2x Xeon E5-2670 vs 4x Xeon E5645

[cm.graz]

I've been pretty set on going with the dual E5-2670 route, and checking my options to see if I could find anything that made more sense than the Natex deal. My uses will be the following:

Media storage

1-2 simultaneous Plex transcodes

15+ dockers, mostly media related like couch potato, sonarr, nzbget, MythTV, etc.

2-3 VMs. Mostly used as workstations. No heavy gaming or video editing. Mostly word processing, web browsing, media viewing.

I've recently found on Natex.us, for about $200 less than the E5-2670, 1U Rack, 128GB RAM system, there is a Supermicro, 2 node, 4x Xeon E5645 CPU which is in a 2U rack and has 96GB RAM. Here are the two links:

4x Xeon E5645

Supermicro CSE-827HD-R1400B 2 x X8DTT-HF+ Nodes

2x Xeon E4-2670

1U Chenbro RM13704 Server - Intel S2600CP2J Dual Xeon E5-2670 SR0KX 128GB (16x8GB) ECC PC3-12800R RAM Intel X520-DA1

Outside of the 32GB RAM drop. what other major differences/issues will I encounter going the dual node route of the supermicro system over the dual 2670 system? I see that the nodes only have the single 2.0 16x PCI slot, so I get less PCI slots. I'm also getting a bonus 10 gigabit network adapater with the E5-2670 system. However, besides this, under my specific uses, if these are my two choices should I go with the quad Xeon E5645 system because of the cheaper price and greater # of cores?

Maybe I'm missing some other obvious pitfalls of that potential setup. I'd be interested in hearing what you guys thought.

 

[ttabbal]

I'm not an expert with the cluster side of things, so I might be wrong...

I don't think Plex currently supports using other machines for transcoding, so you would be limited to whichever node the Plex container/VM runs on for that. If that's the case, you will get more concurrent transcodes out of the 2670.

For the 2670, if you don't need 1U, I might go without the case from Natex. I know they sell the bare boards and various combos. That leaves you open to use various expansion cards later. Or get a taller case you can use standard cards in.

2670 has higher single-core performance, if that matters to you.

Random google results comparing the CPUs.. Intel Xeon E5645 vs E5-2670

If it were me, spending that much, I think I'd go 2670. The only reason I'm on a 1366 platform was I got a great deal on the motherboard/CPU/RAM combo from Natex and it's enough for my needs.

 

[cm.graz]

Surprisingly, pricing with Natex was the same if you were including the chasis or not.

Assuming your Plex statement about using a single machine for transcoding, I'd be restricted to 1 single node, which would still mean 2x E5645 CPUs. That's still going to be 12 cores, 24 threads. I would use substantially less than this for no more the 2 simultaneous streams.

Single core performance is the big thing the 2670 would have going for it. But again, in my usage, is this going to be of much consequence? Outside of Plex, I'm really just running a bunch of basic dockers (albeit, a lot), and a few virtual machines that won't have any intense tasks being run.

With that said, I'm still trying to understand what other downfalls there could be on this 4 CPU system. Power consumption is one thing I have not looked into. This is a cost that I'd have to see how long it'd take to catch up to me.

 

[MiniKnight]

These days, I'm souring on the E5-2670. They're only 8 cores and getting old. The 5600 series uses way more power since its got that north bridge.

What hypervisor are you using? For what you're describing, the AMD Ryzen 7 1700 seems like a better fit. Easy to overclock to 3.4 or 3.5GHz and you're going to save a HUGE amount on power. You can also have something silent or that looks cool with RGB lights.

Ryzen will have way better single core performance. Even if you've got half the cores you don't have NUMA sucking performance.

You don't need 128GB of RAM and you'll save power by using 4x DDR4 over tons of small DDR3.

I built a Ryzen 7 1700 system for transcoding and it's maybe 20% slower than my old dual E5 system but it uses 95w less while doing so. For me, the E5-2670 was good, but as a home server, it's hard to swallow when these new chips are so good. In a few months we'll have 16 core desktop CPUs and then dual E5-2670 will be kaput in the home. I think the total system purchase price of the E5's was like $150 less but I'll make that back fast with the lower power and it's a silent tower.

This had some comparisons AMD Ryzen 7 1700 Linux Benchmarks - The Zen you should buy

Three months ago I'd have told you E5-2670 all the way. Now, it's really hard.

 

[cm.graz]

I'm using unRAID OS which uses Xen hypervisor.

It looks like price difference will be about the cost of a single CPU motherboard. I can get 2x E5-2670 on an Intel motherboard for about the same price as a single Ryzen 7 1700 chip. Dual 2670 has a CPU Mark of 18334 whereas the Ryzen is at 14682.

Outside of power consumption, I'm not sure where I see that the Ryzen would shine. Single thread rating won't be far off, and I'll have twice as many with the dual setup.

I'll take a look at the link you posted to see if the newer chip has some other things I may be overlooking.