Buying & Upgrading used workstations - first questions

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Janiashvili

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Well I wasn't aware of anything obvious but apparently After Effects has some single core bottlenecks though I rarely use that at this point, I don't see much listed for Premiere.

Honestly if I could throw together a Windmill based workstation that might well be perfect - new enough Sandy Bridge cpu's, sounds like I can throw at least 128gigs there, if I literally see prices of $30 per 32gigs i'd just say the heck with it and go to 128gigs right away and not look back - I just considered those prices unattainable so was designing around RAM price bottlenecks.

I read through the 33 page Windmill deals discussion but questions i'm still left with are what's the newest supported videocard (someone reports a 950 GTX, my goal would be a 1050 GTX Ti and i'd be fully content with that for the time being - faster better even if an external PSU were needed), whether the system can work with only one cpu socket populated (if I want to upgrade later - i'd be tempted to kit out boards inexpensively on the cpu's to start and wait for prices to drop further honestly since they always seem to be trending down), and just how reliable it is to put together a working system. Reports of Win 7 working vs not working, a certain video card supported or not supported gives me a little hesitation. I'm also for having two nodes in the same box since one of the goals was two PC workstations per person - one for background processing processes powered up on demand plus the 'foreground' PC for continuing setting up other edits and such for instance.

I could quite happily design around a Windmill system if there's a good reliability of putting together a system where all the drivers and such work with something like the 1050 card. That would make me skip most talk of trying to cheap out with much older hardware because the price entry points for the performance i'm totally content with.
Yes, it does support 1 CPU config, I think it does support anything in if it's PCIe x16 slot as long as card gets enough power, and I really doubt this PCIe slot provides full power as it should and as it does on desktop; Windmill does support Win 7, I think 8 and 8.1 too (some other open compute I think named "Wiwyan" doesn't support Win 7)

A year ago you could buy 1033MHz RAMs for even cheaper, for even cheaper, slightly cheaper.
 
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Yes, it does support 1 CPU config, I think it does support anything in if it's PCIe x16 slot as long as card gets enough power, and I really doubt this PCIe slot provides full power as it should and as it does on desktop; Windmill does support Win 7, I think 8 and 8.1 too (some other open compute I think named "Wiwyan" doesn't support Win 7)

A year ago you could buy 1033MHz RAMs for even cheaper, for even cheaper, slightly cheaper.
Just as an oddity if you run one cpu can you only fill the dimm slots next to that cpu or are all available? (like if I had an abundance of cheaper small ram sticks) Or can sizes mismatch like some 4gb sticks and 8gb sticks just each in pairs...

I really only need four cores for a similar workload as what I do now to get started plus it's less power use - when cpu prices drop and when I start doing this seriously i'd look at a pair of 8 cores.

I wonder if there would be any issues running a big video card with it's own PSU, like is it relying on the 75w from the mainboard... reading all 33 pages of the other thread I didn't see anyone say they had a new fast video card running anyways. The 1050 GTX Ti is what i'd like to run but having the ability to upgrade to bigger power later would be nice.

Also I thought i'd seen images of the Windmill showing two x16 slots on some kind of riser/mezzanine..? If dual cards could be run let alone as SLI (even if that means a separate ATX PSU just for them, and a couple of bitcoin risers to reposition the cards to a custom mount) this would literally do everything I could want honestly.
 

Janiashvili

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Just as an oddity if you run one cpu can you only fill the dimm slots next to that cpu or are all available? (like if I had an abundance of cheaper small ram sticks) Or can sizes mismatch like some 4gb sticks and 8gb sticks just each in pairs...
You can Google and find an answer within seconds.
DIMMs per CPU; I do believe you can mismatch but probably you'll loose quad channel; pairs on quad channel makes no sense.


I wonder if there would be any issues running a big video card with it's own PSU, like is it relying on the 75w from the mainboard... reading all 33 pages of the other thread I didn't see anyone say they had a new fast video card running anyways. The 1050 GTX Ti is what i'd like to run but having the ability to upgrade to bigger power later would be nice.
You could literary find an answer on Google within seconds.

I use motherboard's FDD power to molex and handmade molex to PCIe 6pin to power my old GPU

Also I thought i'd seen images of the Windmill showing two x16 slots on some kind of riser/mezzanine..? If dual cards could be run let alone as SLI (even if that means a separate ATX PSU just for them, and a couple of bitcoin risers to reposition the cards to a custom mount) this would literally do everything I could want honestly.
Probably; I don't have riser so can't tell you whether BIOS sees risen PCIes or software driver does.
You could ask it there :)



And come on, you know that only games (Direct3D/OpenGL) need SLI, don't you?
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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I would not recommend going anything less than westmere. If you are on a budget, you can get a dual cpu 1366 MB for $60:

Tyan S7012 Motherboard Dual LGA1366 2x E5506 4Cores 18 Slot DDR3 IPMI S7012GM4NR | eBay

Add in 2 x5650 cpu for $50 gives $110. $50-60 for 32gb ddr3 ecc. So for $170 you got a dual x5650 with 32gb with multithread performance faster than a ryzen 5 1600x (which cost $210 for just the cpu alone)...

But that would be like the end of the road for your WS as far as upgrade goes because there is really no cost effective upgrade beyond x5650 for 1366.

If you got a little money you should go for 2011 or 2011 v2. for single cpu WS, I highly recommend Lenovo S30 over HP and dell as levono board uses standard plugs and PSU. Keep your eyes out on ebay. I recently won a Lenovo S30 v2 WS with 16GB ram, e5-1607 v2 cpu, 256gb hdd, quadro K2000 all for around $230:

Lenovo ThinkStation S30 E5-1607v2 Quad-Core 3.0GHz 16Gb 250Gb K2000 Win7 x64 #10 | eBay

for dual cpu 2011, 2011 v2, probably the cheapest is intel S2600cp MB.
 
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You can Google and find an answer within seconds.
DIMMs per CPU;

You could literary find an answer on Google within seconds.

And come on, you know that only games (Direct3D/OpenGL) need SLI, don't you?
I'm sorry, I guess I got a little carried ahead of myself asking without re-searching first. :) I'd gone thru the original 33 pages or so of Quanta Windmill info that I saw up and took notes.. I saw enough conflicting answers that I was under the impression alot of things were still up in the air or/and unreliable still. I'll try to follow up a bit better before posting too much then.

The reason i'm curious about SLI is because if I could also make it usable for some gaming use, i'd like to build some spare PC's as budget gamerigs for some friends. A $60 mobo using cheap ram and cheap cpu's is a good deal in any book.

For myself I just would like two physical cards even if it's for something like one graphics card at x8 and one SAS card at x8 split from the same physical x16 slot.
 
I'm willing to slide on the SLI support (that was more a wishlist/gives 'additional uses'), but dual physical x16 slots would be really nice - about the only gripe I have about the Quanta Windmill boards. (yet i'd *swear*I saw something showing some riser card with two x16 slots... or is that for the 'other' ex-Facebook server for Open Compute?) As it is I originally weren't considering them at all yet now they seem seriously in the running - especially due to all those RAM slots.

I'm looking to have at least 64gigs and preferably upgrade to 128gigs later at minimum, with even more being better. (the Windmills apparently supporting 512gb using 32gb chips whenever those come down in the future hopefully) The use will primarily be video editing (Premiere), AfterEffects, and Adobe CC stuff for 4k, eventually 6k and 8k. Lesser graphical CAD use later. (3d studio, maya)

If i'm able to (ie if RAM incompatibility issues should assume to be minor/general DDR3 should work in anything instead of hunting down very specific model numbers from only certain manufacturers) i'm literally planning on buying the RAM first and then getting 3-6 workstations after that which will be compatible with the RAM. However if it IS an issue (if someone can warn me off early) then I either need to choose real carefully, or/and commit to a single platform for all workstations so the RAM can work on them all.

My top priority is big RAM and multiple seats to start - and i'll agree the LGA2011 is definately more tempting because it should stretch into a future longer as I hope to be using these for a number of years. If 16-32gb chips ever get cheaper, further RAM upgrading is possible. If CPU's drop back down in the future, same there.
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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In that case you probably want dual cpu 2011 MB with yr priority of lots of ram and expandability.

Unfortunately, the cheapest solution intel S2600cp does not have the dual physical x16 pcie. Add to the insult, if you are only using v1 cpu most cards are then limited to pci-e 2.0. but most v1 cpu are so slow anyway that I would recommend 2660 v2 anyway. the 2670 v1 was great for the cost when there were still a lot around but the supply for that is gone so no point trying to get that over 2660 v2 which is actually slightly faster and use less power...also using v2 cpu you don't have to worry about pci-e being limited to 2.0 on the s2600.

For most usage, pci-e 3.0 x8 vs x16 for gfx cards are not that noticeable. So if you can accept that, then this is the breakdown:

$145 for the S2600CP MB:

S2600CP INTEL LGA2011 SYSTEMBOARD FOR CHENBRO RM13704 WITH 2 HEATSINK | eBay

$176 or less for e5-2680 v2, $340 for 2x 2680 v2:

I said 2660 v2 earlier but the spot price check now shows 2660 v2 to be $140, no good. only get 2660 v2 if it's less than $120. otherwise, might as well go for 2680 v2. If you buy 2x 2680 v2 cpu, you get 80+ % the multithread performance of TR 1950X for 30+% the cost.

SR1A6 INTEL XEON E5-2680V2 10 CORE 2.80 GHz 25M 8 GT/s 115W PROCESSOR | eBay

$180 or less for 64gb ram or $360 for 128gb:

I would go for 16gb dimms as they are cheaper per gb than the 8gb dimms and also allow for more rams later

16GB DDR3 PC3-8500R Registered ECC Server Memory Stick | eBay

So if you decide to go 1 cpu and 64GB, the cost would be $145+ $176+ $180= $501. If you decide to go 2 cpu and 128gb, the cost would be $845. Going this route, you are always using quad channel to give the highest mem bandwidth. Also you still got more rams slots left to go up to a potential 256gb ram.
 

Janiashvili

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Dec 16, 2016
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This is for your Quanta:

QUANTA PCIE RAISER CARD FOR QUANTA WINDMILL SYSTEM | eBay

SLI-ing is not something I'd recommend, it's being massively dropped out in modern games, now true multi-GPUs are used in modern APIs (ashes of the singularity is an example)

But you'd better forget Windows 10 and DirectX 12 on Windmill. Some say there's a bios that supports it, some say there is not. My BIOS "upgrade" made my system unstable, so I don't recommend because of that upgrading your bios on Windmill (because as far as I know there is no official BIOS to upgrade to)


About core usage in game engines - I haven't used Unreal, in Unity (unlike programs like 3ds Max) at least 24 threads are being utilized for things like importing assets, generating lightmaps, generating object occlusion, etc. In short in development a lot of things get generated, and Unity is a software which recognises NUMA, and uses many many threads.
 
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Ooooh... yes... thank you. At least I know i'm not crazy/would swear i'd seen it before. So I COULD run two cards, even though i'm sure there's limitations. (splitting 75w board power into 1/2 each i'm sure - but hopefully externally powering at least one of the cards would make it okay - yes i'm just thinking out loud)


I'm willing to give up Windows 10 being run 'directly' - I hope to play around with ESX and run Win 10 as a client under it, or to run Win 7 as a host at other times. I'm willing to put up with these compromises for the price honestly, and consider things better than my current expectations to be experimental. (like win10 running direct) Right now it's still "Windmill vs the world" with the score favoring Windmill for my particular use cases. (even though I might use other workstations in the future when prices for them dropped and just migrate over cpu and ram at that time)
 
I would not recommend going anything less than westmere. If you are on a budget, you can get a dual cpu 1366 MB for $60:

Tyan S7012 Motherboard Dual LGA1366 2x E5506 4Cores 18 Slot DDR3 IPMI S7012GM4NR | eBay

Add in 2 x5650 cpu for $50 gives $110. But that would be like the end of the road for your WS as far as upgrade goes because there is really no cost effective upgrade beyond x5650 for 1366.

If you got a little money you should go for 2011 or 2011 v2.
Lenovo S30 4351 2011 v2 cpu $190

Lenovo S30 WS with 2011 v2 MB. $190 or less! get it while it lasts this is great price!
Just wanted to say a specific thanks for both these great recommendations... going back over things people have said suddenly has me re-reconsidering even my decision about the Quanta, though partly because the shipped price for a dual node is up to more like $300 and so the economics are starting to skew.

How big of a difference is there between LGA1366 and LGA2011 is one question that sticks in my head? I mean featurewise, is there something like some CPU instruction set ten times faster (the way i'm told it is over LGA775), in general i'm assuming 15-20% faster but with many apps being single core limited, something like a 3.3ghz LGA 1366 quad core may well be as good or faster than a 2.6ghz LGA 2011 octal core... used to be Premiere would use all the cores, now they've really shifted to the GPU when more than four. I wonder with a fast gpu and a pair of 3.3ghz quads if I could still edit 6k video, and even 8k since it's mostly hitting the RAM... it wont be a Threadripper, but I dont have the money for a Threadripper.

My top priorities have always been 'cheap ram' and 'multiple seats' (ie i need multiple PC's up to six) and when I see the xeon w5590 on ebay for $23 shipped (though i dont know what SLBGE means) for 3.3ghz four core (turbos to 3.6ghz) and E5-2670's have drifted north of $120 (though eight core if I can't use all that for most apps, and could put the $100 saved towards a better gpu) taking into account no messing about with custom PSU hacks, already has multiple PCIe slots (even if some only x1) and on board graphics, now i'm wondering if I should plan to stick to Westmere like I first thought. :- P I seem to have missed the train for the cheapest Quanta/$60 8-core era of 2016...
 

wildpig1234

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as long as you stay with ddr3, won't have to worry about ram.

the question is how much do you care about future upgradability and some futureproof.... go with westmere 1366 and you got a still decent x5650. for very cheap cost. but that is immediately the end of the road... I think even the latest windows 10 1709 is dropping support for it. there is no official win10 intel chipset driver for 1366 . I had trouble getting my dell t5500 to go to sleep properly without coming out of sleep crashing.... if you stick to win10 pre 1703 then win10 will do ok with sleep, but I don't know if win10 will force you to upgrade to 1709 anyway... if you don't use sleep at all then you might be ok too...

if you go with 2011 v1/v2 you got more room to go...as well as more energy efficient... a lot more cpu choices but they are not as cheap as 1366...
 

i386

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@wildpig1234
Windows 10 can use the same drivers as windows 8/8.1/server 2012/server 2012 r2 (unless there are built in version checks like mellanox has in the installer package).
But "small" upgrades like 1703 to 1709 can remove/break the old drivers.
 

wildpig1234

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@wildpig1234
Windows 10 can use the same drivers as windows 8/8.1/server 2012/server 2012 r2 (unless there are built in version checks like mellanox has in the installer package).
But "small" upgrades like 1703 to 1709 can remove/break the old drivers.
something must hv changed. my dell t5500 no longer exit from sleep properly after upgrading to 1709.
 
as long as you stay with ddr3, won't have to worry about ram.

the question is how much do you care about future upgradability and some futureproof.... go with westmere 1366 and you got a still decent x5650. for very cheap cost. but that is immediately the end of the road... I think even the latest windows 10 1709 is dropping support for it. there is no official win10 intel chipset driver for 1366 . I had trouble getting my dell t5500 to go to sleep properly without coming out of sleep crashing.... if you stick to win10 pre 1703 then win10 will do ok with sleep, but I don't know if win10 will force you to upgrade to 1709 anyway... if you don't use sleep at all then you might be ok too...

if you go with 2011 v1/v2 you got more room to go...as well as more energy efficient... a lot more cpu choices but they are not as cheap as 1366...
Right, well the only upgrade that might come with me might become the RAM itself/my original reason for wanting to buy in, and it might just follow me into a higher end LGA 2011 system in the future.

Right now i'm still using a 1055T with 24gig ram - and it's fine for 1080p video. I'm not saying i'm overjoyed, just that my needs are still simpler as an early video/film production student. It choked when I fed it 4k still images for stop motion animation - but that could be because it was a series of jpegs too. And when Windows ate itself right before a final project was due I decided only one workstation was not enough anymore.

I feel like a knuckledragger trying to hyperoptimize an old system but even promises of a threefold general improvement don't blow my mind when it's a tenfold per seat cost. I'm looking for the tenfold improvement spending two to three times. If it's 1366 or 2011 straight up i'm sure the 2011 is better, but if the saved money lets me upgrade to an SSD earlier or one notch up in video card it changes the equation.

My biggest bottlenecks are probably RAM, SSD, and GPU in that order each giving me those 10x performance improvements vs not having them. Even the thought of "waiting 9 minutes instead of 4 minutes for an operation to finish" is less of a problem if I can afford two workstations and KVM between them working on different parts of the project at the same time. Then a 4 minute wait is closer to 0 minute because the work doesn't stop, it just switches focus.

I know there are better 2011 cpu upgrades available, but if CC doesn't use most cores above 4-6 and things like the top of the line 12 core model still cost $600 (and will probably still be expensive even in a few years, last gen TOTL models always are it seems) i'm not sure if i'd ever get to that - vs just seeking the upper midrange next workstation from say the Skylake era once DDR4 finally hits parity cost. Upgradeability I suppose matters less if the older quad core is a $23 throwaway cost/i'm barely in for anything, and as the LGA 2011 workstations slide down in cost in a few years I still have the option to just migrate my RAM over to make use of something. (along with SSD and GPU at that time)


As my hardware consideration slides further backwards I lose any delusions of it being a budget Threadripper anymore at 1/3 the performance, but as long as it doesn't bottleneck and I have two of them to handle the waiting periods between work to prerender and export and all that it's okay - maybe even 8k footage can still be worked on ultimately. So my discussion of upgrading workstations may instead drift into acquiring workstation motherboards like the Intel 5520 based ones. If a board, cpu, and PSU gives me a seat for $120 shipped (or $150 dual cpu) plus whatever RAM i'm bulk buying, becomes simpler to use again (no PSU hacking like the Quanta Windmill), and gives me back more working PCIe slots and SATA ports I might just buy in at that level - and then watch for eventual more local decommissioning of LGA 2011 hardware with cpu's to just bring RAM and other parts with. If i'm just looking at mobos it becomes questions like "Supermicro, Tyan, or Intel and why?" (are there any big makers for workstations outside those worth comparing?)
 
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