Socket 771 Xeon E5410x2 Worth bothering with for anything?

[TheBay]

I've got chance of a brand new blackformd based Supermicro super server with 2x E5410's for £120,
1U rackmount.

I know it's a few generations behind, but it's at least core 2 based not netburst, was wondering if it would be worth it for a PfSense/RouterOS box, especially as PCI-X quad NIC's are dirt cheap now.

Not sure what power usage is like though, I could always remove a CPU.

Worth grabbing or should I pass?

 

[Patrick]

I think the Socket 771 Xeon's are starting to get a bit old. Moving to LGA1366 was a huge architecture change. Not necessarily a bad idea but would likely just get inexpensive L5420's and be done. Not as many on ebay UK but the US has them for $40 in pairs:

xeon l5420 pair | eBay

At that price probably worth it from a power savings perspective and slightly faster.

 

[michaeld]

FWIW, I have a dual-socket, S771 board (Tyan S5396) and I've had dual E5410's and dual whatever the "X" 3.0GHz part number is, in it. Honestly, b/c the board uses FBDIMMs, it runs HOT. As in blazing hot. And all that heat is just wasted electricity. Due to the heat, I had to use higher speed fans (this is at my home, btw) so the box was really noisy, dumped a ton of heat in the room and used as much electricity at idle as my gaming box at full tilt. Plus, as Patrick stated, it's way behind, architecture-wise. I'm not advertising, but I had the whole system on EBay at a STEAL price for a month and I got about 2 page views.

All that said, it was a reliable system when I was running it and running the OS off an SSD really perked it up. If the noise (especially a 1U screamer) and heat the box will kick out doesn't bother you, it might be a worthwhile investment, especially that it's brand-new at that price.

 

[TheBay]

Cheers for the replies guys.

I can get the server minus CPU's for £80 delivered, that's unopened box with heatsinks, optical drive etc.
And could go down the L route for CPU.

Yeah 771 is getting on a bit but core 2 is a vast improvement to netburst, just an idea as I need to sort a new router out and overall costs for something atom or e/i3 based (or Celeron/Pentium) will cost a lot more.

Another idea is I have a 775 based E2140 in a drawer here, I can get Supermicro 775 board for ~£37 new.

It's finding right price/performance/efficiency ratio for this application.

And 1U screamer is no good as this is for my office at home!

 

[Mike]

Efficiency and fb-dimms don't go hand in hand that well.

A sandy or ivy bridge system with a cheap pentium or celeron will be plenty fast and cheap. Like less than 150 bucks cheap.

 

[s0lid]

I'll just leave this here:
Xeon 1,8 Ghz DualCore; incl IPMI Karte | eBay

1U single LGA771 box using ecc reg ddr2 rather than fb-dimms. Cheap and seems to be easily silence able, drop in L5240 (these go for 9.00$ on ebay btw) or L5420 and you got yourself a fairly low wattage box.