Dual LGA2011 board (or barebone/prebuilt system) that supports 256GB ram and dual GTX 970 GPUs

[Manav Agarwal]

I picked up a pair of Xeon V1s (2670) and want to put them into a 2u-4u server I am putting together for compute purposes. I'm open to single or dual lga2011 since my applications are more bound by memory and GPU.

I need to have > 128GB of ram, preferably 256GB so I'd need 12+ slots.. actually 24 would be great to save some money if possible.

Any ideas or recommendations? I'm also open to buying a used HP/Dell server and swapping in new cpu/memory... but I would need to fit in the GPUs as well. (I could go with a single GTX 980 ti or titan x as well if needed).

I'm looking to minimize the cost as much as I can but still meet the requirements.

Thanks!

 

[Fritz]

Right now they're all selling at a premium due to the flood of E-2670's on the market. The chips are cheap but the MB's are depressingly expensive. I was lucky enough to grab a X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD for 199 bucks on eBay when they were just starting to rise thanks to a member here but I would not buy one at the current asking price. Might want to check out this thread.

Motherboard/CPU/Memory Bundles for sale

 

[C@mM!]

Wondering what the 970's are for? For compute, they are a pretty poor option is all.

 

[Manav Agarwal]

The reason for going 970 is that I'll be doing a bit of rendering as well, and for that the number of cores makes a difference. This way I can manage until Pascal comes out without wasting more on a 980/Titan setup. I haven't bought the cards yet though so it will depend on how pricing is.