Folks, I'm in the middle of redesigning my home (and production) lab, and having a tough time deciding on a strategy for convergence. The goal (like anybody else) is to have maximum performance, at the lowest power consumption, while spending the least amount of money.
I can "converge" multiple, physical server(s) into bigger boxes with dual CPUs, but after going blind on Intel's ARK site, comparing things, I'm still at a loss. If I go for higher core count CPUs, I lose clock speed, need (potentially) more expensive motherboards, and the power savings may not be worth it. This is purely from a compute perspective, features (like VT-d, AES-NI, vPro etc) play very little part in this.
What would you suggest is the best "bang for buck" compute only motherboard/cpu combo in 2018? I'm not limited by rack space at all, although somewhat dense would be nice. I can even jury rig custom chassis/DIY for custom board form factors.
Many el-cheapo, small compute nodes or a few big ones?
I can "converge" multiple, physical server(s) into bigger boxes with dual CPUs, but after going blind on Intel's ARK site, comparing things, I'm still at a loss. If I go for higher core count CPUs, I lose clock speed, need (potentially) more expensive motherboards, and the power savings may not be worth it. This is purely from a compute perspective, features (like VT-d, AES-NI, vPro etc) play very little part in this.
What would you suggest is the best "bang for buck" compute only motherboard/cpu combo in 2018? I'm not limited by rack space at all, although somewhat dense would be nice. I can even jury rig custom chassis/DIY for custom board form factors.
Many el-cheapo, small compute nodes or a few big ones?