Dual Xeon video workstation build - worth it?

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Dec 7, 2019
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Hi folks, very nerdy thread here!! Happy to have found this site, so thank you all for your contributions! I'm posting because I'm curious about my next PC build and am wondering if it is worth it or if there are other things to consider.

Background: Currently a desktop user with 2600K /16GB ram, built way back in 2011; maybe even 2010. I do some film work and editing. I'm looking to do more, and am considering where I should be (tech-wise) in the near future.

A few years ago, I started seeing more and more people talking about picking up Xeon workstations on the cheap. I did some research back then and got all giddy and I think the seed was planted. Flash forward to today -- and it really seems like they've come down in price. So much so, that a lot of people sway builders towards purchasing a newer, single socket build, because it can outperform dual Xeons. With the ability to put so many cores on one small chip, I assume the nature of multi-socket platforms involves more energy consumption and high production costs; and unless some major tech happens in the future, which too could be brief -- I imagine that multi-socket processors will soon be fossils of the computer industry. It does *seem* multi-socket processing are not only increasingly historic, but a somewhat time-sensitive technology, and thus for some, like me -- also a bit of a novelty. And despite all the videos I've seen where people make dual Xeons look bad, you can still find people buying them today, defending them today, and proving they got a bargain for their buck.

And so I've come to the tentative conclusion that while perhaps most people looking for workstations should probably stay away from dual Xeons, it might still make sense for me -- and I'd like some 2nd opinions on that. I've been doing a lot of research in the last weeks, semi-trying-to-convince-myself-it's-not-worth-it, but also trying to plan any future technology investments well.

Heres my parts list. I would update my CPU down the road and wait for a deal as they are still too expensive in my eyes:

Starting CPU's: 2 E5-2637 v3 - 8 C / 16 T 3.5Ghz ($115 together)
Used Dell Precision 7810 or 7910 DDR4 mobo($85ish)
EVGA 850W PSU
Used 64GB ECC Reg 2400
Inexpensive heatsinks
Inexpensive case
Probably a GeForce 980 or 980ti, happy to take suggestions -- don't know much about GPU's for editing.


My reasoning is that I should go with a 2011-3 board and a v3 chip because of DDR4 and better RAM clocks. The v2 chips are obviously a little cheaper, but I figure having a v3 board would help with future-proofing my rig.

What do you guys think? And when we talk budget here, I can't kid myself, I've lived in poverty and I have no idea how I'll scrap up this computer, but I will if it's worth it. The big question is, should I skip over the dual Xeon idea altogether, and focus on different technology? For example, a used Threadripper 1950X($320-ish/cpu) build? The Threadripper is 16 C / 32 T and 3.4Ghz, and I don't know for sure but I'd think that 3.4Ghz+ would likely be more stable, especially with overclocking.

Also sidebar: I'm on Windows 7 and I probably want to run the dual Xeon on Windows 7. Is that stupid? Will windows 7 bottleneck anything?

sorry if my post is immensely too long, just trying to illustrate what I know already and where I'm coming from. thanks if you read!
 

laserpaddy

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Jul 17, 2017
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out there
Had a similar thought a while back and picked up an asus dual 2011 a9 board with pike controller 2 e5-v2s and 128gb of 1866mhz ddr3 ram.
And still have not had the time to grab a GPU or 2 for that matter.
I went the v2 route because it is or was considerably cheaper than a v3 setup at the time...long story short its 12 cores 24 thread 128gb 1866 ecc ram with massive controller in a rosewill 4u rack case and I think I got 800 bucks in it.
So yes I think v2 v3 etc is worth it and will be , at least for me, for many years- IMHO The GPU is the fulcrum of my builds.
If you decide to go the v2 route send me a pm I have too many systems, and Christmas n all....
 
Dec 7, 2019
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Had a similar thought a while back and picked up an asus dual 2011 a9 board with pike controller 2 e5-v2s and 128gb of 1866mhz ddr3 ram.
And still have not had the time to grab a GPU or 2 for that matter.
I went the v2 route because it is or was considerably cheaper than a v3 setup at the time...long story short its 12 cores 24 thread 128gb 1866 ecc ram with massive controller in a rosewill 4u rack case and I think I got 800 bucks in it.
So yes I think v2 v3 etc is worth it and will be , at least for me, for many years- IMHO The GPU is the fulcrum of my builds.
If you decide to go the v2 route send me a pm I have too many systems, and Christmas n all....
thanks, i'm pretty sure i'm set on v3 but i'd like to hear some peoples opinions. Most of the editing work i do is with lightworks so i'm looking to build something good for that
 

alex_stief

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May 31, 2016
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There are a few caveats you should be aware of. In no particular order:

1) The reason some OEM motherboards are so cheap is their proprietary form factor and connectors. Plus all the locks and barriers that come with OEM motherboards. You will have a hard time fitting this into a regular cheap case. Read up on which connectors your particular board has, it might be incompatible with the regular 24-pin of an ATX motherboard. My biased take on this: either buy a complete OEM workstation and use it as intended, or go all the way with more standardized components. If you are the tinkerer type and know what you are doing, your conclusion might differ.
2) NUMA. And parallelization in general. Not all software works great with 2 CPUs. Not all software scales well on many cores. Not sure about lightworks though, specific information seems hard to find.
Sure, 16 cores for 115 bucks sounds great. But if we take most of Adobes products as an example, they might be beaten by a single 8-core CPU.

These old dual-xeon workstations are great for some niche applications. I built and used a few of them myself. For example if you need tons of RAM and memory bandwidth for cheap. But with the currently low prices for new RAM, and recent advancements in core-count on mainstream platforms, there is often a better alternative.
Before buying, you should definitely try to find out if your software can make effective use of this many cores, distributed across 2 physical CPUs.
 
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Markess

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Also sidebar: I'm on Windows 7 and I probably want to run the dual Xeon on Windows 7. Is that stupid? Will windows 7 bottleneck anything?
As @alex_stief notes above: the programs you use, and their ability to make use of 2 CPU's is going to be a big determinant in your choice of CPU architecture.

Also important to consider though, is that Windows 7 is end of life. The very last date for security updates isless than two months away. You may wish to consider this when designing your new system.
 
Dec 7, 2019
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There are a few caveats you should be aware of. In no particular order:

1) The reason some OEM motherboards are so cheap is their proprietary form factor and connectors. Plus all the locks and barriers that come with OEM motherboards. You will have a hard time fitting this into a regular cheap case. Read up on which connectors your particular board has, it might be incompatible with the regular 24-pin of an ATX motherboard. My biased take on this: either buy a complete OEM workstation and use it as intended, or go all the way with more standardized components. If you are the tinkerer type and know what you are doing, your conclusion might differ.
2) NUMA. And parallelization in general. Not all software works great with 2 CPUs. Not all software scales well on many cores. Not sure about lightworks though, specific information seems hard to find.
Sure, 16 cores for 115 bucks sounds great. But if we take most of Adobes products as an example, they might be beaten by a single 8-core CPU.

These old dual-xeon workstations are great for some niche applications. I built and used a few of them myself. For example if you need tons of RAM and memory bandwidth for cheap. But with the currently low prices for new RAM, and recent advancements in core-count on mainstream platforms, there is often a better alternative.
Before buying, you should definitely try to find out if your software can make effective use of this many cores, distributed across 2 physical CPUs.
From what I've gathered EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2 220-G2-0850-XR 80+ GOLD 850W Fully Modular EVGA ECO Mode Includes FREE Power On Self Tester Power Supply - Newegg.com this power supply would be able to power both cpu's without limitation, but i could be wrong

I know that Lightworks can make use of many many threads, so it does seem very applicable to go with a high core, high ram system. Just not sure on cost vs result, or anything else I might be missing
 
Dec 7, 2019
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As @alex_stief notes above: the programs you use, and their ability to make use of 2 CPU's is going to be a big determinant in your choice of CPU architecture.

Also important to consider though, is that Windows 7 is end of life. The very last date for security updates isless than two months away. You may wish to consider this when designing your new system.
this is probably bad but I don't really update my computer or any of that stuff. Is it really that bad lol :(
 

alex_stief

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It's not about the rated wattage or quality of the power supply. But about the physical connector on the motherboard. Some OEM boards do away with the usual 24-pin connector, and use something proprietary instead. It's an easy fix with an adapter, and maybe the board you buy even has standard connectors. Anyway, this was just one of the points against this type of board in a DIY build.
I would suggest asking in their own forum if Lightworks plays nice with NUMA.
 
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Patrick

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I am going to chime in here.

You can see what is more or less my daily workstation here: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/my-september-2017-workstation-build.16397/

There are links as well to my older 2015 and 2013 builds. The 2015 version actually ended with dual Xeon E5-2690 V4's.

Since I was already on two CPUs in 2017, the original Threadripper 1950X seemed attractive. Higher clock speeds yet still with 16 cores. Although billed as a single CPU, the 1950X in many ways is like two Ryzen 1700 chips combined (maybe higher in the SKU stack, but that is the general idea.)

Part of the reason I went Threadripper was because I wanted to also make a statement that if we recommended something, I would be willing to use it myself.

This weekend, I am doing a Threadripper 3970X build. I simply want more cores and a single NUMA node design.

As part of the process, I am replacing the CPU, motherboard, RAM, liquid cooler, GPU, and drives. Pretty much I am only keeping the chassis and power supply from the current system.

At 64GB, frankly, I think that you should target a Threadripper 1950X or 2950X (2990WX is a different story) system that someone upgrading will discard. With the Core i9-10980XE at $999 for 18 cores, that is going to put a lot of pressure on the used 16 core Threadrippers. The 1950X has higher clock speeds and twice the cores of the dual E5-2637 V3's.

My guess is that you could get a used 1950X, 64GB of RAM, a motherboard, and maybe a cooler in the $750-800 range. That may seem like a lot, but you are also getting more single-thread performance and 2x the cores along with lower power consumption with the Threadripper.

The other option is that you get a Core i9-9900K which generally performs great at Adobe applications but has limited PCIe expansion capabilities.
 

alex_stief

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I had not realized that you were planning to use 4-core CPUs in your dual xeon build. In this case, it makes no sense at all. There are way better alternatives out there with regular consumer hardware. E.g. Ryzen 7 2700x, which goes for 150€ new and includes a CPU cooler.

Not sure if your question about Windows 7 end of support is serious or not. Of course you should no longer use it, and now switching to a new PC anyway is the perfect time to upgrade.
 
Dec 7, 2019
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I am going to chime in here.

You can see what is more or less my daily workstation here: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/my-september-2017-workstation-build.16397/

There are links as well to my older 2015 and 2013 builds. The 2015 version actually ended with dual Xeon E5-2690 V4's.

Since I was already on two CPUs in 2017, the original Threadripper 1950X seemed attractive. Higher clock speeds yet still with 16 cores. Although billed as a single CPU, the 1950X in many ways is like two Ryzen 1700 chips combined (maybe higher in the SKU stack, but that is the general idea.)

Part of the reason I went Threadripper was because I wanted to also make a statement that if we recommended something, I would be willing to use it myself.

This weekend, I am doing a Threadripper 3970X build. I simply want more cores and a single NUMA node design.

As part of the process, I am replacing the CPU, motherboard, RAM, liquid cooler, GPU, and drives. Pretty much I am only keeping the chassis and power supply from the current system.

At 64GB, frankly, I think that you should target a Threadripper 1950X or 2950X (2990WX is a different story) system that someone upgrading will discard. With the Core i9-10980XE at $999 for 18 cores, that is going to put a lot of pressure on the used 16 core Threadrippers. The 1950X has higher clock speeds and twice the cores of the dual E5-2637 V3's.

My guess is that you could get a used 1950X, 64GB of RAM, a motherboard, and maybe a cooler in the $750-800 range. That may seem like a lot, but you are also getting more single-thread performance and 2x the cores along with lower power consumption with the Threadripper.

The other option is that you get a Core i9-9900K which generally performs great at Adobe applications but has limited PCIe expansion capabilities.
Interesting stuff and I appreciate you sharing your opinion. I really didn't look around too much with the AMD stuff, but, the only thing that really stuck out to me was the 1950X. With that setup I could sell my current setup to help fund it because I could use a 1950X build as an all-around machine, but, I really liked the idea of building a Xeon workstation separate from my 'gaming' PC(if you will), and having multiple machines for guests, testing, etc. It does sound like I'm going to have to convince myself to stay away from dual Xeons, but, do you have an opinion on the 1950X compared to better performing V3 chips? 2 Xeon E5-2666 v3's are $280 on eBay, for example. 2.9GHz, 20-cores. 2 Xeon E5-2643 V3's are 350 for 2, and 3.4Ghz on 12 cores.

And here's another question -- what if I can't do this build for a year or two? I imagine even the best E5-2X processors are going to plummet pretty hard in the near future.


I had not realized that you were planning to use 4-core CPUs in your dual xeon build. In this case, it makes no sense at all. There are way better alternatives out there with regular consumer hardware. E.g. Ryzen 7 2700x, which goes for 150€ new and includes a CPU cooler.

Not sure if your question about Windows 7 end of support is serious or not. Of course you should no longer use it, and now switching to a new PC anyway is the perfect time to upgrade.
I would only run the 8-core setup for a matter of months until I could upgrade, if at all. I just don't know if at any point I'd be able to spend more than 300-350 combined on whatever I'd end up with, in my foreseeable future.

And yeah I am serious on the Windows 7, I don't know a whole lot about internet security these days. But also, I have no money so it's not like people can do much with my identity and I'm not really sure what else there is to risk.

To be honest with you I'm far more concerned with the corporate-government monopoly invading my privacy and using my information, and to be honest, newer versions of Windows are undoubtedly much more pro-corporate-government-monopoly in terms of sharing personal information(and additionally just seem to get bulkier and bulkier). I haven't sought out much info, but any discussion on security I'd be eager to hear.


It's not about the rated wattage or quality of the power supply. But about the physical connector on the motherboard. Some OEM boards do away with the usual 24-pin connector, and use something proprietary instead. It's an easy fix with an adapter, and maybe the board you buy even has standard connectors. Anyway, this was just one of the points against this type of board in a DIY build.
I would suggest asking in their own forum if Lightworks plays nice with NUMA.
This still seems a bit confusing to me, I know it's not the wattage, I had just read a couple times that higher end power supplies tend to have the right connections to properly power dual CPU's.



Thanks for your responses so far!
 
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Markess

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I would only run the 8-core setup for a matter of months until I could upgrade, if at all. I just don't know if at any point I'd be able to spend more than 300-350 combined on whatever I'd end up with, in my foreseeable future.
A couple extra thoughts on your proposed setup. First, as you note above, you're considering an upgrade in the future. Rather than get two cheaper 4 core CPUs to start, get a single CPU with higher core count to start, an 8 core E5-2667 v3 for example, and upgrade later by adding a second CPU. You can run most dual socket motherboard on a single CPU and it keeps you from having to replace both CPUs. I don't have hard benchmarks, but I'd bet a single E5-2667 will perform about as well as dual 2637's to start.

The Dell motherboards you list won't work in a non-dell case, at least not without some cutting & drilling. Dell positions the rear I/O connectors on their motherboards differently in relation to the expansion slots than the "standard". So in a generic case, in order to use the expansion slots properly you'd need to push rear I/O ports until they stick way out of the back of the case. If you aligned the rear I/O ports to be flush with the back of the case, the expansion slots would be recessed too much to secure any expansion cards properly. Hope that makes sense? If you are considering a Dell (or HP) motherboard for example, it may be better to get a complete server with case and power supplies.
 

ReturnedSword

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The Xeon E5 craze from a few years back was mostly due to cheap ES CPUs being dumped on eBay as a way to get more cores for a reasonable price. This was before AMD Zen was available, and the corresponding Intel attempts to stem the bleeding by reducing prices / adding cores. Nowadays I feel that a user would be better served by a more modern Threadripper 1950X/2950X for example. If you must get a Xeon E5 v3, I'd suggest going with a used pulled standardized motherboard from Supermicro. You'll have too much difficulty moving an OEM, non-standard board into standard chassis later.

On the topic of Windows version, the enthusiast world has had this debate many times before whenever there's a major version shift. Windows 3.x vs 95, 98 vs 2000, 2000 vs 7, it goes on. My humble opinion is a user is better served by any OS that has continuing security patches, which Windows 7 support will be ending soon, not to mention future driver updates/availability. To be fair, though I didn't resist moving Windows versions, I did lag behind on moving from 98 to 7, then from 7 to 10. Windows 10 just feels faster in every way. If you are concerned about personal data security concerns, the Windows 10 LTSB variant is available that does not come with the functionalities that generate most complaints from privacy minded folks, in addition to more controls for when non-security patches can be applied. I got hit with ransomware on my remaining Windows 7 test box not too long ago. This machine is rarely ever connected to the internet. Thankfully I didn't have any important data on that machine. I did promptly upgrade it to Windows 10, however :p
 
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kapone

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<snip>

<snip>concerns, the Windows 10 LTSB variant is available that does not come with the functionalities that generate most complaints from privacy minded folks, in addition to more controls for when non-security patches can be applied. <snip>
While true... (and that is what I use)

LTSB requires a Windows 10 Enterprise license which is only available via a Volume Licensing agreement.
You can't buy LTSB retail.
 

alex_stief

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My last post here, since this is getting out of hand...
You got hooked this dual-Xeon idea, which makes no sense for you, especially in the current market. And building it as you planned will be a pain in the ass.

Get a somewhat decent B450 motherboard instead, with a (used) Ryzen 7 2700. Lower price, less hassle, and can still be upgraded to 12 or 16 really fast cores later down the line.
 
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ReturnedSword

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One thing I learned from my younger, more active enthusiast days is that chasing trends usually ends in either overspending, a compromised solution or both.

@alex_stief brings up a great point. I also moved from a i7-2600K about a year and a half ago. I had no reason to upgrade since Intel was stuck on quad cores with minimal IPC increases for years, and didn't play as many games as I used to in the past. My first PC after the i7-2600K was a Ryzen 1700 and I was blown away by how much more responsive it was. I've since given away the Ryzen 1700 box to a family friend who was in need and have two Ryzen 2700X boxes as my main PCs. With the Ryzen 2000 series Intel vs AMD IPC discrepancy was minimal, and with Ryzen 3000 AMD has surpassed Intel in IPC.

@surfacevalueshowdown have you thought about building around a great B450 motherboard, such as the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max and a Ryzen 2700? Enthusiasts are selling their Ryzen 2000 CPUs to upgrade to Ryzen 3000. The motherboard (due to its increased BIOS flash memory) can fully support Ryzen 3000 CPUs down the line. You'd be able to pick up a Ryzen 3950X to get a 16-core CPU down the line for cheap once enthusiasts go through their next upgrade cycle.
 
Dec 7, 2019
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A couple extra thoughts on your proposed setup. First, as you note above, you're considering an upgrade in the future. Rather than get two cheaper 4 core CPUs to start, get a single CPU with higher core count to start, an 8 core E5-2667 v3 for example, and upgrade later by adding a second CPU. You can run most dual socket motherboard on a single CPU and it keeps you from having to replace both CPUs. I don't have hard benchmarks, but I'd bet a single E5-2667 will perform about as well as dual 2637's to start.

The Dell motherboards you list won't work in a non-dell case, at least not without some cutting & drilling. Dell positions the rear I/O connectors on their motherboards differently in relation to the expansion slots than the "standard". So in a generic case, in order to use the expansion slots properly you'd need to push rear I/O ports until they stick way out of the back of the case. If you aligned the rear I/O ports to be flush with the back of the case, the expansion slots would be recessed too much to secure any expansion cards properly. Hope that makes sense? If you are considering a Dell (or HP) motherboard for example, it may be better to get a complete server with case and power supplies.
that's a pretty good point about running a single socket for a while. If I'm correct about prices dropping significantly in the future, I guess only then would it be better to buy 2 lower-end chips because there might be more of a premium to buying a single high performing chip now.

Good point on cases. In terms of cases, I was hoping to use a large ATX. I guess I may have to buy a used dual socket server for a couple hundred bucks, or just go with the Rosewill 7-fan one from NewEgg or something. The latter is okay with me but I'm not as keen on getting an old server tower since they don't really have any aesthetic appeal.


My last post here, since this is getting out of hand...
You got hooked this dual-Xeon idea, which makes no sense for you, especially in the current market. And building it as you planned will be a pain in the ass.

Get a somewhat decent B450 motherboard instead, with a (used) Ryzen 7 2700. Lower price, less hassle, and can still be upgraded to 12 or 16 really fast cores later down the line.
So this is something I missed I guess. Apparently I am mistaken -- I thought that the verdict was in order to run more high end AMD products, you need a 500 dollar motherboard. I didn't realize these B450 boards can run so many chips, including ones not yet out, and are sub-$150. Unless I'm missing something, that in itself is reason for me to cancel out the dual socket idea. Though I think I would still go with a threadripper series, likely used, just simply because I want the high core #, even if I lose some degree of clock speed.

Not sure if anyone has anything else to add but thanks to everyone who posted and is helping me decide a direction.

Lastly, I did some research and Windows 10 LTSB sounds great, so I will work on somehow getting that in the future and dumping Windows 7 for good. I'm still very curious if there are processing advantage, or in some case even disadvantages between W7 and W10 and will have to research that as well.
 
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ReturnedSword

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AMD B450 can certainly run almost all AM4 socket CPUs, given the VRM being robust enough for higher core CPUs ofc. The MSI B450 Tomahawk Max I suggested is ~$100 and checks all the boxes. You can get an 8-core Ryzen 2700 as suggested and upgrade to a 16-core 3950X later when enthusiasts go through their next upgrade cycle.

If you go with AMD X399 for TR, you can get older gear for cheaper now too. For example a used TR 1950X is about $400. That gets you 16 cores on a single NUMA node. The main benefits of TR is more connectivity, however do note that while TR 1000 and TR 2000 are compatible with each other, you will need a new motherboard to run TR 3000 and up, effectively closing off an upgrade path. TR 3000 vastly improved the architecture since it's now a single NUMA node vs multiple NUMA nodes after 16 cores, which can bring performance improvements if you are doing memory latency sensitive tasks.

Another consideration you may consider is, how much connectivity do you need? Since the days of the Sandy Bridge you're using right now, there has been even more integration. Simply put, for the vast number of users, even power users, there isn't a need to have anything more than a single PCIe slot for the GPU. Then there's storage. The B450 supports at least a single M.2 NVMe and 4 SATA, and usually more, depending on design from the manufacturer.
 

Patrick

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@surfacevalueshowdown part of it is that I want to use what I recommend. The other part is that the 1950X was a fairly good balance between having a good core count, clock speed, and PCIe expansion.

I do agree with @ReturnedSword that the new Threadripper is much better since it is a single NUMA node with more cores. At the same time, it is a LOT more expensive. The 1950X is in closer price competition with the older dual Xeons.

I think the dual Xeon E5 V3's you mentioned are nice, but you have relatively low clock speeds. With all cores loaded you are probably 3.0GHz or less with a four generation old architecture. If your OS is turning on security patches, Haswell will feel a lot slower today as well. Even CentOS 8 has a warning if you are using Hyper-Threading on Intel regarding security during the installer.
 
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@surfacevalueshowdownWith all cores loaded you are probably 3.0GHz or less with a four generation old architecture. If your OS is turning on security patches, Haswell will feel a lot slower today as well. Even CentOS 8 has a warning if you are using Hyper-Threading on Intel regarding security during the installer.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean here with security and feeling slower, sorry for being a bit of a newb. I've been learning a lot here.

I do realize now why I came to my conclusion on AMD in the first place, and for people in a similar position as me, looking for a strictly video editing machine or the like, they might come to a similar conclusion -- which is that as of late 2019, you still have to get an expensive TR4 motherboard to have access to more than 8-core processing. I could indeed get an 8-core AM4 AMD chip with a cheap motherboard and that's great and at all, and the limited amount of non-ECC ram isn't even that big of a deal, but, you can't ever get more cores out of the AM4 board and I've been on a budget 4-core build for 10 years already

Perhaps I am underestimating AMD overclocking outdoing high core count and ECC RAM, but, being able to still get a DDR4 MB, an insane amount of potential for ECC ram, still have NVMe m.2 potential, 16-20 cores to start with, and room to inexpensively expand cores in the future, still may make my original idea more appealing to me(for my uses) than simply upgrading to an entry level consumer system that won't get past 8 cores, ever. I love my 2600k to this day, but it feels like a consumer machine outside of gaming, and video work is very intensive. Currently, with 16GB of DDR3 1600, I do have some crashes with Lightworks.

Additionally, I could get 8 cores and to some degree future-proof myself by starting with 2x 3.4Ghz 2637 v3's for only around 100 bucks for the two of them, and I'd be benefitting from the RAM and double the cores, triple the threads in the meantime; I say future proof here being that in that in the future, I wouldn't get more than 8 cores on an AM4, but can get quite a few more with the dual 2011-3.... and because I expect high end E5 Xeon prices to drop as they become more and more dated and niche.

Given I went with an eBay server purchase or got deals on a case and motherboard, it would bring the dual Xeon cost down to $660 or less before hard drives; and that's about half the cost of the 3.4Ghz 1950X setup. Even with a 12 core 3.4Ghz dual xeon setup, I'd still be looking at at least $245 less than a *similar* 1950x setup.

TR1950X
~$300 MB
~$340 used 1950X(16 cores total)
-$225 64GB Non-ECC DDR4 3200
-$50 case
-$30 heatsink
-$50 PSU
-$150 GPU
-------------
$1145

Dual Xeon
~$340 2643 v3 3.4Ghz(12 cores total)
~$150 64GB ECC DDR4 2400
~$200 ebay T7810 case, PSU + motherboard
~$60 heatsinks
~$150 GPU
--------------
$900(or $660 for 8-core 3.4Ghz to start)

Kind of interesting for comparison, especially when it seems a lot of people are getting a Xeon case/motherboard/power supply and sometimes CPU for cheaper than I'm listing. I still think for most people, especially those gaming more than me, that initially spending 200-400 extra for a Threadripper setup is more appropriate. Perhaps I am being stubborn.