Dual E5 2670 workstation motherboard recommendation

[adgjk]

Hi all, new to this forum but I was hoping to build a dual CPU workstation for myself with either 2670, 2680 or 2690's (depending on what the offers are at the time of buying).

I was originally wanting to use the Asus Z9PE-D8 WS board, but can't find it anywhere currently, then I stumbled across the AsrockRack EP2C602-4L/D16 and (besides the green PCB) it seemed a perfect alternative to the Asus!

Now I'm reading about these lockups under Windows 10... I would much prefer to use Windows 10 if possible, I just found 7/8.1 to be clunky in their own ways and 10 seems to have ironed out those issues for me.

Is there anything that can be done? I noticed fastrax mention that it locks up only at when gaming now, but I would still like to game in downtime... Any alternatives? I like these boards because of the SATA 3 6Gbps capabilities and PCIe x16 slots.

I was hoping to use the above CPUs, a GTX 1080 and 128GB ECC RAM (just whats available on ebay).

Thanks!

 

[wildpig1234]

Hi all, new to this forum but I was hoping to build a dual CPU workstation for myself with either 2670, 2680 or 2690's (depending on what the offers are at the time of buying).

I was originally wanting to use the Asus Z9PE-D8 WS board, but can't find it anywhere currently, then I stumbled across the AsrockRack EP2C602-4L/D16 and (besides the green PCB) it seemed a perfect alternative to the Asus!

Now I'm reading about these lockups under Windows 10... I would much prefer to use Windows 10 if possible, I just found 7/8.1 to be clunky in their own ways and 10 seems to have ironed out those issues for me.

Is there anything that can be done? I noticed fastrax mention that it locks up only at when gaming now, but I would still like to game in downtime... Any alternatives? I like these boards because of the SATA 3 6Gbps capabilities and PCIe x16 slots.

I was hoping to use the above CPUs, a GTX 1080 and 128GB ECC RAM (just whats available on ebay).

Thanks!

Z9PE-D8WS ASUS Computer System Board

Asus Z9PE-D8 WS Motherboard Refurbished By Asus Dual Xeon 2011 V2 Capable

if you are willing to pay 400+ minimum.

Your next cheapest options are either S2600cp2j package deal with natex or one of the oem dell t7600, Lenovo d30, or hp z820. These oem workstation does have the built in sound but not surround and many sata and usb 3 ports and at least 2 x16 pcie slots.

c602 MB aside from s2600cp2j are def not cheap at all...

 

[Bill1950]

I'm using an ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16, dual E5-2670. 8 x 4gb Samsung, GTX 750Ti, Samsung 240gb SSD and a few other SSDs and spinners. Have not had problems usingW7 Ultimate SP1 (my preferred system), I don't use sleep mode. But I don't have much experience with it. We're talkimg days, not years of experience with it. No lockups, no hang-ups. No particular issues beyond a few update issues not specific to this mb / proc system (had to manually install a different update agent and 300+ updates). No problems, no errors, no fails, no issues. Reasonably fast, lots of processing capacity.

Just read very carefully ALL the documentation before you buy ANYTHING. And check natex.com for prices.

NOT as fast doing single-threaded apps, but running 15 - 25 different windows is impressive. CPU temp barely breathes over 50C even under load. 32 thread processor system works quite adequately.

My understanding is that the EP2C602-4L/D16 only has documented problems with sleep mode. But at my age, everybody has problens with sleep.

 

[wildpig1234]

depends on the need, if the purpose is to run as a server, then the oem workstation won't cut it as they lack the remote management features like ipmi, etc. but if your purpose is just to run as a workstation and unless you are set on building your own (as a lot of us like to tinker), the oem are actually not bad if you can score a good deal on fleabay.

Ex: I scored a relative good barebone deal recent on a D30 for $330 shipped. so that comes with case, 1100w gold plus psu, and MB and 1 cpu fan. add $130 for 2 e5-2670 from natex . rams seems to be a little more expensive now than a few months ago but even at $15/8gb, 64gb would be $120 or 128gb would be 240, and plus another $22 for another cpu cooler. Grand total for a complete WS with 2x e5-2670 with 128GB ram based on that barebone d30 would be $730, excluding boot drive and gfx card.

Pretty good price? usb 3 and sound are already built on board the d30 so even though it only have 4 pcie slots those are open whether as the s2600 and a lot of these C602 based MB has 6 pcie but if you add usb3 and sound you are down to 4 pcie slots too.

Add to this is the fact that the d30 is built like a WS. sleep is perfectly configured using 3w whereas my s2600cp uses 17W during sleep!. win 10 runs like a champ on it without any problem at all whatsoever.

 

[Klee]

I'm using an ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16, dual E5-2670. 8 x 4gb Samsung, GTX 750Ti, Samsung 240gb SSD and a few other SSDs and spinners. Have not had problems usingW7 Ultimate SP1 (my preferred system), I don't use sleep mode. But I don't have much experience with it. We're talkimg days, not years of experience with it. No lockups, no hang-ups. No particular issues beyond a few update issues not specific to this mb / proc system (had to manually install a different update agent and 300+ updates). No problems, no errors, no fails, no issues. Reasonably fast, lots of processing capacity.

Just read very carefully ALL the documentation before you buy ANYTHING. And check natex.com for prices.

NOT as fast doing single-threaded apps, but running 15 - 25 different windows is impressive. CPU temp barely breathes over 50C even under load. 32 thread processor system works quite adequately.

My understanding is that the EP2C602-4L/D16 only has documented problems with sleep mode. But at my age, everybody has problens with sleep.

Well I wanted to see if I had suspend disabled in the bios and went ahead and rebooted a little while ago and it was enabled, I could have sworn that I disabled it.
Oh well I guess I should have taken and kept notes on what I did.
Maybe tomorrow I'll try windows 10 again on a spare hard drive.

 

[ycp]

Hey Klee,

in an earlier post in this thread you said that you had the ASROCK Mobo working well with windows server 2016. Was that an extensive test or just you were able to install it? The reason i am asking because i am also looking to purchase an ASrock board with e5-2670 cpus for some VM stuff and i will be using windows server 2016.

 

[Klee]

Hey Klee,

in an earlier post in this thread you said that you had the ASROCK Mobo working well with windows server 2016. Was that an extensive test or just you were able to install it? The reason i am asking because i am also looking to purchase an ASrock board with e5-2670 cpus for some VM stuff and i will be using windows server 2016.

I ran it for two or three weeks because it was free and I wanted to check it out to see if it had the same random lockup problems as Windows 10.

I installed the free trial Datacenter version and used it as a workstation LOL.

Kerbal Space program and World of Tanks ran great on it and it had zero lockups.

So no issues at all running, installed perfectly and had ZERO issues but it was not a extensive test but I liked it and if I could have found a guide like the " Windows 2003 server as a workstation" one I used back in the day I would have left it installed until the preview expired.

 

[ycp]

I ran it for two or three weeks because it was free and I wanted to check it out to see if it had the same random lockup problems as Windows 10.

I installed the free trial Datacenter version and used it as a workstation LOL.

Kerbal Space program and World of Tanks ran great on it and it had zero lockups.

So no issues at all running, installed perfectly and had ZERO issues but it was not a extensive test but I liked it and if I could have found a guide like the " Windows 2003 server as a workstation" one I used back in the day I would have left it installed until the preview expired.

Did you have the sleep or suspend features disable in the bios when you tried server 2016 or were they on?

 

[Klee]

Did you have the sleep or suspend features disable in the bios when you tried server 2016 or were they on?

I had suspend enabled, I just disabled it last night and i'll give windows 10 one more go hopefully this afternoon.

 

[wildpig1234]

you ever try to uncheck the allow wake up from sleep for both keyboards and mouse inside windows device manager?

 

[Klee]

you ever try to uncheck the allow wake up from sleep for both keyboards and mouse inside windows device manager?

I just reinstalled windows 10 and turned off everything to do with sleep or hibernation I can find so I will see if that works.

 

[wildpig1234]

I just reinstalled windows 10 and turned off everything to do with sleep or hibernation I can find so I will see if that works.

I can't say that exactly the fix since your problem seems to be more random rather than with some other people which has specifically sleep problems. but worth a try I guess...

Make sure to also set never sleep under "change when I want to sleep" under power options in windows control panel. as well as also uncheck allow wake up from sleep for keyboard and mouse in device manager. See how long it runs under win 10..

 

[Klee]

I can't say that exactly the fix since your problem seems to be more random rather than with some other people which has specifically sleep problems. but worth a try I guess...

Make sure to also set never sleep under "change when I want to sleep" under power options in windows control panel. as well as also uncheck allow wake up from sleep for keyboard and mouse in device manager. See how long it runs under win 10..

Yep already did all that. The longest it ever went before locking up was about a day and a half, so I just installed my usual programs and no extras and i'll keep it running.

 

[Klee]

Going on 21 hours so far , has not locked up ........sure hope I did not just jinx myself.

 

[wildpig1234]

run some stress and benchmark test too

 

[Bill1950]

I've been running the EP2C602-4L/D16 for a few days 24/7. Even tried sleep earlier today. No problems. Runs cool. Speed good. Plenty of capacity. Hardly registers any CPU usage.

Sleep actually doesn't. At least not what I call real sleep. It just seems like the video card is shut down. But the fans keep running.

Oh, I'm running Windows 7. Mature, rock solid, fast and stable. I don't like W10.

 

[Klee]

Well it just locked up hard , almost made 24 hours running Windows 10.

Looking at logs in a minute.


EDIT: Only shows unclean reboot, nothing else just like before.

 

[wildpig1234]

sorry to hear ;(... I guess you ll have to get back onto win 7 or server 2016 and skip win 10...

 

[Bill1950]

Have you considered running HWiNFO64? Latest version is 5.36-2960. Free download. It might help hardware monitoring to see if there are heat or voltage issues. Works fine for me in W7. Can't say how it runs in any other O/S.

 

[wildpig1234]

I see the latest bios is 3/2016 but I assume you already had that installed and it didn't work? that sucks that asrock just don't take the problem with win 10 into account as I am sure a lot of people already let them know the problem ;(. at this point, if you really want to get win10 working, I would really sell the board as it's not worth tickering time that obviously hasn't worked. I hope maybe when server 2016 out they release another bios but it might not happen if they just decide to cut support for it since this is like almost 6 yrs old.

I have been in this scenario before. and actually this is just very recently while I was trying to get my s2600cp to work with sleep. I bought a Lenovo d30 and was going to sell my s2600. good thing I figure out the problem but I really was about to cut my loss.