Looking to get into Dual LGA 2011

[Ari Gold]

Hi everyone,

First time poster here, but congrats on the great amount of info on these forums so far!

I'm looking to get into a Dual LGA 2011 build (probably for dual E5-2670's).
I need these to run W10 with graphics card (GTX 10 series) for botting games, NOT playing.

What would be my best best?
-Buy a used workstation (can get a ThinkStation D30 for €300 used with single 2640)
-Buy a server motherboard (cheap options like DELL W6W6G C8220 or one from Bargain Hardware, but that doesnt have pcie?)
-Buy a used workstation/ATX motherboard (ie Asus Z9PA-D8)

I prefer a plug-and-play kinda solution with a regular chasis (small form factor if possible)
But I don't mind buying power cable adapters either.


Kind regards,
Thomas

 

[Evan]

If the workstation is small enough form factors for you I would be tempted to keep it simple and just to that and add/upgrade the CPU, just check comparability of everything you want to do.
Server motherboards if your taking supermicro sure but if you taking HP, Dell, Cisco etc I think they are much more trouble than they are worth unless you simply want to build a server on the cheap but using all geniune oem parts.

 

[i386]

Do you really need dual socket (40+ pcie lanes or 128+ gb ram)? Or is it just "do want"?

 

[Evan]

Do you really need dual socket (40+ pcie lanes or 128+ gb ram)? Or is it just "do want"?

Haha never ask a logical question like that !
I could never imagine in most home labs or servers anything beyond 8 or so cores in a single socket is needed. (Unless you 'need' more than 128gb ram)

 

[Boddy]

For games, would a higher Ghz be better than multicore like E5 2670 that has a 2.6 - 3.3 GHz CPU?

 

[Boddy]

Good point @Nanotech! That article is 9 mths old, so I imagine the newer CPUs would be more powerful.

IMHO some of the newer Kaby Lake & Ryzen CPUs are not that expensive, when you factor cheaper motherboards and ram on the newer platforms.

 

[TType85]

I vote for buying a used workstation. I would go single socket though. The E5-1650/1660 CPU's are still pretty stout and you can buy a whole system pretty cheap. I picked up a Lenovo S30 for $225. It came with a E5-1620V2, 32GB DDR3 ECC Ram, 2TB HDD, 2 quadro cards (not good ones) and a Windows 7 COA. I threw in a 256GB SSD and GTX 1060 I had and picked up a E5-1660 for $115. I can probably get $60-80 back for the E5-1620V2.

Comparing the system to the Ryzen 7 1700 i had; day to day performance there was little difference seat of the pants feel. I run multiple VM's for development, do some video re-encoding and play some games. The Ryzen 7 was faster on the re-encoding to h265 due to the extra cores. The E5-1660 played WOW better (game is mostly single core). The VM's I couldn't tell much difference.

 

[Ari Gold]

Nevermind the gaming, it will be used for botting around 90% of the time.
I just put the gaming in there because it'll have to work with recent GPU's. (Botting computer games)
I'll game/do single core stuff on my 6700 itx system I suppose.

 

[TType85]

I think it's more to do with the turbo and clock speed differences as the E5-1660 (3960X unlocked Xeon) can boost up to 3.9Ghz on 1-2 cores whereas the 1700 can do 3.7Ghz on presumably 1 or 2 cores so that's a 200mhz clock speed difference. I think if they were clock for clock without turbo they probably would provide similar wow results. But your right that a cheap 1650/1660 system can be obtained for cheap. However I wouldn't really expect those OEM motherboards to really be able to overclock which is a big minus in my opinion especially as the 1650 and 1660 overclock nicely. The other problem is that good X79 motherboards add to the cost if overclocking is needed.

The 200mhz extra can be the difference, some games LOVE higher frequency chips. Comparing the E5-1660 to Ryzen they are pretty comparable. OC the Ryzen to 3.9Ghz and I would expect it to preform a bit better. Ram capacity and ram price are better on the E5-1660 side but motherboard cost on the Ryzen side is better. Good X79 boards go for insane prices. You can pretty easily load up a workstation with 128GB of ram using 16GB sticks, the DDR4 side that you are looking at near $600 just to hit 64GB.

That said, Dual LGA2011 for most uses is not the way to go especially if it is your main workstation unless you have a specific workload that scales well to 2P. Higher speed single proc system is the way to go. There are a lot of articles and videos out there of people who jumped on the dual E5-2670 band wagon only to find the system was slower than they expected. If you are using it for non-production critical VM's you would be surprised how many VM's can run concurrently at acceptable speeds on a 6-8 core machine assuming you the disk sub-system to keep up.

 

[cactus]

FYI I had to start Steam with affinity settings to even get GTAV running on my dual 2670. I could then never get games, in general, to run smoothly either. If you want to do gaming, stick to single socket.

 

[Ari Gold]

I feel like opening a new thread, this got all about gaming so fast.....

 

[cheezehead]

When looking at botting boxes specifically, how many instances are you planning on running? If your planning on running many instances, then the extra umph from the dual proc setups can be seen. If your planning on only running <4 instances though, single ryzen setup might be cheaper up front and cheaper on the electric bill.

 

[Ari Gold]

When looking at botting boxes specifically, how many instances are you planning on running? If your planning on running many instances, then the extra umph from the dual proc setups can be seen. If your planning on only running <4 instances though, single ryzen setup might be cheaper up front and cheaper on the electric bill.

I will probably be able to run enough to max them.

 

[rampage666]

I would say, avoid Intel motherboards, they tend to have more problems, support less CPUs (not supporting OEM, ES, QS cpus).