Xeon E5-2600 v4 Broadwell Still Relevant in 2022?

[TXAG26]

I'm looking to build a dedicated firewall server for a 1gb fiber connection and noticed that some of the Xeon E5-2600 v4 / E5-1600 v4 Broadwell CPU's are now less than $100 ea. on eBay. Are these still viable/relevant parts in 2022? Or should I be looking to something from a more modern generation?

 

[unwind-protect]

Yes, among other uses much of the AWS EC2 crowd is haswell and broadwell based. Idle power consumption might be concern, especially if you are building a dual processor system.

/signed a Haswell fanboi

 

[i386]

For a bussines? I would say no: newer amd and intel cpus have some great features for encryption, a lot more io (especially amd epycs with 128 pcie lanes), more memory support

For a homelab?
It depends what you're doing.
For general use it can be enough.
For an all flash(nvme) fileserver the 80pcie lanes (2x 40 lanes) can become the bottleneck

I'm using a single socket system with a 1630 v4 and I'm running out of pcie lanes because of nvme ssds, 100GBE networking, hba/raid controller and a gpu...
Also in some cpu intensive workloads the system is showing it's age.

 

[marv]

Xeon E5 platform sound like overkill for dedicated firewall with 1Gb uplink. But if you dont mind higher power usage (around 80W idle), go for it.
On the more modern parts, core i3-12100 offers great performance for 4c8t part, but currently server motherboards arent available yet.
And also AMD plans to start selling cheaper ZEN3 CPUs in April(finally!).

 

[TXAG26]

I've looked at a couple of core i3 options, but need IPMI and would prefer to stay away from UDIMMS. I have plenty of DDR4 RDIMMS that I could pull together for this build. Lower priced ZEN3's would be welcomed!

 

[T_Minus]

For a bussines? I would say no: newer amd and intel cpus have some great features for encryption, a lot more io (especially amd epycs with 128 pcie lanes), more memory support

For a homelab?
It depends what you're doing.
For general use it can be enough.
For an all flash(nvme) fileserver the 80pcie lanes (2x 40 lanes) can become the bottleneck

I'm using a single socket system with a 1630 v4 and I'm running out of pcie lanes because of nvme ssds, 100GBE networking, hba/raid controller and a gpu...
Also in some cpu intensive workloads the system is showing it's age.

A lot of businesses don't need 100GBE, all flash storage, 128 pcie lanes or loads of CPU
It's scary how many businesses even large ones still use pre E5 hardware

 

[i386]

It's scary how many businesses even large ones still use pre E5 hardware

I know, I saw multiple systems with l5640 (or similar aged) cpus at customers datacenters in the last 12 months

 

[111alan]

If the price is as low as 50-100USD, it's relevent. At least 22 cores with dual ring beats 8.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

I know, I saw multiple systems with l5640 (or similar aged) cpus at customers datacenters in the last 12 months

Lots of X5680 here. In fact, earlier this year I updated a few boxes from L5620 to X5670 (the particular Dell motherboard in those systems don't support X5680). The only 5600-series CPUs I've retired for power/performance reason were X5698's (changed to a system with E5-2643 v3's).

 

[bayleyw]

If the price is as low as 50-100USD, it's relevent. At least 22 cores with dual ring beats 8.

The 8 can get pretty close, especially if you have 8 Alder Lake cores - 8x 5GHz cores is not that far from 22x 2.5GHz cores, ADL has some significant IPC improvements, and applications don't scale perfectly. I'm not sure you want a full size E5 for a firewall though, the boards are big and idle power consumption can be quite high. It would make more sense if you virtualized the firewall.

 

[UhClem]

... For an all flash(nvme) fileserver the 80pcie lanes (2x 40 lanes) can become the bottleneck ...

Consider PCIe_Switch-based HBAs; some very good values [Gen3 x8 (PEX8724) & x16 (PEX8748)] from Ceacent on aliexpress.

 

[EasyRhino]

e5 for a firewall seems overkill.

I had an old E3-1225 and it was able to route gigabit traffic at home, with loands of cpu cycles to spare. (no fancy packet inspection or anything).