Skylake/Z710 for a server build?

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dscline

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Feb 15, 2011
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My home server is getting a bit old, and I'm beginning to ponder what I might replace it with. Skylake is getting good reviews as a desktop platform, but I've seen some comments that suggest it may not be a good server choice, one example is here:

"The new DMI 3 link offers bandwidth equivalent to four lanes of PCIe Gen3. That's not nearly enough to sustain simultaneous I/O operations across all 26 of the Z170's high-speed ports. Heck, it's not even close, which is kind of a big deal since the system's memory sits beyond that DMI link, hanging off of the CPU's integrated memory controller. If this were a server architecture, I'd be worried about that fact."

I have some questions about this for those who understand these things more than I: The first one is: shouldn't it still be much better than previous consumer-grade platforms? Secondly, I'd like to better understand the issue and options. It seems the above comment is specifically about the bandwidth of the link between the chipset and the CPU. But if I understand correctly, the x16/x8 PCI express slots connect directly to the CPU, bypassing the DMI link. Since Skylake CPUs have integrated graphics, and you don't need high-end graphics for a server, couldn't one simply connect their HBAs into the PCI express slots, which should have ample bandwidth? That's how my current server is configured: I have an IBM M1015 in the x16 slot (which has an HP SAS expander connected to it), and a SASLP-MV8 in a x4 slot. It seems to me with the Z710 being capable of running x8/x8/x4, it should be able to handle a lot of bandwidth before even considering the bandwidth to the ports accessed through the chipset. Am I missing something here?

I'd really like to get into something that can better handle transcoding. My current server can handle a single SD stream fine, but it chokes on a blu-ray. Skylake should be able to handle this with ease, maybe even multiple streams. But I'm missing why it shouldn't also speed up my multi-disk parity calculations.
 

Deslok

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Jul 15, 2015
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Maybe it's an AMD chip XD
I doubt the E3 chips will offer more memory than their desktop counterparts(unless patriot knows something I don't) they typically just enable ecc with the same capacity since they're I5/I7 chips or very close when you look at a side by side on ark, ECC might be worth something however which they do enable.
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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Maybe it's an AMD chip XD
I doubt the E3 chips will offer more memory than their desktop counterparts(unless patriot knows something I don't) they typically just enable ecc with the same capacity since they're I5/I7 chips or very close when you look at a side by side on ark, ECC might be worth something however which they do enable.
They support reg according to year+ old leaks. 128GB max.
And I have reasons to believe them.
 

dscline

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Feb 15, 2011
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The desktop version supports 64GB, which is plenty for me. As for my current CPU, it's a Core2 quad Q9505. I didn't think it was that unusual that it has hiccups, as I understood that you needed fairly powerful hardware to transcode blu-ray ISOs on the fly. It will do some, but many stutter pretty badly. I guess it could be my tablet: It's been a while since I've tried it, and I don't remember how much I investigated it, but I'm pretty sure I checked while streaming and the server load was pegged.

Are you guys suggesting this hardware should handle that with no problem?

As far as placing the HBAs in the slots intended for graphics cards... I know in the past that I'd read that that didn't always work, though it does in my current system. Just not sure how much you can count on that on the new platforms. I'm just trying to correlate the claims that Z710 would have bandwidth limitations on on servers, considering all those PCIe slots hanging off the CPU.
 

cheezehead

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Sep 23, 2012
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Here's the three Supermicro Skylake E3 boards (scraped from the IDF pic).

The other question I would pose given the workload is D-1520 or E3-12xx v5?