Choose E5-2680v4 / 2640v4 / 2620v4 ?

[Evan]

Looking to maybe add an E5 to my home lab to complement Xeon-D (or just get another Xeon-D system)
I always thought E5 was a much greater power hog but i see some threads talking about ~40-45 watt idle or even less and thats with cards i won’t use.

This could be either an always on system in a cluster or or could be used purely for lab use and started when needed. I have no specific workload that either needs a huge amount of cores or high speed cores. Even spinning up a full cloud foundry install or doing some nested ESX or Hyper-V testing is not really pushing any of the CPU's too hard.

Size, power consumption, and then quiet are the primary considerations. To this end i would prefer the SM X10SRM, if i go to ATX size i would then use X10SRH for the inbuilt SAS3 or X10SRL/X10SRi.
Will add 128gb ram, (potentially 256 if i use the larger board)
Case probably a caselabs bullet BH4 or BH7 depending on uATX or ATX mainboard.

Possible E5’s (done know stepping but not ES/QS) that work for me and i can get at a reasonable price.
E5-2680v4 14-core 2.4ghz (3.3) 120w TDP
E5-2640v4 10-core 2.4ghz(3.4) 90w TDP
E5-2620v4 8-core 2.1ghz(3.0) 85w TDP

The high CPU also support 2400 memory and higher QPI, t-Case temp is the only other major difference 86 degrees of the 2680 vs 76 on the 2640.

I think the 2620 is a waste right, i can go straight to a D-1541 again and get integrated 10G and probably less power usage and it is small and simple.

So questions;

• Which CPU would you choose and why ?
• What is the impact on t-case ? just means the 2680 can run hotter ? (the TDP scaling of 2640 vs 2680 is more or less linear)
• 10G and SAS adapter onboard from a power perspective mostly ? even the uATX board has 3 x PCIe slots, any real difference ?

 

[Rand__]

The question is what is the limiting factor here? If money is no issue and (potential wait) time is not either then go for simple=xeon d.

Is there any reason not to use a -D for you? You don't need more Ram, more compute, more IO and don't mention cost...

 

[Evan]

Cost is not the biggest factor but Xeon-D for 8 core is slightly more expensive to the 10 core E5

I have original D-1540 but the board without 10g which in any case I keep, I was thinking to keep that as my real test box and get 2 say 6-core D's as a cluster.
I was kind of hoping for the higher core count C3000's to arrive as the always on solution but based on the test @Patrick has done does not save really any power at all and for sure no match computer wise to most of the D's

Part of it is 'just because I can'
IT is my job and I already have DDR4 and storage I can use the expensive is mostly in the board/CPU

 

[Rand__]

Well the 2640 was the best of the breed in terms of efficiency (all core clock*cores/TDP) iirc, so if you dont need the higher speed of the 2680 then thats a good candidate. If you want higher speed then get the 2680, that one will take a punch any day if you need it.

You will need to come up with a deciding factor though

 

[Evan]

@Rand__ maybe the deciding factor could be future use of NVMe

The thread you have contributed to got me thinking...
PCIe NVMe HBA FYI

Does the X10SDV boards support the splitting of PCIe for multiple NVMe adapter ? Maybe the E5 does ?

Xeon-D is for sure the compact safe choice.

 

[Rand__]

Well I dabbled in bifurcation with a Riser Card and it worked, but due to the fact that my riser was not really designed for the case it was a little painful so I abandoned this. This was on a X10SDV-6c+.
On Xeon-D you can do bifurcation in general, so the x2/x4 AOC cards should work, as well as using the M.2 slot via adapter (->U.2).
O/C its easier with a bunch of PCI-e Slots to just plug AIC's in...
Depends again on the number of NVMe drives you want to use ... 1-2 with nothing/little else will work on Xeon-D, much more ... E5.

O/c its still to be expected that more x16->4*x4 cards will be available at some point at a reasonable price to facilitate NVMe...

 

[TangoWhiskey9]

I'd go E5-2640 V4 for a step up from the Xeon D.

I'd expect you're looking at 256GB RAM with the E5-2640 and 512GB with the E5-2680 if you're going to use all those cores.

 

[Evan]

I'd go E5-2640 V4 for a step up from the Xeon D.

I'd expect you're looking at 256GB RAM with the E5-2640 and 512GB with the E5-2680 if you're going to use all those cores.

Actually at work use dual 2680's and 512gb
No plans to go that big memory wise.
Having said this the ATX boards have the slots to make allow more memory than the uATX where it's same as Xeon-D. 8 x 32gb = 256 vs 4 x 32gb = 128 unless using 64gb LRDIMM

 

[Mark Bradley]

What prices are you finding for these processors? Specifically, the E5-2640 v4... Haven't priced CPUs and this is a bit of "sticker shock" for me. [Coming from the guy with dual L5640's.]

 

[Evan]

Still throwing around the idea my lab rebuild should include an E5. Just saw I never replied to @Mark Bradley so to answer the question is normally new ~$900 but 2 used ones I can get are ~600-700 each.
So after adding a board bang for buck similar to Xeon-D configs.

I have a strange feeling that I won't actually see all that much performance increase some how, which sort of makes the complexity sort of silly, major advantage is more ram and expansion and onboard sas3 instead of possible onboard sas2