra hundred bucks and 110W (combined) higher TDP (considering they will be idle most of the time).

I realize there's no one "correct" answer here. Just wondered what others would go for in my situation. Thanks Patrick and et al.

Edit: I should add that power consumption is something I care about also (I know I'm already jumping way up in that department from the X3440 to any DP Westmere setup). In the real world, with most of the cores idle I'm just not sure how many watts difference I would see between 2x L5630 and X5650. If it was like 20W or less that's probably trivial, but if it was likely to be >20W then that would be another reason to go with the L5630.
 
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mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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L5639 is a good in-between which are cheap, which are 6-core 12-thread. 20 watts difference but man those extra 2 cores really come into play if you are rocking 1 socket!

I have a dl360 G6 with L5639, 72gb of ram, 4 samsung 840 pro, lsi 9260-8i, emulex be2 dual sfp+ port 10gbe nic, and pushing hard (backing up at 9gbit) it breaks 110 watt!

I run performance mode max,max,max in esxi 5.1 so I don't bother with low profile power mode but I suppose it can idle pretty well since each core is gated!

A good deal to get a full 1socket workstation is the Z400 L5639 on ebay. (or Z600 or Z800). The Z400 complete with one L5639 was like $199 shipped. Only thing is the power supply is kind of odd but I had it running a quadro 6000.

Trust me, I pulled a bunch of L5630's offline when i got the L5639, it makes a huge difference. Also pulled all the E5603 (1.6ghz quad-core!) and replaced them with L5639's.

There is a thread on Anandtech CPU forum on folks running X58 motherboards and clocking up the L5639 to 4ghz reliably for cheap home usage!
 
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OBasel

Active Member
Dec 28, 2010
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Moving to a 2S server with a hot IOH will add a lot of power consumption right there, especially with all of that RAM.

I'd say if 20-40w idle is not that big of a difference for you, get the X5650's. If you want lower power get the L5640's like here and save a few dollars SLBV8 Intel Xeon L5640 12M Cache 2 26 GHz 5 86 GT s AT80614005133AB 0675901038652 | eBay

If your main goal is to need only a little bit of CPU power but have lots of RAM, then L5630.

From your note above, you are doing video transcoding. I might venture to say you'd be better off with a cheapo quick sync processor system + the L5430's. If you want it all in one system then just get the X5650's. 50% more cores and more clock speed will probably get you like 70% more performance which is huge.