Planning to get Supermicro X10SRM-TF, please recommend Proc

Hi. Planning to get X10SRM-TF | Motherboards | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.. What cost effective processor to get? 1st criteria should be under 150 usd. 2nd criteria is as high core count and max turbo frequency as possible . To be used for Unraid, and gaming vm inside unraid. Any suggestions?

 

I've no idea on the US s/h prices these days, but the best you can get for those sockets is either the E5-1680 v4 (8 cores, 4GHz turbo) or the cheaper 1630v4 and 1650v4 (4 and 6 cores respectively, both 4GHz turbo) but in rightpondia at least those processors were as common as rocking horse poo.

Cheaper and more attainable might be the popular enthusiast E5-1650 v3 which was used by a fair amount of people (it worked on the X99 platform and had an unlocked multiplier so you could push beyond the 3.8GHz turbo, making it popular with the gaming crowd, but also supported ECC memory, making it ideal for a prosumer workstation). These are available on fleabay for less than £150 at the moment so I dare say they'll be even cheaper in the US.

 

@EffrafaxOfWug , does that mean in selecting processors, apart from my motherboard supporting ecc, I have to make sure the processor I am selecting supports ecc as well? The board has support, and I intend to get ecc. Do I have to be careful in selecting the processor? I intend to get at least 8 core. Your suggestion is good. But is there anything at least in 8 core 16 threads?

 

Supermicro only list a) xeons and b) ECC RDIMMs as supported with that board so I assume that's what you were looking for, and yes as far as I'm aware that's what you'll require if you want to use this board. I'm not aware of any 2011-3 CPUs that support registered ECC other than the Xeons.

The only single-chip 8P/16T I'm aware of is the aforementioned E5-1680 v4; back from the days when Intel placed a hefty premium on 8P models so I think the chances of getting one of these for $150 are next to nil (the ones I saw listed on fleabay were still at over $1000 s/h). There's the E5-26xx v4 series which scale all the way from 4 to 22P models but they're generally even more expensive than the equivalent E5-16xx models.

I think you're going to be very hard pressed to find an 8P/16T model for $150 even if you look for ES models (and those are notoriously finicky specially with Supermicro motherboards) but I'm not much of a bargain hunter and not familiar with the US s/h market so hopefully another forum member will have more optimistic. FWIW I've gone with the hideously economical Ryzen 3000 for my current build because the prices for Intel 8Ps with ECC support are still ridiculous.

 

The only chips for this board you'll be able to find for around $150 are not going to be suitable for gaming as their clock speed will be too low. I just picked up a bunch of E5-2680v3's for $165 each. They are 12c/24t but with a base clock of 2.5 GHz. You can pretty much disregard the Turbo speed of any of the chips if you'll be using them primarily in VMs as you'll never see that speed in a shared vCPU scenario.

 

As mentioned the 1650v3 or 2643v3 will likely be your best shot at that budget.

Check here for a massive list of all Xeon chips - List of Intel Xeon microprocessors - Wikipedia

 

When we talk about gaming, e.g., Fortnite, and Cities Skylines, do we nee the base clock to be high? Or is it good enough that the Max turbo frequency reaches high enough?

 

Thanks @EffrafaxOfWug , @zer0sum ! Will consider.

 

Bump

 

I might save up a bit and go after an e5-1660 v3 that'll give you 8c/16T with 3.0-3.5ghz, the 1680 v3/v4 really is a better chip but you'll pay twice as much for about 300mhz on the turbo. Make sure it's paired with a good cooler if you're counting on that turbo speed.

 

I can't say as it's been a while since I've gamed but I always remember the latest games likes higher CPU clocks and more threads are not usually necessary. That's why most gaming CPU's these days can do 4.0Ghz+ easily.

 

I do play games on my T7500 which does just fine, I've got the X5690's so it's 3.46-3.73 Ghz anything that hits ~3ghz though does just fine for the most part, you might be better off closer to 4ghz but you won't be doing terrible either(especially since the v3/v4 xeons have a better arcitecture than my old nehalem beasts)
here's a haswell cpu review including a 3.3-3.6 i7-5820k it's typically only a few fps behind the 5960(10 in the worst case shown and they're over 100fps still)
The Intel Haswell-E CPU Review: Core i7-5960X, i7-5930K and i7-5820K Tested

 

Nice! Good info. Like I had said I haven't gamed in quite some time. But I may test doing so on a Windows 10 VM on my Xeon E5-2680v3 in the coming months.

Just for reference, when my current daily driver Windows 10 VM on my 2680v3 is at 100% maximum CPU usage (6 total threads) the CPU only gets to about 2.8GHz. Same goes for when I try and do just 1 thread at 100% usage.

 

depending on how your threads are assigned that makes sense, the 2680v3 has a turbo setup that looks like this
4/4/4/4/4/4/4/4/5/6/8/8
so any more than 5 cpu cores loaded limits you to 4 bins higher than the base clock of 2.5ghz so 2.9ghz, you're not quite boosting to maximum but might have other workloads stopping the vm from getting there
compared to the 1660v3 we've been talking about which is layed out like this and should always reach 3.3ghz
3/3/3/3/3/3/5/5
or the 1680v3 which is setup similarly and would easily hit 3.5 with all cores loaded
3/3/3/3/3/4/6/6

all of this is visible here
List of Intel Xeon microprocessors - Wikipedia"Haswell-EP"_(22_nm)_Efficient_Performance

 

Can you expand on what that 4/4/4/4/4/4/4/4/5/6/8/8 means with regard to Turbo?

 

In this instance the 4/4/4/4/4/4/4/4/5/6/8/8 can be read left to right as the number of cores loaded decreases so if all 12 cores are loaded you're allowed 4 bins of turbo(100mhz steps) and that doesn't change till you get to only 4 cores loaded where you're allowed 5(500mhz) 3 cores is allowed 6 bins(600mhz) and a load only on 1 or 2 cores is allowed the full 8 bins advertised turbo speed(8 bins for 800mhz above base) there are ways to go beyond that (some consumer boards have a "multicore enhancement" that breaks those rules for higher all core turbo numbers) but server gear typically is limited to exactly the spec since longevity is a factor over absolute raw performance

 

So I'd need to limit my VM to 2 cores (4 threads) to possibly (depending on other workloads) get the full 3.3GHz turbo.

 

Yes if it was the only thing running you could set it to 2 cores/4 threads and the workload on it should reach that turbo(heat/power allowing) some things like AVX workloads have offsets as well that will impact your turbo(it looks like 100mhz below max might indicate some part of your typical workloads are using avx instructions as well)
https://www.intel.com/content/dam/w...on-e5-v3-advanced-vector-extensions-paper.pdf
Keep in mind a bare metal install with a 2c4t workload would also hit that 3.3 without having to disable any cores(think something like converting mp3 files with only 4 threads set in your software)

All that said I wouldn't artificially limit your number of threads to force a higher turbo since it may actually decrease performance depending on how wide your workload can scale

 

@Deslok , I've since bought an X10SRM-TF with 32 GB ram off eBay, so only Xeon e5 V3 and V4s are acceptable. Though can't decide on the processor .

I've always wanted more cores for future-proofing, 8 cores, 16 threads at least, specially I think I have a winning platform. Good motherboard, has room to expand memory in the future. 10 GBe. PCIe x16. Supports bifurcation. BUT, getting more cores means I can't play games. . Occasional gamer though. But I would rather I can. It seems the E5-1660 v3 works. But my budget is only up to 150. Maybe you can suggest another that fits within the budget, that allows over 3.0 GHz? How about Xeon e5-2660 v3? Base of 2.4- 3.2 . This is for gaming in Unraid.

 

The 1650V3 at 3.5-3.8 is going to be a better fit I know it's only 6C12T but you can always upgrade to a V4 later when prices come down and it's ~30USD cheaper than the E5-2660V3 then keep an eye on the e5-1660/1680 v4 as well as the e5-2667 v4 pricing
With a single socket mainboard like yours E5-2xxx chips are a bit of a waste since in most cases you're buying features(2s scalability) you won't use with the exception of cpu's ending in a W(workstaion targetd chips with higher tdp's) the E5-2687W v3 being a prime example of one but unless you're willing to try ES cpu's(there's a thread here somewhere about engineering sample chips) that's a very expensive cpu.