General Intel HEDT Xeon/i7 Discussion

[Skunch]

On 1/29/2020 at 8:52 PM, gmac82 said:

Interestingly after doing some forum reading, its recommended to not use the GUI for preparing the DUET USB. Using the command line as Administrator and only doing FORMAT, DUET, REFIND options (using safe removal when prompted) makes everything work seamless. Windows 10 is now installing on the NVMe!

Awesome, let us know how it turns out! I've been interested in DUET for a while, I'd like to know what kind of performance you get, and whether or not it permits for a hands-off, silent boot. Does DUET require a certain size of usb drive? Does the drive need to be connected to a specific USB port, like on the motherboard? Or will it work with an expansion card. I have a bunch of pci usb cards with internal usb headers, I think it would be cool to have the usb stick inside the case.

 

Unrelated question, I'm started to get bothered by the noise my cooler makes. I'm thinking about a Be Quiet! Product, but I'm stuck on which TDP to use. Intel's description of TDP is confusing, so I have no idea how many watts of heat a 980x will put out. I know it's rated at 130w, but that is not indicative of how hot it will get under load or overclocked. Would a cooler with 150 watt TDP be effective? Or should I shoot for 200 if I plan to overclock to around 4ghz?

 

Also, I saw some people posting their builds, so here's mine!

[Crunchy Dragon]

57 minutes ago, Skunch said:

I'm stuck on which TDP to use. Intel's description of TDP is confusing, so I have no idea how many watts of heat a 980x will put out. I know it's rated at 130w, but that is not indicative of how hot it will get under load or overclocked. Would a cooler with 150 watt TDP be effective? Or should I shoot for 200 if I plan to overclock to around 4ghz?

To be safe, I'd recommend going with one of the beefier bois anyway, especially if you're gonna be overclocking.

[Skunch]

I can get a Be Quiet! Dark Rock 4 which can handle 200 watts for about $112 CAD shipped, but I can get the dark rock pro 4 which cools 250 watts for $134 CAD shipped. It's only $22 difference. I guess I should go for it at some point. I have a hard time paying more than 50 bucks for an air cooler lol

[gmac82]

4 hours ago, Skunch said:

Awesome, let us know how it turns out! I've been interested in DUET for a while, I'd like to know what kind of performance you get, and whether or not it permits for a hands-off, silent boot. Does DUET require a certain size of usb drive? Does the drive need to be connected to a specific USB port, like on the motherboard? Or will it work with an expansion card. I have a bunch of pci usb cards with internal usb headers, I think it would be cool to have the usb stick inside the case.

 

Unrelated question, I'm started to get bothered by the noise my cooler makes. In thinking about a Be Quiet! Product, but I'm stuck on which TDP to use. Intel's description of TDP is confusing, so I have no idea how many watts of heat a 980x will put out. I know it's rated at 130w, but that is not indicative of how hot it will get under load or overclocked. Would a cooler with 150 watt TDP be effective? Or should I shoot for 200 if I plan to overclock to around 4ghz?

 

Also, I saw some people posting their builds, so here's mine!

 

Quote

Awesome, let us know how it turns out! I've been interested in DUET for a while, I'd like to know what kind of performance you get, and whether or not it permits for a hands-off, silent boot.

Yep. For a cold boot from power on to Windows login screen it's 60 seconds with no manual intervention.

 

Quote

Does DUET require a certain size of usb drive?

Nope. For example I'm using a USB key that came with a peripheral and it has a capacity of 256 MB. DUET/REFIND takes up about 5 MB of space on the drive.

 

Quote

Does the drive need to be connected to a specific USB port, like on the motherboard?  Or will it work with an expansion card. I have a bunch of pci usb cards with internal usb headers, I think it would be cool to have the usb stick inside the case

I don't think so, I just have it plugged in on the top most USB port on the rear I/O. Just make sure your BIOS is set to boot from USB (in my case the motherboard detects USB keys as HDD High Capacity Devices), in which case just make sure your DUET USB Key is set to the top most priority. As for using extension cards, I would think that as long as your BIOS detects it and its a selectable drive I don't see why it wouldn't work.

As far as performance is concerned, I have the PCIe expansion card plugged into the 2nd x16 PCIe 2.x slot. Here's an out of the box, no tweaks run base settings from CrystalMark:



Follow this guide to the letter and you'll be fine:
https://youtu.be/eSPnRB1aVAE

 

Here's the equipment I purchased:

PCIe to NVMe adapter: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01N09W21D/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

512 GB NVMe drive: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07KZXJTLN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

So for around 150 CAD or less after shipping and taxes I'm getting great performance. Excellent value.

[Slayer3032]

1 hour ago, Skunch said:

I can get a Be Quiet! Dark Rock 4 which can handle 200 watts for about $112 CAD shipped, but I can get the dark rock pro 4 which cools 250 watts for $134 CAD shipped. It's only $22 difference. I guess I should go for it at some point. I have a hard time paying more than 5o bucks for an air cooler lol

I paid like $87 for my NH-D14 in 2010, the fans lasted 8 years before starting to make noise and one was ran at 100% speed at all times. It's still occasionally in my Antec 900 that I gave to a buddy to use for his garage sale X58 X5670/750ti build that cost like $75 all together excluding case, psu and ssd being stuff that was laying around. It still works just as good as it did the day I bought it. I've seen the NH-D15 on sale recently for a really good price, maybe since the Chromax parts are out the base models will come down a little.

 

Also, as far as DUET being worth it. I noticed a solid difference coming from a 4 year old Intel 535 240gb. I don't see buying a sata ssd as viable nowadays with m.2 basically being the standard for most builds. In a few years, when pci-e 4.0 takes off and ssds keep getting larger and faster you're going to kick yourself big time if you build a new system as drive speeds exceed 20-30x faster than your sata2 and "fake" sata3 controller could ever handle. I wouldn't have been happy with the 2TB Micron sata ssd I had been looking at and twice the price still at the time. There was a bunch of benchmarks posted a page or two back if you want those too. I have DUET installed to a 16gb AData usb drive, I just benchmarked all of my drives, found my fastest and stuck it on it. I had 3 of those drives and the other two are now running FreeNAS in a cloned setup on my home server.

 

I'd take some pictures of my X58 stuff but I really need to take them outside and dust them out, I'll probably just wait until FreeNAS 11.3 comes out to do that though as I'll need to power cycle it.

[gmac82]

3 hours ago, Skunch said:

I can get a Be Quiet! Dark Rock 4 which can handle 200 watts for about $112 CAD shipped, but I can get the dark rock pro 4 which cools 250 watts for $134 CAD shipped. It's only $22 difference. I guess I should go for it at some point. I have a hard time paying more than 5o bucks for an air cooler lol

Do yourself a favour and get an AIO. https://www.amazon.ca/Radiator-120mm-SP-Advanced-Lighting-Software/dp/B019954Y2Q/ref=sr_1_5?crid=17W6WYNI923S9&keywords=corsair+h100i+v2&qid=1580430855&sprefix=corsair+h100i%2Caps%2C207&sr=8-5 This single 120 rad with push/pull is in the same range you're talking about, and will ensure you never have issues with CPU temp. I'm running an H100i v2 and albeit being a dual 120 rad with more surface temperature, there's the same number of fans. Here's some screenshots of CPU-Z and Core Temp at idle and after 10 minutes of stress test.

Keep in mind my AIO is like 4 years old which is longer than most people keep theirs (~3 years on average)

IDLE

 

STRESS TEST

[Skunch]

I am bad at quoting lol

Edited February 1, 2020 by Skunch
I quoted improperly

[Skunch]

Thanks, that's great info! I'm less interested in my own system, I'm thinking about all the possibilities with older, single core junk that I have piles of in my workshop. I've got a bunch of NVMe drives and a handful assorted adapters, I have some fun testing to get to. A quick search for DUET tells me that it is an intel developed program, and so clear documentation isn't forthcoming. I found this link and an initial skimming shows that it contains the basis of DUET, but it was last updated in 2012.

 

6 hours ago, gmac82 said:

Do yourself a favour and get an AIO. https://www.amazon.ca/Radiator-120mm-SP-Advanced-Lighting-Software/dp/B019954Y2Q/ref=sr_1_5?crid=17W6WYNI923S9&keywords=corsair+h100i+v2&qid=1580430855&sprefix=corsair+h100i%2Caps%2C207&sr=8-5 This single 120 rad with push/pull is in the same range you're talking about, and will ensure you never have issues with CPU temp. I'm running an H100i v2 and albeit being a dual 120 rad with more surface temperature, there's the same number of fans. Here's some screenshots of CPU-Z and Core Temp at idle and after 10 minutes of stress test.

Keep in mind my AIO is like 4 years old which is longer than most people keep theirs (~3 years on average)

IDLE

 

STRESS TEST

 

Eh, not so sold on liquid. I've had two AIO's in my history, and I've installed a lot of them for clients. They work well enough, but I've had to warranty all of them. I know that my experience is a pretty small sample size, but it's a lot of added complexity (in the device) with not enough benefit. If I'm already getting two fans and a heat sink, why bother adding coolant and a pump? it just seems like more stuff to break down over time

 

Also, dat 4063 watt tdp:

 

Are you overclocking with those temps? I know cpu-z only reports the stock frequency

[Skunch]

7 hours ago, Slayer3032 said:

I paid like $87 for my NH-D14 in 2010, the fans lasted 8 years before starting to make noise and one was ran at 100% speed at all times. It's still occasionally in my Antec 900 that I gave to a buddy to use for his garage sale X58 X5670/750ti build that cost like $75 all together excluding case, psu and ssd being stuff that was laying around. It still works just as good as it did the day I bought it. I've seen the NH-D15 on sale recently for a really good price, maybe since the Chromax parts are out the base models will come down a little.

 

Also, as far as DUET being worth it. I noticed a solid difference coming from a 4 year old Intel 535 240gb. I don't see buying a sata ssd as viable nowadays with m.2 basically being the standard for most builds. In a few years, when pci-e 4.0 takes off and ssds keep getting larger and faster you're going to kick yourself big time if you build a new system as drive speeds exceed 20-30x faster than your sata2 and "fake" sata3 controller could ever handle. I wouldn't have been happy with the 2TB Micron sata ssd I had been looking at and twice the price still at the time. There was a bunch of benchmarks posted a page or two back if you want those too. I have DUET installed to a 16gb AData usb drive, I just benchmarked all of my drives, found my fastest and stuck it on it. I had 3 of those drives and the other two are now running FreeNAS in a cloned setup on my home server.

 

I'd take some pictures of my X58 stuff but I really need to take them outside and dust them out, I'll probably just wait until FreeNAS 11.3 comes out to do that though as I'll need to power cycle it.

That noctua is a beefy boi. Even more expensive than the Dark Rock Pro 4. I just saw the Dark Rock 4 is on sale for 10 bucks off on canada computers, so I can get a 200w tdp cooler for less than 101 CAD shipped. I'm already running a Samsung 950 pro on my x58 machine, the only sata drive I would buy would be a proper HDD for archival purposes. Too bad x58 dropped the soap in the sata 3 department

 

I've cleaned out some gnarly-assed, ash tray looking computers. I can take it dirty, show us that dusty server!

[Zando_]

7 hours ago, Skunch said:

That noctua is a beefy boi. Even more expensive than the Dark Rock Pro 4. I just saw the Dark Rock 4 is on sale for 10 bucks off on canada computers, so I can get a 200w tdp cooler for less than 101 CAD shipped. I'm already running a Samsung 950 pro on my x58 machine, the only sata drive I would buy would be a proper HDD for archival purposes. Too bad x58 dropped the soap in the sata 3 department

What kind of OCing are you planning to do? I've ran an X5675 at 4.4Ghz fine on a Gammax 400, which is around Hyper 212 levels of perf. It even kept an i7 920 at 4GHz with 1.45v or so under throttle temp, BUUUUUT that was with two Noctua iPPC NF-F12 2000rpm fans going full blast lmao. 

I've also pushed an X5670 on water (360mm slim rad for just the CPU), it really depends on what temps you're comfortable with and what you're planning to push. 

I will be putting my Noctua NH-D15S on an X58 rig this weekend hopefully (also need to pull my i7 920 for @Crunchy Dragon), I can let you know how that goes. Got the LGA1366 mount kit from Noctua a bit ago but I've just been lagging lately. 

[gmac82]

CPU-Z will report whatever the motherboard has set the clock frequency to. That's why people use it to verify their overclock once they get into Windows. But yes, those temps right now are stock.

[Skunch]

13 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

What kind of OCing are you planning to do? I've ran an X5675 at 4.4Ghz fine on a Gammax 400, which is around Hyper 212 levels of perf. It even kept an i7 920 at 4GHz with 1.45v or so under throttle temp, BUUUUUT that was with two Noctua iPPC NF-F12 2000rpm fans going full blast lmao. 

I've also pushed an X5670 on water (360mm slim rad for just the CPU), it really depends on what temps you're comfortable with and what you're planning to push. 

I will be putting my Noctua NH-D15S on an X58 rig this weekend hopefully (also need to pull my i7 920 for @Crunchy Dragon), I can let you know how that goes. Got the LGA1366 mount kit from Noctua a bit ago but I've just been lagging lately. 

I'd like to push at least 4ghz. I'm less worried about temps and more bothered by noise. My girlfriend has been complaining about my computer while we watch movies. I'm just looking for a quiet tower cooler with a good amount of headroom for overclocking, and future use on (gasp) other motherboards.

 

12 hours ago, gmac82 said:

CPU-Z will report whatever the motherboard has set the clock frequency to. That's why people use it to verify their overclock once they get into Windows. But yes, those temps right now are stock.

Ah, I see. I remember having an issue with cpu-z not showing my overclocked numbers, but then, that may have been an issue with the board itself. You and I have very similar temps, even with my loud hyper 212 evo, I rarely ever go above 55 degrees C.

[gmac82]

3 hours ago, Skunch said:

I'd like to push at least 4ghz. I'm less worried about temps and more bothered by noise. My girlfriend has been complaining about my computer while we watch movies. I'm just looking for a quiet tower cooler with a good amount of headroom for overclocking, and future use on (gasp) other motherboards.

 

Ah, I see. I remember having an issue with cpu-z not showing my overclocked numbers, but then, that may have been an issue with the board itself. You and I have very similar temps, even with my loud hyper 212 evo, I rarely ever go above 55 degrees C.

I just finished overclocking the CPU, stress testing to find the highest stable clock.

 

CPU-Z is slightly under reporting, based on the settings in BIOS and during post, I'm at 4.1 Giggity Hertz with a 205 Mhz core clock and 20x multiplier. With the Memory ratio at 2:8 and Uncore @ x16, my 16GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866 (4x4) kit (I upgraded, originally I recalled my Corsair Vengeance kit being 24GB but it was actually only 12GB) is slightly underclocked at 1642 MHz.

Running LinX CPU stress test for 10 minutes @ 10,000 problem difficulty, the highest core reached 71C.

All in all I'm pretty happy getting to at least 4 GHz, the big improvement is running that 205 MHz base clock. Everything is much snappier, and combined with the NVMe I have zero system lag whatsoever.

[gmac82]

Does anyone else get weird audio artifacts whether using onboard audio or a USB sound card when overclocking? I tried all different kinds of drivers to no avail. Put the clock speeds and memory timings and voltages back to stock and the problem went away. I was also getting pausing of the mouse every 4 or 5 seconds in 1 second durations when moving the mouse constantly within game.

If this isn't a widespread problem, I'm guessing that extreme increases in the BLCK in combination with deterioration due to age of capacitors etc on the motherboard causes a level of instability that manifests as audio distortion and other "ticks" in the USB bus. Disappointing to say the least. Oh well, hopefully this system can keep me afloat until I can afford a brand new system.

[Slayer3032]

6 hours ago, gmac82 said:

Does anyone else get weird audio artifacts whether using onboard audio or a USB sound card when overclocking? I tried all different kinds of drivers to no avail. Put the clock speeds and memory timings and voltages back to stock and the problem went away. I was also getting pausing of the mouse every 4 or 5 seconds in 1 second durations when moving the mouse constantly within game.

If this isn't a widespread problem, I'm guessing that extreme increases in the BLCK in combination with deterioration due to age of capacitors etc on the motherboard causes a level of instability that manifests as audio distortion and other "ticks" in the USB bus. Disappointing to say the least. Oh well, hopefully this system can keep me afloat until I can afford a brand new system.

I noticed my bios and post screen acting a little different when I was pushing 210x23 or so, 1.5v and 4.8ghz~, it just seemed laggy and not as smooth to boot up. I was extremely close to the "wall" where my board just no longer functions when playing around with that for benchmark runs.

 

You should try using more of the unlocked multipliers that you have with the 980x, my setup was unstable for the longest time trying to do 200x22 and 200x23 but when I switched to 180x25/1.4v~ and enabled the turbo multipliers it just worked perfectly.

[gmac82]

5 hours ago, Slayer3032 said:

I noticed my bios and post screen acting a little different when I was pushing 210x23 or so, 1.5v and 4.8ghz~, it just seemed laggy and not as smooth to boot up. I was extremely close to the "wall" where my board just no longer functions when playing around with that for benchmark runs.

 

You should try using more of the unlocked multipliers that you have with the 980x, my setup was unstable for the longest time trying to do 200x22 and 200x23 but when I switched to 180x25/1.4v~ and enabled the turbo multipliers it just worked perfectly.

Cool, ill play around with that later tonight. Just finished watching the Super Bowl

[bomerr]

If you upgrade to the Xeon CPUs (e.g. E5-1660 v3) than you can run Registered (ECC + Fully Buffered) DIMMs, including Samsung B-die sticks. Why?

1. Because these sticks are starting to flood the market.
2. B-die is good for OCIng.
3. Buffered RAM puts less stress on the IMC so it should allow for better OCing.
4. Samsung OEM B-die is cheaper than 3rd party kits, e.g. G.Skill or Corsair.
5. ECC ram is more reliable. 

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/global.semi/file/resource/2018/06/DDR4_Product_guide_May.18.pdf

 

The best stick to buy for the X99 platform is the 4x M393A2K40BB2-CTD  for 64GB or M391A1K43BB2 for 32GB. These sticks are B-die, single rank, 16GB, feature a 2nd gen buffer and a good PCB layout

 

The Samsung 2133P and 2400T sticks both have a weaker buffer so I would avoid them. There is also an 3200AA kit (M393A2K40BB2-CWE, M393A2K40DB3-CWE?) but if your CPU has a weak memory controller, you may not be able to post. 

 

These kits run at JEDEC speed, no XMP profile so you'll have to manually overclock them. 

[bimmerman]

I haven't had any audio or usb issues at 215x21 for what it's worth-- ~1.35 V if I remember right on the QPI/VTT, it's been a while. My board oddly had issues being stable around 195-205 range but has been a champ at 210+.

 

I am using USB out to an external DAC, so that probably negates it, but I also am using a USB 3.0 card via PCIe since the on board USB3...sucks on X58 era stuff.

 

I have not touched the PCIe clock rate, though I think I goosed the ICH or IOH voltages a smidge.

[Slayer3032]

On 1/30/2020 at 11:57 PM, Skunch said:

That noctua is a beefy boi. Even more expensive than the Dark Rock Pro 4. I just saw the Dark Rock 4 is on sale for 10 bucks off on canada computers, so I can get a 200w tdp cooler for less than 101 CAD shipped. I'm already running a Samsung 950 pro on my x58 machine, the only sata drive I would buy would be a proper HDD for archival purposes. Too bad x58 dropped the soap in the sata 3 department

 

I've cleaned out some gnarly-assed, ash tray looking computers. I can take it dirty, show us that dusty server!

Oh, it's nothing like that. Just dust building up on all the edges of the fans, and enough dust coating everything to make it look horrible with a flash which I would have needed to use where it sits as light doesn't shine into it very well for taking pictures. FreeNAS apparently decided to finally release something after not offering a "supported" operating system for a couple months, took most of my time yesterday to fight various things that broke with updates, ect. I still have to update a bunch of my jails but after my test one entirely failed to backup/restore the snapshot correctly after breaking. I have very little trust that it will manage to update my Plex server and not force me to lose like two years of statistics from having to recreate the jail.

 

The Cooler Master Storm Scout really reminds me how nicely cases from the late 2000's and early 2010's were made to use compared to something that you need at least 3-4 arms to install the side panels on. I really really miss the Antec 900's side panels which hooked in on the inside of the case instead of pushing against the case with your chest because it wants to twist and not latch. I really don't miss the case blocking 90 degree connectors and needing pliers to plug in sata cables though, nor do I miss having no space around your motherboard for radiators and the like. I guess glass kind of gets rid of these issues nowadays.

 

The home server is 36gb of mismatched memory, still running in triple channel though with a stock X5660/212 Evo on a Asus P6T(non-SE). It has a GT1030 I can't use since Plex seems to only support Nvidia accelerated transcodes under Windows and definitely not FreeBSD. SM951 128GB NVMe with a AHCI part number that isn't actually a AHCI bootable drive with the cheapest adapter on Amazon which I knocked the drive activity LED off of with a flathead screwdriver. 2x8TB WD Elements shucks along with a 4TB, 2TB, 1TB and a 500GB drive which I picked up for $5 that had less than 40 hours on it and like 5 power cycles. The power supply is a 550w that I picked up for $75 with a $25MIR and a $25 steam gift card. Every single thing on this build was either a deal or spare parts laying around, I think the next upgrade to it will be a nice set of fans but I'm really contemplating if I should just slap it in a Fractal Define R6 for future expansion instead. It's just hard to do that when I'd much rather be buying a Meshify/Define for my personal rig though.

 

Here's a CPU-Z validation from my current setup, I hit it with a OCCT stress test to make it actually clock up and for the first time it's actually pretty much dead on with the voltages, clocks, ect. https://valid.x86.fr/5sd2a1

 

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

2 hours ago, Slayer3032 said:

-snip-

That last one a 450D?

[Slayer3032]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

That last one a 450D?

Yeah, it's an alright case. I got it on an Amazon lightning deal that lasted like 8-10 minutes. It's basically a requirement to remove the drive cages though. My cpu temps dropped from 95c~ to down to around 78-81c just from doing that. The stock fans in it started to die in just over a year too.

[mr mans]

Does anyone have some direct benchmarks of 5 GHz (+/- a few hundred mhz) of 5960x compared to a 3700x/3800x, particularly in the single-threaded department? I of course know the AMD chip is quicker but 5960x can be had for around $200-$250 and dropping these days (on US eBay). Lowering prices + fun overclocking headroom + i7 Extreme Edition cool factor makes for a compelling platform.

 

On another note, how do the xeon e5-1680 v2/v3 compare to 5960x with OC included?

[bomerr]

27 minutes ago, vukos said:

Does anyone have some direct benchmarks of 5 GHz (+/- a few hundred mhz) of 5960x compared to a 3700x/3800x, particularly in the single-threaded department? I of course know the AMD chip is quicker but 5960x can be had for around $200-$250 and dropping these days (on US eBay). Lowering prices + fun overclocking headroom + i7 Extreme Edition cool factor makes for a compelling platform.

 

On another note, how do the xeon e5-1680 v2/v3 compare to 5960x with OC included?

1. 5GHz is rare for a 5960X without extreme cooling. You'll almost certainly need a "J" serial number CPU and a good binned one too. 

2. E5-1660 v3 is going for 175 on eBay. If you could get a good binned 5960x for ~200 than the cost would justify the performance but otherwise it's not worth the premium over the Xeon.

3. 1680 v2 is Ivy Bridge and 1680 v3 is selling for $300, not worth it.

 

An overclocked i7-5960x/E5-1660 v3 @4.4GHz will yield performance that is very close to the R7 2700X, especially because the X99 platform is quad channel. 

 

X99 isn't particularly cost-effective right now unless you already have a mobo. If you have a 5820k than upgrading to the 1660 v3 is a no brainer right now. 

Other case scenario that might be good is if you need a lot of RAM, you can find DDR4 server memory flooding the market right now, coupled with a high core count Xeon, you could get a good rendering rig. 

[Kilrah]

12 hours ago, bomerr said:

An overclocked i7-5960x/E5-1660 v3 @4.4GHz will yield performance that is very close to the R7 2700X

Worthy of note that this will be at about twice the power dissipation though.

[GrockleTD]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Worthy of note that this will be at about twice the power dissipation though.

Pfft, electricity shmecticity