NAS CPU

Havel · July 26, 2020

Currently running a NAS on an old i7 970 and im looking to upgrade it to more modern hardware that could handle more ram instead of the 24gb this one is limited to. There's also the option of getting an old xeon for the same socket like an x5670. Not sure which path i should go with, and if i should go with new hardware which cpu would be the best bang for the buck considering the application.

Slayer3032 · July 26, 2020

Nehalems and Westmeres should handle 8gb dimms just fine, I'm pretty sure they were only validated for 24gb because 4gb dimms at the time were the largest single rank non-ecc dimms available in 2010/2011. I'm not 100% sure if i7 skus support unbuffered ECC, but I am 100% sure the Xeons do so if you're just looking for capacity and not performance look for memory that's like PC3-xxxxxU or PC3-xxxxxE, avoid anything with an R. Occasionally a few registered dimms will work fine on X58 but don't expect it to. I run 3x8gb 3x4gb on my X5660 on a standard Asus P6T, it even has an nvme that was recycled over from my personal build.

If you're looking at 8gb dimms of DDR3 for your board, I'd step up to the X5675 as it's just a little bit better silicon usually for like $10 more. I run mine at 4.5ghz@1.425v and have been for a while in my personal rig. X58 was/is really solid aside from the little nuances and finesse to get them dialed in sometimes. You're not going to see a performance increase from going to a similarly clocked Xeon but i7 970's seem to sell on ebay for $50-70 which could easily cover a X5675.

LGA2011 has some decent used Xeons and AVX support would be an improvement, although I personally have no problem transcoding a couple HEVC streams. Ryzen probably has better price to performance though and with DDR4 over the hill now, I'm not sure if I'd say buying 8gb DDR3 dimms is a great idea when DDR4 is often close to the same price. If you can find a good deal on DDR3 dimms, it would probably be worth it.

Havel · July 27, 2020

22 hours ago, Slayer3032 said:

Nehalems and Westmeres should handle 8gb dimms just fine, I'm pretty sure they were only validated for 24gb because 4gb dimms at the time were the largest single rank non-ecc dimms available in 2010/2011. I'm not 100% sure if i7 skus support unbuffered ECC, but I am 100% sure the Xeons do so if you're just looking for capacity and not performance look for memory that's like PC3-xxxxxU or PC3-xxxxxE, avoid anything with an R. Occasionally a few registered dimms will work fine on X58 but don't expect it to. I run 3x8gb 3x4gb on my X5660 on a standard Asus P6T, it even has an nvme that was recycled over from my personal build.

If you're looking at 8gb dimms of DDR3 for your board, I'd step up to the X5675 as it's just a little bit better silicon usually for like $10 more. I run mine at 4.5ghz@1.425v and have been for a while in my personal rig. X58 was/is really solid aside from the little nuances and finesse to get them dialed in sometimes. You're not going to see a performance increase from going to a similarly clocked Xeon but i7 970's seem to sell on ebay for $50-70 which could easily cover a X5675.

LGA2011 has some decent used Xeons and AVX support would be an improvement, although I personally have no problem transcoding a couple HEVC streams. Ryzen probably has better price to performance though and with DDR4 over the hill now, I'm not sure if I'd say buying 8gb DDR3 dimms is a great idea when DDR4 is often close to the same price. If you can find a good deal on DDR3 dimms, it would probably be worth it.

Best advise i could've hoped for, thanks man