First Budget server. Dual 2660 or x5660

[Charleymuteland]

Hey everyone, could use some help. Looking to buy a cheap ($250-375) pre-built server for home use, mostly running multi threaded programs (Python & C#)

 

I've been looking at the prebuilt Dell power edges, just stuck on which dual processor would preform the tasks better. Dual 2660 (v1) vs dual x5660 for simply a single person workstation running multi threaded programs, so don't really need anything too crazy or overkill. Most benchmarks that I'm seeing are showing the x5660 out preforming the 2660 while being much cheaper. I'm out of my element so could use some advice.

 

More specifically Poweredge R710 vs Poweredge R620

 

Thanks all.

[Electronics Wizardy]

the 2660 is a much better cheap, lower power and a newer archeture.

 

Go with the r620, its a much better pick.

 

where are you seeing these benchmarks, everything I see points to the e5 2660 being better

[Charleymuteland]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

the 2660 is a much better cheap, lower power and a newer archeture.

 

Go with the r620, its a much better pick.

 

where are you seeing these benchmarks, everything I see points to the e5 2660 being better

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Xeon-X5660-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5-2660-v2/m17750vsm13068  here's the link, couldn't find it comparing to non v2 version. Just seems off to me.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Charleymuteland said:

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Xeon-X5660-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5-2660-v2/m17750vsm13068  here's the link, couldn't find it comparing to non v2 version. Just seems off to me.

don't use userbenchmark, its very bad.

 

Those numbers seem all wrong, the 2660 is a newer faster chip, with more features.

 

Also id really try to go ryen for this, much lower power, newer features, and probably a better bet for a home server. It will be cheaper in the power savings(those servers can easily use 200+w

 

[Charleymuteland]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

don't use userbenchmark, its very bad.

 

Those numbers seem all wrong, the 2660 is a newer faster chip, with more features.

 

Also id really try to go ryen for this, much lower power, newer features, and probably a better bet for a home server. It will be cheaper in the power savings(those servers can easily use 200+w

 

Oh okay, good to know. Does ryzen have any prebuilt ones similar to the poweredge setup? Or would you simply just build as you would a normal PC.

[mariushm]

Yeah, i'd say neither. You'll have a noisy and power hungry machine.

Get a cheap 60$ A320 motherboard (or spend more on a b450 board) and a used Ryzen 1400 or better (to have hyperthreading enabled for a total of 8 cores) and a couple sticks of ram and you're in business.

Get 2600/3100/3300x if you want new.  2200g would also work, and you get integrated graphics with it.

3000g is cheap and with integrated graphics, but it's only 2 cores... if you're spending money aim for 4 cores or higher.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Charleymuteland said:

Oh okay, good to know. Does ryzen have any prebuilt ones similar to the poweredge setup? Or would you simply just build as you would a normal PC.

id just build a normal desktop unless you need a used server

[Charleymuteland]

5 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yeah, i'd say neither. You'll have a noisy and power hungry machine.

Get a cheap 60$ A320 motherboard (or spend more on a b450 board) and a used Ryzen 1400 or better (to have hyperthreading enabled for a total of 8 cores) and a couple sticks of ram and you're in business.

Get 2600/3100/3300x if you want new.  2200g would also work, and you get integrated graphics with it.

3000g is cheap and with integrated graphics, but it's only 2 cores... if you're spending money aim for 4 cores or higher.

 

Used is more than fine. I will definitely look into that. I have an old Nvidia 710 laying around here somewhere so integrated graphics isn't a necessity for the CPU.

[Charleymuteland]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

id just build a normal desktop unless you need a used server

Seems like I don't. I was more basing it off of the RDP specs I usually run all my programs on, which handles it quite well, and assumed buying a user server with similar specs would be more beneficial then spending monthly for a rental machine. If a cheap ryzen build can handle it all, I'm all for it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Charleymuteland said:

Seems like I don't. I was more basing it off of the RDP specs I usually run all my programs on, which handles it quite well, and assumed buying a user server with similar specs would be more beneficial then spending monthly for a rental machine. If a cheap ryzen build can handle it all, I'm all for it.

why not try a few different specced rental machines to get a fell for how performance will be?

[Charleymuteland]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

why not try a few different specced rental machines to get a fell for how performance will be?

I was considering that but for the price RDP services are asking for ryzen spec machines are quite high, can practically buy the used cpu for the same price as a month to use their rdp. I've always rented xeon rdps that seemed to easily run multiple instances of programs/debugging which is why I was leaning towards that route.

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 minutes ago, Charleymuteland said:

I was considering that but for the price RDP services are asking for ryzen spec machines are quite high, can practically buy the used cpu for the same price as a month to use their rdp. I've always rented xeon rdps that seemed to easily run multiple instances of programs/debugging which is why I was leaning towards that route.

where are you getting these from?

 

Can't you just rent for a hour from somewhere like aws?

[Charleymuteland]

40 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

where are you getting these from?

 

Can't you just rent for a hour from somewhere like aws?

Will definitely check AWS now.

 

Mostly just see xeon powered ones,

[Charleymuteland]

2 hours ago, mariushm said:

Yeah, i'd say neither. You'll have a noisy and power hungry machine.

Get a cheap 60$ A320 motherboard (or spend more on a b450 board) and a used Ryzen 1400 or better (to have hyperthreading enabled for a total of 8 cores) and a couple sticks of ram and you're in business.

Get 2600/3100/3300x if you want new.  2200g would also work, and you get integrated graphics with it.

3000g is cheap and with integrated graphics, but it's only 2 cores... if you're spending money aim for 4 cores or higher.

 

How would a ryzen 5 1600 32gb ram build hold up compared to the dell server for multi threaded work?

[mariushm]

16 minutes ago, Charleymuteland said:

How would a ryzen 5 1600 32gb ram build hold up compared to the dell server for multi threaded work?

I guess it would depend on which dell server .... but the actual brand (dell, supermicro, whatever) is not relevant, the cpu is... dell doesn't add anything fancy to the table to make a server special in some way.

 

Anandtech benchmarks processors quite well, and they have the results publicly listed. Here's the 1600 vs e5-1280 link : CPU 2019 Benchmarks - Compare Products on AnandTech

You can select from dozens of cpus to compare against ryzen 1600 and others in the series, just select from drop down list and then click on View Comparison, or select a particular test you're interested in from the left side..

 

Servers aren't particularly better at multithreading compared to regular desktops - there's no special sauce... servers have benefits in the sense that they can be placed in racks, they're in standardized units to fit in racks, they have remote administration... hardware wise the only differences would be support for ECC memory (but a lot of AM4 motherboards support ECC) and maybe the server boards having 10g ethernet and/or sas/scsi controllers. Oh yeah, you may get dual socket servers but it doesn't make a server better for multithreading ex 2 10 core intel processors vs a 12 core 3900x ... 3900x would probably be better because there's latency communicating between cpu sockets, there's cache misses and lots of issues when dealing with two cpus.  A single cpu makes more sense for lots of scenarios.

 

[Charleymuteland]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

I guess it would depend on which dell server .... but the actual brand (dell, supermicro, whatever) is not relevant, the cpu is... dell doesn't add anything fancy to the table to make a server special in some way.

 

Anandtech benchmarks processors quite well, and they have the results publicly listed. Here's the 1600 vs e5-1280 link : CPU 2019 Benchmarks - Compare Products on AnandTech

You can select from dozens of cpus to compare against ryzen 1600 and others in the series, just select from drop down list and then click on View Comparison, or select a particular test you're interested in from the left side..

 

Servers aren't particularly better at multithreading compared to regular desktops - there's no special sauce... servers have benefits in the sense that they can be placed in racks, they're in standardized units to fit in racks, they have remote administration... hardware wise the only differences would be support for ECC memory (but a lot of AM4 motherboards support ECC) and maybe the server boards having 10g ethernet and/or sas/scsi controllers. Oh yeah, you may get dual socket servers but it doesn't make a server better for multithreading ex 2 10 core intel processors vs a 12 core 3900x ... 3900x would probably be better because there's latency communicating between cpu sockets, there's cache misses and lots of issues when dealing with two cpus.  A single cpu makes more sense for lots of scenarios.

 

Wow, thank you so much. That is incredibly helpful!

That makes a lot of sense, so "servers" are simply just meant to be stacked. Dual CPU vs Single CPU latency makes a lot of sense as well.

 

Looks like I will definitely go the Ryzen route, much more practicality for my use.

[Charleymuteland]

4 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

id just build a normal desktop unless you need a used server

Thank you for all of your help as well. Was very insightful.