I use my primary computer 12 - 18 hours a day. Mostly it's just for browser (up to 15 open browser windows), email (2 different email apps) and Office apps (O2007 Word and Excel). I write, edit and review technical papers. Sometimes I run MS Flight Simulator X.
Within the last few months, I have become increasingly concerned about my [previous] PC under stress of 20+ open windows and what appears to be terminal temperature problems. The configuration of that PC:
Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3
AMD FX-8320 o/c'ed to 4ghz
4GB of DDR3 1333
GTX-750Ti
Samsung 750 SSD
W10 Pro [upgraded from W7 Ultimate]
It just seemed like the system was running out of steam even though the CPU was running under 60% utilization across all "8 cores." There were times when the system was completely bogged down. The CPU temps were regularly above 55C and I saw more than once CPU temps reported above 60C. Hot for FX-series processors. I backed off the overclocking and cleaned the huge Zalman HSF without much improvement. The heat pipes were hot to the touch shortly after the system shut down. The voltages seem OK, but the temps were out of control. Three different anti-virus applications show nothing out of the ordinary, just heavy usage for applications and plugins.
That's the background for this project.
I decided to build a workstation using a pair of E5-2670 v1 processors to observe whether that addressed the issues. It took a few attempts to get a solid working motherboard. I tried a used Supermicro X9DR3-F but it had a dead memory slot and a dead PCIe slot. Non-starter. I tried a new ASRock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16 but the mb was DOA. A second ASRock mb seemed to do the trick. I played around with a few different operating systems settling on W7 Ult 64-bit. So the complete current configuration is:
ASRock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16
2 x E5-2670 V1 (SR0KX)
8 x 4BG Samsung memory modules (4 sticks per CPU)
GTX 750Ti video card
A gaggle of SATA SSD and spinner drives (Samsung 750 250GB SSD 6gbs on the primary Intel controller for boot, O/S and programs, Kingston 110GB SSD dedicated for pagefile on the Marvel controller / 6gbs, other drives on SCU, spinner drives for archive and rarely used data)
USB PCIe expansion card
ASUS Xonar DGX audio card
EVGA SuperNova 850 B PSU
Corsair 750 Obesity case
I have loaded in HWiNFO64 v5.36-2960 to monitor the CPU.
It has been running a couple of days and is stable. VERY stable. I don't use "sleep" mode but will test that. Eventually.
The system takes quite a long time to boot mostly due to extended POST. POST seems to take a long time to get past the Marvel controller. W7 actually comes up reasonably fast after POST. Maybe not as fast as the FX-8320 on W10, but acceptable.
Office applications (O2007) are stable and as fast as the FX-8320. Single applications start and execute just fine. Loaded and used Avast (free version) without any performance degradation at all. That is an improvement over the FX-8320 which was notably, but not terribly slower. The system works quite well in W7. No issues, no complaints
The biggest difference is that when a lot of windows multiple instances of the same application along side half a dozen different open applications, the system seem to take everything in stride. Temps increase a few degrees but stay in the 35C to 40C range +/- a couple of degrees, most of the time, rarely hitting 50C. Well under the max. Task manager shows very little CPU usage. The system just absorbs load without bogging down or heating up. That meets my needs.
The new workstation seems a touch slower, but that is expected with the difference in clock speed. Loading programs with large files (e.g. email with large folders) is faster. This is likely due to the improved anti-virus performance. Flight Simulator performance with everything on the highest settings is slightly slower possibly due to the slower clock speed. But the CPU remains cool.
The bottom line is that the overall performance is significantly improved when the system is loaded with different applications and a lot of open / active windows . And the system remains cool. Though the dual CPU system is more expensive than the FX-8320-based system, the performance seems worth the difference in price when the system is used as I use it.
Not to be critical of the FX-8320, but the dual E5-2670 is just in a different league when it comes to multitasking.
Within the last few months, I have become increasingly concerned about my [previous] PC under stress of 20+ open windows and what appears to be terminal temperature problems. The configuration of that PC:
Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3
AMD FX-8320 o/c'ed to 4ghz
4GB of DDR3 1333
GTX-750Ti
Samsung 750 SSD
W10 Pro [upgraded from W7 Ultimate]
It just seemed like the system was running out of steam even though the CPU was running under 60% utilization across all "8 cores." There were times when the system was completely bogged down. The CPU temps were regularly above 55C and I saw more than once CPU temps reported above 60C. Hot for FX-series processors. I backed off the overclocking and cleaned the huge Zalman HSF without much improvement. The heat pipes were hot to the touch shortly after the system shut down. The voltages seem OK, but the temps were out of control. Three different anti-virus applications show nothing out of the ordinary, just heavy usage for applications and plugins.
That's the background for this project.
I decided to build a workstation using a pair of E5-2670 v1 processors to observe whether that addressed the issues. It took a few attempts to get a solid working motherboard. I tried a used Supermicro X9DR3-F but it had a dead memory slot and a dead PCIe slot. Non-starter. I tried a new ASRock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16 but the mb was DOA. A second ASRock mb seemed to do the trick. I played around with a few different operating systems settling on W7 Ult 64-bit. So the complete current configuration is:
ASRock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16
2 x E5-2670 V1 (SR0KX)
8 x 4BG Samsung memory modules (4 sticks per CPU)
GTX 750Ti video card
A gaggle of SATA SSD and spinner drives (Samsung 750 250GB SSD 6gbs on the primary Intel controller for boot, O/S and programs, Kingston 110GB SSD dedicated for pagefile on the Marvel controller / 6gbs, other drives on SCU, spinner drives for archive and rarely used data)
USB PCIe expansion card
ASUS Xonar DGX audio card
EVGA SuperNova 850 B PSU
Corsair 750 Obesity case
I have loaded in HWiNFO64 v5.36-2960 to monitor the CPU.
It has been running a couple of days and is stable. VERY stable. I don't use "sleep" mode but will test that. Eventually.
The system takes quite a long time to boot mostly due to extended POST. POST seems to take a long time to get past the Marvel controller. W7 actually comes up reasonably fast after POST. Maybe not as fast as the FX-8320 on W10, but acceptable.
Office applications (O2007) are stable and as fast as the FX-8320. Single applications start and execute just fine. Loaded and used Avast (free version) without any performance degradation at all. That is an improvement over the FX-8320 which was notably, but not terribly slower. The system works quite well in W7. No issues, no complaints
The biggest difference is that when a lot of windows multiple instances of the same application along side half a dozen different open applications, the system seem to take everything in stride. Temps increase a few degrees but stay in the 35C to 40C range +/- a couple of degrees, most of the time, rarely hitting 50C. Well under the max. Task manager shows very little CPU usage. The system just absorbs load without bogging down or heating up. That meets my needs.
The new workstation seems a touch slower, but that is expected with the difference in clock speed. Loading programs with large files (e.g. email with large folders) is faster. This is likely due to the improved anti-virus performance. Flight Simulator performance with everything on the highest settings is slightly slower possibly due to the slower clock speed. But the CPU remains cool.
The bottom line is that the overall performance is significantly improved when the system is loaded with different applications and a lot of open / active windows . And the system remains cool. Though the dual CPU system is more expensive than the FX-8320-based system, the performance seems worth the difference in price when the system is used as I use it.
Not to be critical of the FX-8320, but the dual E5-2670 is just in a different league when it comes to multitasking.
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