Intel Xeon E5-2670 Deal and Price Tracking

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Jeggs101

Well-Known Member
Dec 29, 2010
1,529
241
63
Thanks, I am looking for a server motherboard and I'm open to using a rackmount or a tower.

I actually ran across that server last night as I was looking. It does look pretty good, and I'll already have 6 hard drives to fill into those hotswaps. Also it looks like you linked the same thing twice. What was your first motherboard link suppose to be?
Sorry first link should have been this - Supermicro Server Motherboard X9DR3-LN4F+ I/O LGA2011 Dual Socket DDR3 SATA3
 

Churchill

Admiral
Jan 6, 2016
838
213
43
Hey guys, I've been reading and lurking on the forums here for a while now. Finally decided I needed to make a post as I am getting Gigabit internet where I live and would like to build a server for the home.

So I'm defiantly going to get the Xeon e5 deal. I really need to find the right MB. I've looked at a lot of motherboards and considered the X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD or the X9DR7-LN4F-JBOD. But what I really want is something that has 8 + SATA/SAS 6Gbps, full PCI x16 slots (2 preferred), IPMI and USB 3.0 I've been looking for a while now and can't quite seem to find anything that matches up with what I want.

Does anyone have a good motherboard recommendation?

you are looking at E-ATX/SSI-EEB motherboards so bear that in mind you'll need a big case, a beefy power supply (750W or bigger), and willing to spend some bucks because your list of boards don't come cheap.

On the other hand if you can be on the look out for an Z9PA-D8 - Overview you'll have a compact motherboard in a tight lil ATX package. Downside? Price of
course. Dual PCI Express x16 3.0 are rare on motherboards with these CPU's, which of course pumps up the price.

The one thing I wouldn't worry too much about is USB 3.0 and Audio (I know you don't mention it). I bought a USB PCI Express card, front bay expander, and front mount kit for $25. An Audigy card cost me $25. The Xeons are designed for high end workstations or servers, USB and Audio are not always found on these boards and if they are they are lousy. If you can give up those 2 (IPMI is also overkill for a workstation great on server) then the amount of boards you are looking for opens up drastically.
 

rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
846
236
43
Michigan, USA
A lot of people in this thread are using server boards in work stations. Server boards do not have built in sound. Hence my reply. :rolleyes:
But you didn't link to the item you were discussing, unless I missed that part. I'm currently using a cheap USB soundcard, but I'm interested in what you used.
 
  • Like
Reactions: T_Minus

rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
846
236
43
Michigan, USA
No, problem. That looks like the same sort of setup that I already have that works fine here as well (mine is not fancy aluminum though :) ). Both of these devices both use the same C-Media CM108 audio chipset, so they should be functionally identical.

Sabrent Aluminum USB External Stereo Sound Adapter
 
Last edited:

XxrazorxX

New Member
Apr 19, 2015
6
0
1
35
you are looking at E-ATX/SSI-EEB motherboards so bear that in mind you'll need a big case, a beefy power supply (750W or bigger), and willing to spend some bucks because your list of boards don't come cheap.

On the other hand if you can be on the look out for an Z9PA-D8 - Overview you'll have a compact motherboard in a tight lil ATX package. Downside? Price of
course. Dual PCI Express x16 3.0 are rare on motherboards with these CPU's, which of course pumps up the price.

The one thing I wouldn't worry too much about is USB 3.0 and Audio (I know you don't mention it). I bought a USB PCI Express card, front bay expander, and front mount kit for $25. An Audigy card cost me $25. The Xeons are designed for high end workstations or servers, USB and Audio are not always found on these boards and if they are they are lousy. If you can give up those 2 (IPMI is also overkill for a workstation great on server) then the amount of boards you are looking for opens up drastically.

What I'm looking to do with this is run unRaid with a VM that has 1 gpu passed through. So the main role is running as a NAS with Docker containers. I thought having an extra pci x16 would be nice, but probably not necessary. Same with usb 3.0, I can probably just get a card and pass it through. I do want IPMI, because I will not be home most of the time and if I need to remotely work on the server, it would be very convenient. I'm looking to spend under $1.5k for a complete system (mb, psu, ram, case, sas card, etc) - hard drives, I already have those.
 

Stereodude

Active Member
Feb 21, 2016
467
95
28
USA
But you didn't link to the item you were discussing, unless I missed that part. I'm currently using a cheap USB soundcard, but I'm interested in what you used.
An Asus Xonar DG / DGX card works well in my experience (at least under Windows). They have both PCIe and PCI flavors.
 
Last edited:

Churchill

Admiral
Jan 6, 2016
838
213
43
What I'm looking to do with this is run unRaid with a VM that has 1 gpu passed through. So the main role is running as a NAS with Docker containers. I thought having an extra pci x16 would be nice, but probably not necessary. Same with usb 3.0, I can probably just get a card and pass it through. I do want IPMI, because I will not be home most of the time and if I need to remotely work on the server, it would be very convenient. I'm looking to spend under $1.5k for a complete system (mb, psu, ram, case, sas card, etc) - hard drives, I already have those.
You can get one of these:

Dual Xeon E5-2600 v2 socket 16 DIMM Motherboard LGA2011

Comes with 1 PCI Express x16 3.0 as required. Tons of memory slots, pickup 2 CPUs on the site for $65, and memory if you want. Board is $175 with multiple NICs.

Things you'll need:

PCI Express Sata card: M1015 or that type can be found on ebay cheap enough. The board has limited amount of sata. Under $100.

USB 3.0

Sound Card

HeatSink Fans


I run UnRAID and this is the setup I'm leaning to sans the whole GPU pass through.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,519
5,826
113
Thanks, I am looking for a server motherboard and I'm open to using a rackmount or a tower.

I actually ran across that server last night as I was looking. It does look pretty good, and I'll already have 6 hard drives to fill into those hotswaps. Also it looks like you linked the same thing twice. What was your first motherboard link suppose to be?
I really like the Intel 2U systems. I have 3x of the V3 generation running STH in Fremont, CA and 1x of the V1/V2 generation in Las Vegas.

2U - Intel R2312GL4GS Server System 2U Rack, Socket R, V2 Technology New Bulk
4U - Intel P4216IP4LHJC Server System 4U, Socket R, 1200W, New Bulk Packaging

If they took an offer of half, they would be good deals. The Intel servers run fairly quiet. Not next to your desk quiet but if they are not right next to you usually OK. and people on here have bought tons of stuff from that ebay seller with very good best offers. They also have many of the odds and ends you may want. For example, I got 3x kits to add 4x NVMe 2.5" + 4x SAS/ SATA bays to the 2U units from that seller and saved a bunch.

I tend to like buying motherboards + chassis + PSU if I can. One of the biggest reasons is that if you read STH forums a lot, people often have PSU issues. Buying in one shot means it all arrives the same day, assembled, and you have a good chance of the PSU/ chassis/ motherboard working well together.
 

MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
3,073
974
113
NYC
Comes with 1 PCI Express x16 3.0 as required. Tons of memory slots, pickup 2 CPUs on the site for $65, and memory if you want. Board is $175 with multiple NICs.

Things you'll need:

PCI Express Sata card: M1015 or that type can be found on ebay cheap enough. The board has limited amount of sata. Under $100.
A warning - that board doesn't have a dedicated IPMI port. 5 years ago I would have just said VLAN it but now we only buy boards with dedicated ports. Are these like the rest of the Intel boards where you need the RMM module for iKVM? Do you need the "fancy" one with the NIC?
 

poto

Active Member
May 18, 2013
239
89
28
You can get one of these:

Dual Xeon E5-2600 v2 socket 16 DIMM Motherboard LGA2011

Comes with 1 PCI Express x16 3.0 as required. Tons of memory slots, pickup 2 CPUs on the site for $65, and memory if you want. Board is $175 with multiple NICs.

Things you'll need:

PCI Express Sata card: M1015 or that type can be found on ebay cheap enough. The board has limited amount of sata. Under $100.

USB 3.0

Sound Card

HeatSink Fans


I run UnRAID and this is the setup I'm leaning to sans the whole GPU pass through.
In for cpu/mboard/ram - will report results upon receipt.

fyi - I think the vendor figured out demand on dual 2011 mb; they just started 5-day ebay auction to adjust pricing.
 

rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
846
236
43
Michigan, USA
In for cpu/mboard/ram - will report results upon receipt.

fyi - I think the vendor figured out demand on dual 2011 mb; they just started 5-day ebay auction to adjust pricing.
That site seems like great pricing, but I wish they had something like Paypal as an option. I'm very leery giving some unknown company my credit card info. The pricing, especially on the motherboards seems too good to be true at this point.

Has anyone every bought and received an item from this company yet? I want this to be a real deal, because I would build another 2670 system right now if the price was this good.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fritz

snclawson

Member
Feb 7, 2013
51
22
8
A warning - that board doesn't have a dedicated IPMI port. 5 years ago I would have just said VLAN it but now we only buy boards with dedicated ports. Are these like the rest of the Intel boards where you need the RMM module for iKVM? Do you need the "fancy" one with the NIC?
I bought one of these boards off eBay from what looks like the same seller (bethanie1990). Yup, the address matches exactly with the address in the `About Us' page on www.natex.us, and the picture looks identical. It is interesting that they're selling the quad LAN version on their web site; all they've listed on eBay so far are the dual lan versions...it would have been nice to have the extra two NICs! Ah well...

In any case, yes these only come with minimal IPMI functionality and a shared LAN. You can add a dedicated LAN by buying the RMM4 module, or get the RMM4LITE to upgrade the IPMI functionality without a dedicated LAN. It definitely tips the price balance towards the SuperMicro boards if you want full IPMI! Not to mention adding a SAS controller to it! Intel does have an Open Source distribution for their BMC software though, but I haven't looked through it to see if there's any hope of rolling your own updated version. Probably all of the remote KVM code is just a chunk of proprietary Java code anyway. =(

Also note that the 16x slot is only 8x electrically (not that you really need 16x for a video card...maybe if you were going to run a 100G NIC...). There are also two other open ended x8 slots with latches for a full length card to sit in, so there are a few places you can stick video cards. Unlike the SuperMicro boards where they pretty evenly split the PCIe lanes to the slots between both CPUs, Intel routed most of them (all but one!) to CPU1. Which means that you can use more slots with only one CPU installed, but you have a bunch of unused PCIe lane capability on the second CPU if it is installed (why didn't they just make _that_ one an x16?). Granted, 6 slots of x8 PCIe isn't anything to sneeze at.

I should say that the default fan profile is dead silent on this thing and everything seems to be nicely heatsinked. I'm still trying to decide if I'll keep the S2600CP or the SuperMicro X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD (which I _still_ haven't gotten my replacement back from comp-tec(!)...damned thing has been stuck in UPS delivery hell all week because the suite # is `missing or incorrect'. They've tried to fix it twice now! Hopefully it'll actually make it here today and not get rescheduled for Monday...grrr!). Really what I think I want is the X9DR7-LN4F-JBOD, but those have really dried up!
 

Churchill

Admiral
Jan 6, 2016
838
213
43
That site seems like great pricing, but I wish they had something like Paypal as an option. I'm very leery giving some unknown company my credit card info. The pricing, especially on the motherboards seems too good to be true at this point.

Has anyone every bought and received an item from this company yet? I want this to be a real deal, because I would build another 2670 system right now if the price was this good.
I thought the exact same thing as you did. I spent an hour of research and discussion with the vendor to find things are normal.


I bought 128GB of RAM from them and have a shipping label come out within hours. A few other people have bought motherboards and CPU's from them. Their cisco switches are ridiculously cheap. Few other people have bought those Quanta 10GB switches I think.

They are another clearing house of electronic parts, Urban Mining is their main company. You can call them and talk to a live person here in the US (They are out of Colorado). I spoke with them for 30min yesterday. Pleasant people.

So far so good. If things go south I'll be sure to report back my progress.
 

workingnonstop

Active Member
Feb 24, 2016
235
63
28
38
I bought one of these boards off eBay from what looks like the same seller (bethanie1990). Yup, the address matches exactly with the address in the `About Us' page on www.natex.us, and the picture looks identical. It is interesting that they're selling the quad LAN version on their web site; all they've listed on eBay so far are the dual lan versions...it would have been nice to have the extra two NICs! Ah well...

<...snip...>
I think it's just a bad copy/paste job of the Intel specs page on their website. The bullet says quad gig-E, dual gig-E available. My baseline would be that it's the lower dual ethernet model.
 

SavageWS6

Member
Feb 2, 2016
35
7
8
31
Pennsylvania
Anyone seen the influx of HP Z820 dual socket boards pop up on ebay? Looks like custom form factor and extra 4 pin near socket 1. Wonder how well this board runs
 

snclawson

Member
Feb 7, 2013
51
22
8
I think it's just a bad copy/paste job of the Intel specs page on their website. The bullet says quad gig-E, dual gig-E available. My baseline would be that it's the lower dual ethernet model.
You're right! Looking on Intel's page for the S2600CP, they definitely just did a copy/paste. And the picture is the dual NIC version.

One bonus of the S2600CP compared to the JBOD SuperMicros is that they use the standard square ILM mount. I've got a super cheap Cooler Master Hyper T4 ($10-15 AR I think) on one of the CPUs and it keeps temps under 60C when running a small FFT mprime while staying almost completely silent. It's doing as well as the SNK-P0050AP4 that I bought for the JBOD, although it does cover up the closest RAM slot on each side.