Restless: What's my system worth, should I upgrade?

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gigatexal

I'm here to learn
Nov 25, 2012
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Portland, Oregon
alexandarnarayan.com
I have a working Hyper-V system that I am tinkering with. Will likely move over to ESXi one of these days but for now it's Hyper-V.

The system is a dual x5670, Asus Z8PE-D18, an assortment of SSDs (nothing fancy, some 120s, some 240s, an Intel X25-E for ZFS cache, etc...), two WD Red 3TB drives, and 72GB of DDR3 ECC, in a Corsair 900D. [It'd be nice to transition to 8GB dimms...]

I've thought about maybe going to a dual 2ghz or so (only speed I can likely afford) E5 XEON route, (E5 2620 maybe?) and salvage my ram, but will the drop in frequency compared to my 2.8ghz old-gen Xeons be too much?

I'd like to keep the single, large box config, just not sure where to go here. Hence I am restless. The setup works, but I'm sort of bored.

PCI-e 3.0 would be nice for eventually going SAS 12gbps and the like.

I guess the bottom line here is: help talk me out of the upgrade, or do you think there's still a market for dual xeons and the mobo?
 

Jeggs101

Well-Known Member
Dec 29, 2010
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I'd stick with what you have until NVMe goes mainstream. 12g is 50-100% performance. NVMe is 300-600%.

Go for a low power appliance for the meantime to stay occupied. Cheaper too.
 

gigatexal

I'm here to learn
Nov 25, 2012
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Portland, Oregon
alexandarnarayan.com
Yeah, that makes sense. I would be the worst customer: I wan't both lot's of cores and lot's of speed but want to pay next to nothing which is why I've gone into higher end last gen hardware with the X series xeons.

Does anything have to happen to the ESXi infrastructure (kernel/vm tools, etc.) to fully leverage NVMe or is it os agnostic?
 
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chinesestunna

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
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Yeah, that makes sense. I would be the worst customer: I wan't both lot's of cores and lot's of speed but want to pay next to nothing which is why I've gone into higher end last gen hardware with the X series xeons.
Nothing wrong with that, it's about being cost effective and we're home users for the most part, don't need bleeding edge :)
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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Let me borrow "The Road Not Taken" By Robert Frost
The most read and misinterpret poem, I'll butch it up one more by borrowing the last 3 lines.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Most people avoid ES chips, especially C0 and C1 steps, rumors is that C0 and C1 have VT-x bugs.
I don't have any issues while running Windows 2012r2 hyper-v, vSphere esxi 5.0 to 5.5 or KVM.
 

TType85

Active Member
Dec 22, 2014
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Garden Grove, CA
You can find steals on the E5-24xx chips you just have to jump on them when you see them. My main home server is now 2x E5-2450L (8 care/16 thread 1.8ghz) cpus and I have ~$500 in to the board and CPU's. I have another set up with dual E5-2418L CPU's (4 core/8 thread 2.0ghz) that I have around $300 in.
 
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chinesestunna

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
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Let me borrow "The Road Not Taken" By Robert Frost
The most read and misinterpret poem, I'll butch it up one more by borrowing the last 3 lines.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Most people avoid ES chips, especially C0 and C1 steps, rumors is that C0 and C1 have VT-x bugs.
I don't have any issues while running Windows 2012r2 hyper-v, vSphere esxi 5.0 to 5.5 or KVM.
I understand there's definitely a risk here, I guess I'm just saying I see you posting references to great deals in other threads quite often and it would help STH folks if they were posted in Great Deals for all to partake.
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
2,644
1,496
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Let me quote the poem once again.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

These cheap and incredible listing carries huge risks, such as "Parts not working", sellers list it cheap and not responsible outcome.
I could fill entire posting with all the stupid mistakes that I have made over the years.
I feel the Great deals section is not the right place to list "gambling" casino type of purchase.
If you like, I could PM you with stuff.
 

chinesestunna

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
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Let me quote the poem once again.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

These cheap and incredible listing carries huge risks, such as "Parts not working", sellers list it cheap and not responsible outcome.
I could fill entire posting with all the stupid mistakes that I have made over the years.
I feel the Great deals section is not the right place to list "gambling" casino type of purchase.
If you like, I could PM you with stuff.
Ok, my misunderstanding then. I didn't realize the great deals you mention are from rolling the dice that much, I was under the impression they were just either low ball listing by seller or good BO snags on eBay etc. Makes me feel a bit better about my deals actually :) Thanks for clarifying. I am looking for a dual 2011 board with 16 RAM slots ~ $150 with IPMI, if you see something and can pass along I'd appreciate it!
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
2,644
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let me bite the bullet on ES hardware steals on ebay
Keep a look out for the ES chip QAFQ, E5-2609 B0 ES chip, last month, there was a batch for $80 each.
I got one , it worked fine with the Tyan dual LGA2011 board , I have not tested with ASUS board yet.

I am about to take a chance on this listing that I know nothing about, it is risky to buy stuff from China.
[US$49.19] Intel Intel XEON CPU E5-2609 2.3G QAFQ spell 2680 2650 2643 2620 - eBuying365.com - Online Shopping - Hardware, Electronics, Travel, Festival Supply
$49 each plus shipping.
I just don't have time yet.
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
2,644
1,496
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With ES chip, I don't have any bad experience with VT-x, I don't test for VT-d because I don't use VT-d.

The one feature is lacking with the older ES chip is "turbo" mode. C0 or higher turbo mode mostly like work fine.

I been running a QA82 B0 8c/16T CPU as my home infrastructure Windows 2012R2 server since 2013. I use it to build Windows OS template images for WDS.
It deploys Windows OS to laptop, desktop, VM. Not a single compatibility problem.
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
2,644
1,496
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Good idea with a different ES threads.

Random thoughts.
Actually, Ebay helping folks like me buying ES chips.
Ebay is forcing the seller to list as "Parts not working",
if seller mark the chip is "Used", seller would have to stand behind the sale if the chip does not work.

Now, some seller just mark it as "Parts not working" for seller protection, some seller start the listing with a low bid or BIN due to "Parts not working" condition.

Today, "Parts not working" listing, would have a better chance getting a working chip than couple years back.
 

chinesestunna

Active Member
Jan 23, 2015
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Same, I've always been surprised people were bidding good $ on them. Seemed strange as there's really no chance repairing these and definitely no warranty