Probably everyone knows that I'm a fan of Opteron server CPUs for excellent memory bandwidth, high core count, and good IO for a very low price - emphasis on the low price part; recent Xeon CPUs are far better if you remove $ from the equation.
The killer Opteron deal has long been the 6128 - eight cores for around $40. The only downside is that power consumption is high - 115Watts TDP. There has always been a low-power version of the 6128, but it has long cost several times more money. Until now.
I just bought a pile of AMD 6128 HE CPUs for $54 each, and there are many left at that price. http://www.ebay.com/itm/350706540994
If you thought the quad-core Xeon L5520 was a deal at $45, then you'll love these - eight cores for $54. The "HE" in the name indicates that this is the low-power version of the 6128 CPU. TDP is 85 watts, compared to 115 watts for the standard 6128 CPU and - for comparison - $90 and 120 watts for a pair of Xeon L5520s with the same number of cores, though with HT.
Of course you'll need an AMD G34 motherboard to take advantage of this offer. I'm stuffing eight of them into one of the Dell c6145s that I bought from Vista Computer. That's a ready-to-run (except for RAM) server with eight CPUs, 64 total cores, 64 DIMM slots, eight x16 slots, four x8 slots, and 24 disk bays for a grand total of $782 including rails. Maximum disk IO should be around 22GB/Second.
The killer Opteron deal has long been the 6128 - eight cores for around $40. The only downside is that power consumption is high - 115Watts TDP. There has always been a low-power version of the 6128, but it has long cost several times more money. Until now.
I just bought a pile of AMD 6128 HE CPUs for $54 each, and there are many left at that price. http://www.ebay.com/itm/350706540994
If you thought the quad-core Xeon L5520 was a deal at $45, then you'll love these - eight cores for $54. The "HE" in the name indicates that this is the low-power version of the 6128 CPU. TDP is 85 watts, compared to 115 watts for the standard 6128 CPU and - for comparison - $90 and 120 watts for a pair of Xeon L5520s with the same number of cores, though with HT.
Of course you'll need an AMD G34 motherboard to take advantage of this offer. I'm stuffing eight of them into one of the Dell c6145s that I bought from Vista Computer. That's a ready-to-run (except for RAM) server with eight CPUs, 64 total cores, 64 DIMM slots, eight x16 slots, four x8 slots, and 24 disk bays for a grand total of $782 including rails. Maximum disk IO should be around 22GB/Second.
Last edited:
