Build’s Name: stupid RAM prices
Operating System/ Storage Platform: Opensuse Leap
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon E5-2667v2
Motherboard: ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16
Chassis: Phanteks Enthoo Pro
Drives: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB, 3x WD red 4TB software RAID5
RAM: 16x16GB Micron 2Rx4 DDR3L-1333 reg ECC, running at DDR3-1866@1.5V
Add-in Cards: Nvidia GTX 1050TI 4GB, passively cooled from Palit
Power Supply: Seasonic Focus Platinum 750W
Other Bits: 2x Noctua NH-U14S coolers, 6x Arctic F14 PWM PST, side panels lined with noise insulation from BeQuiet, a PCIe wifi adaper and an optical drive.
Usage Profile: Mostly fluid simulation stuff and code development. Needed a lot of memory and did not want to spend 3000$ on RAM alone. So I used Micron DDR3-1333 which I had bought dirt-cheap a while ago. This dictated the platform choice.
We considered using AMDs Epyc platform for this build as well because it is just awesome for the kind of work we do. But in order to keep the costs significantly lower we chose the latest DDR3 platform. The CPUs may not have the best performance/$, but I wanted to get the best possible performance out of the old platform for codes that may not scale perfectly on a large number of cores.
Overclocking memory was pretty painless. Although a full run of memtest86+ completed without errors using 1.4V memory voltage, the system still hung occasionally when putting heavy load on the memory subsystem. Now with 1.5V it is rock-stable and still within the specifications of DDR3L. I am pretty happy with that, application benchmarks indicate up to 26% higher performance compared to DDR3-1333. The motherboard chose CL12 for latency which is surprisingly good.
A note on the motherboards built-in fan controls: only the two CPU fan headers can be controlled based on system temperatures. However there is only one preset, no "silent" or "balanced" mode. The other 6 PWM fan headers only have fixed fan speed settings between 1-9 and "full-on".
While one of those decommissioned HP or DELL workstations might have been cheaper for now, their lack of upgradeability through proprietary connectors and form factors would have been more expensive in the long run. Plus parts like power supplies do not get better over time. The plan is to upgrade to a DDR4 platform (probably AMD Epyc or its successor) as soon as memory prices normalize. And the motherboards in these systems usually do not allow a memory overclock as ASRock does.
Pictures today or tomorrow. Done
Power draw: Idle power consumption at the wall is somewhere between 120W-130W.
Under "normal" load that the workstation will usually encounter during daily usage power draw sits around 310W.
However, using synthetic load ("stress") I was able to get the power draw up to 430W stressing CPU and memory subsystem alone. Quite a bit more than I would have expected, but perfect for stability testing.
Operating System/ Storage Platform: Opensuse Leap
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon E5-2667v2
Motherboard: ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16
Chassis: Phanteks Enthoo Pro
Drives: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB, 3x WD red 4TB software RAID5
RAM: 16x16GB Micron 2Rx4 DDR3L-1333 reg ECC, running at DDR3-1866@1.5V
Add-in Cards: Nvidia GTX 1050TI 4GB, passively cooled from Palit
Power Supply: Seasonic Focus Platinum 750W
Other Bits: 2x Noctua NH-U14S coolers, 6x Arctic F14 PWM PST, side panels lined with noise insulation from BeQuiet, a PCIe wifi adaper and an optical drive.
Usage Profile: Mostly fluid simulation stuff and code development. Needed a lot of memory and did not want to spend 3000$ on RAM alone. So I used Micron DDR3-1333 which I had bought dirt-cheap a while ago. This dictated the platform choice.
We considered using AMDs Epyc platform for this build as well because it is just awesome for the kind of work we do. But in order to keep the costs significantly lower we chose the latest DDR3 platform. The CPUs may not have the best performance/$, but I wanted to get the best possible performance out of the old platform for codes that may not scale perfectly on a large number of cores.
Overclocking memory was pretty painless. Although a full run of memtest86+ completed without errors using 1.4V memory voltage, the system still hung occasionally when putting heavy load on the memory subsystem. Now with 1.5V it is rock-stable and still within the specifications of DDR3L. I am pretty happy with that, application benchmarks indicate up to 26% higher performance compared to DDR3-1333. The motherboard chose CL12 for latency which is surprisingly good.
A note on the motherboards built-in fan controls: only the two CPU fan headers can be controlled based on system temperatures. However there is only one preset, no "silent" or "balanced" mode. The other 6 PWM fan headers only have fixed fan speed settings between 1-9 and "full-on".
While one of those decommissioned HP or DELL workstations might have been cheaper for now, their lack of upgradeability through proprietary connectors and form factors would have been more expensive in the long run. Plus parts like power supplies do not get better over time. The plan is to upgrade to a DDR4 platform (probably AMD Epyc or its successor) as soon as memory prices normalize. And the motherboards in these systems usually do not allow a memory overclock as ASRock does.
Pictures today or tomorrow. Done
Power draw: Idle power consumption at the wall is somewhere between 120W-130W.
Under "normal" load that the workstation will usually encounter during daily usage power draw sits around 310W.
However, using synthetic load ("stress") I was able to get the power draw up to 430W stressing CPU and memory subsystem alone. Quite a bit more than I would have expected, but perfect for stability testing.
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