Doing a new build and unsure about CPU's

[pm18570]

Budget (including currency): 2600 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Virtualization, testing, web, encoding/decoding, 3d modeling, financial apps

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc):

 

I bought a new machine in 2015. It fried before I had a chance to use it, was not covered by a warranty for the particular issue it had, and consequently I'm using a desktop from the 2007 (era).

 

I do work using heavy applications requiring ECC, and I like the solid performance of Intel (despite it's recent criticisms). I've been looking for a Xeon CPU with a manufacturer warranty (No tray CPU's) at or below $2600. The prices seem to be totally inconsistent or all non existent. There are similar prices for Xeon's ranging from v2 to Xeon Gold, despite huge disparities in performance and special instructions.

 

The only option with the characteristics I need that I've found, so far, is an E5-26xx V4, at $2.6K. I bought it, but haven't taken delivery of it yet. It seems like it will meet or exceed my needs, but I can see so many newer CPU's with similar core counts at or around this price. I have to think that for that price there should be something newer available on the Xeon platform with the same core count on a single socket. I'm surprised to not see the internet flush with retail warrantied CPU's, since American's have endured so much economic hardship over the last 7 to 10 years. One would expect there to be a surplus. Also because 14nm on any platform is cheap for Intel to produce by this point.

 

Where am I not looking?

 

[Jurrunio]

18 minutes ago, pm18570 said:

requiring ECC

Consumer Ryzen CPUs and many boards support ECC... Your choice

 

23 minutes ago, pm18570 said:

I've been looking for a Xeon CPU with a manufacturer warranty (No tray CPU's) at or below $2600. The prices seem to be totally inconsistent or all non existent. There are similar prices for Xeon's ranging from v2 to Xeon Gold, despite huge disparities in performance and special instructions.

Xeon's warranty is never provided by Intel, but by OEM that bought these CPUs in large batches as far as I aware. These are all OEM parts and Intel never intended them to be sold as individual units.

 

26 minutes ago, pm18570 said:

I have to think that for that price there should be something newer available on the Xeon platform with the same core count on a single socket

Accepting tray CPUs and lack of warranty will be key if you want more options, especially the first condition. This is the same.for.server CPUs from both.companies

 

33 minutes ago, pm18570 said:

I'm surprised to not see the internet flush with retail warrantied CPU's, since American's have endured so much economic hardship over the last 7 to 10 years. One would expect there to be a surplus.

Uhm, that's not how Intel sells Xeons. Maybe they had in the distant past, but not in recent years.  And they can simply reduce production when economy slows down if not goes backwards, they know economics.

 

39 minutes ago, pm18570 said:

because 14nm on any platform is cheap for Intel to produce by this point.

But companies certainly make a lot of money out of Xeons, that's why server CPUs and graphics cards are so expensive despite the underlying hardware being physically the same as consumer stuff. They know their target customer can afford to pay that much.

[pm18570]

Any idea's about where I might be missing something trying to locate a more modern Xeon platform within the price window?

 

That's the essence of the question I suppose...

[pm18570]

"Xeon's warranty is never provided by Intel, but by OEM that bought these CPUs in large batches as far as I aware. These are all OEM parts and Intel never intended them to be sold as individual units."

 

I've actually already spent a great deal of time looking into this, and what I've seen and been told by multiple vendors is that "Retail Boxed" Xeon's come with a 3 year warranty from Intel, where Tray processors sometimes come with a 1 year warranty from the vendor. Given the previous issue from 2015, I'm avoiding the risk this time. Maybe in the future, when building something more for fun, I'd be okay with a Tray CPU.

 

"Uhm, that's not how Intel sells Xeons. Maybe they had in the distant past, but not in recent years.  And they can simply reduce production when economy slows down if not goes backwards, they know economics."

 

There are always "Unloved" old Retail Boxed CPU's out there, sometimes many of them. I remember when I bought some E5's ages ago for work there was a glut of previous generation E5's, two and three generation old Xeon's still available. There could have been even older ones out there, but I didn't look. Something else is probably going on... Who knows.