Replacing the E5-2670 "Space Heater"

[nk215]

Why even looking at ES CPU? 3 months from now you'll forget the extra $$ you paid for a retail CPU but you'll continue to worry if the data is OK with an ES CPU.

Especially if the system is unstable for any reason, with an ES chip, it's hard to pin down what's going on.

 

[ColPanic]

Because it's just a hobby and all an exercise in learning (plus I'm a cheap bastard). I don't think a bad ES chip is going to go rogue and just start corrupting files. Correct me if I'm wrong but they're more likely to just not work. No critical data exists in fewer then 3 locations and I'm not trying to build a production system for someone else. Besides, I don't actually *need* any of this. If I boiled this down to what I really and truly need I'd probably have an intel i3 nuc and some cloud storage, but that would be no fun at all.

 

[grobba]

Hey there, old thread I know but just wondering how you got on with your build? did you achieve the power draw you were after? I got the same Supermicro MOBO, with specs. as below:


CPU: E5 2620 v4 with Noctua NHU9DX i4
HDD's: 6 WD 3TB Reds
SSD's :3 Samsung 850 EVO's
RAM: 4 x 16 GB ECC RAM
Additional NIC: X520 10G NIC
LSI 2008 Controller (For XPEnology)
3 wall fans and 2 rear exhaust fans
PSU: Seasonic Prime 650W Titanium 80 Plus

With 4 VM's running on ESXI6.5 I'm getting power draw of 110W, was wondering if I could reduce this somehow due to looming power price hikes... as an all in one server it's on 24/7.

Might as well document the process. There's no turning back now and with the holidays upon us I should have the time.

Here's what I'm starting with. An Intel P4000 chassis with (8) 3.5" hotswaps and (4) additional 3.5" hotswaps added in. Motherboard is CP2600 with dual E5-2670 and 106 GB RAM. That, along with a Lenovo SA120 (that stays off most of the time) and a UPS is enough to keep the spare bedroom warm and wife annoyed all year long - and since I live in Texas, that's usually not much of a problem (the heat problem, not the wife... uh, never mind).

300ish watts it typical

A couple of inside shots to show off my impeccable use of duct tape and bubblegum to keep a system running in tip top shape. That little SF450 PSU was only supposed to be a temporary fix when I had to steal the PSU out of this for a "real" computer. But that thing has turned out to be a beast! The fan only runs about half the time and it gets 80+ gold according to Jonnyguru. I still may swap it out for something actually attached to the chassis!

Fortunately my new motherboard has the ATX and CPU power connectors on the same side of the board as the PSU, so I wont have to extend anything.

New parts are already arriving. I picked up another 8x3.5" SAS cage for cheap on ebay. I plan to stick SSDs in there and get rid of the SA120 leafblower.

Also got the new motherboard. Supermicro X10SRH-CF SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SRH-CF-O ATX Server Motherboard LGA 2011-3 - Newegg.com. There was an openbox on newegg for $330 that I took a gamble with.

One bad thing about this mobo is the narrow ILM and lack of coolers. Since I'm using a 4U chassis and dont want to hear this thing unless an alarm is going off, I went with the 92mm Noctua Amazon.com: Noctua i4 CPU Cooler for Intel Xeon CPU_ LGA2011, 1356 and 1366 Platforms NH-U9DXi4: Computers & Accessories The other narrow ILM Noctua that uses 120mm is a little too tall to fit in this chassis so this was really the only good option.

I've also picked up 4x 16 GB DDR4 DIMMs from ebay for about $70 each. (hynix 2133 registered ecc). That should be enough to get things up and running.

CPU is still an open question but I'm looking heavily toward an engineering sample of some type. Just trying to decide on which one will strike the right balance of power, clock speed and core count (and actually work as advertised). 8 cores at 2.5 GHz should be plenty for several years.

 

[MiniKnight]

@grobba it may be better to start your own thread. Thanks 110w for that setup sounds right

 

[cheezehead]

Since your in TX, if the extra heat produced from the gear is causing the A/C to run more you could try ducting the exhaust elsewhere (ie outside). Use to do that years ago to work-around even needing the A/C on up here, as a side effect the noise levels also drop some.

For power draw comparison
Single E5-2648L, 64GB ram, 6x300GB 10k (2.5), and a GA-7Pesh1 board with 1.2kw gold psu's runs around 150w - esxi + 3 vms
Dual E5645, 48GB ram, 8x2TB 7.2k, X8DTH-6F board with 1.2kw gold psu's runs around 230w - freenas + plex + dvr

Haven't gotten around to it but going to try pulling one of the E5645's to drop power consumption a bit more.

The biggest two power consumers between these and other builds I've seen have been power performance profiles which affects core parking and fans. Depending on your demands L-sku'd parts would save all-around some....de-featured motherboards also save (ie ipmi being 6-10w alone, SAS controllers, extra nics, ect).

 

[grobba]

Thanks guys, so 110W looks about right for all the hardware in there, forgot that I also got a 17W graphics card in there too. I perhaps mistakenly thought that when all VM's are idle the power draw would be less during the night, although having said that I guess things like the XPEnology/Surveillance station might be keeping the CPU busy... was going to start another thread and discuss the possibilities of alternative Hyper Visors, although not had too much luck with Hyper-V or Xenserver yet....

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

A couple of comments:

CPU: Xeon E5 V3 or V4 Not sure which model
I'd like 8 cores >2 GHz. I was also contemplating the ES stuff​

Just opinion here. I've come to the conclusion that the E5-2630 v3/v4 is the sweet spot here. Enough cores to be useful (and in your 8-10 core target). 85W TDP. Solid bust turbo speeds when you need them (3.2Ghz/3.1Ghz). Going to the next step up gets you modest gains for almost 2x cost increase and 115W TDP. Don't bother with the "L" variant.

Curious why you say do not bother with the L model. I was looking to reduce my power consumption for my next build and was looking at the 2650L. Found it for $40 on ebay and seems to have a good ratio of power to heat/power.

 

[PigLover]

Curious why you say do not bother with the L model. I was looking to reduce my power consumption for my next build and was looking at the 2650L. Found it for $40 on ebay and seems to have a good ratio of power to heat/power.

For most home/lab workloads the system will be at or near idle almost all of the time. With power control features in modern CPUs (C-states, speedstep, etc) there is little or no difference in idle power between the "L", "T" and "normal" CPUs of the same die (e.g., E5-2630 vs E5-2630L). The real advantage of the "L" is for enterprise or embedded workloads where the CPU will be working hard most of the time but the environment is thermally limited and needs to clamp down the peaks.

When I wrote that there was a definite price premium for the "L" chips and I was suggesting that it was not worthwhile to pursue the "L" chip at a higher price just to end up having almost no real power savings in a home or lab setup. In the resale market, price premium is not so much (in fact the low power chip is often less expensive). If you can source it and believe it serves your needs then go for it.

 

[wildpig1234]

you must have a lot of hardware still running even when at "idle" to be using 300+W. my dual e5-2670 idles at 110 W. with load it draws 440. My graphic card is a quadro 3800 fx so it doesn't use that much power... but 300 W idle is not right

Cheapest path to upgrade right now might be to a 12C e5-2696 v2 dual cpu. let you use the same ram and MB with significantly faster multithread...