Homelab cpu (13900 vs 5950x)

[Quarke]

Should I get the r9 5950x, or a 13900 (with ddr4 ram tho) for my homelab. I plan to run ~6 Minecraft servers on it, with a few docker containers and vms.

The r9 and the i9 both have 32 threads, but the r9 has 8 more performance cores than the i9. I don't know how useful the i9's e cores will be for that i'm doing. What can I get, considering I can get both for ~$380 on ebay.

[igormp]

Both will be more than enough for your needs. The 13900 might give you headhaches with the scheduling between the E and P cores, but it doesn't seem like you're doing anything really resource intensive.

 

The 13900 should have lower idle power draw given its monolithic design, but higher load power consumption. Since I believe it'll be close to idle most of the time, the intel one may be a better option on the long run.

 

You could also go for a way cheaper CPU tbh.

[Quarke]

Thanks for the response, but if I'm sharding minecraft servers so I may use up to 30 threads will the scheduling be that much of a problem with the 13900 (its cheaper if I get an ES version).

[igormp]

23 minutes ago, Quarke said:

Thanks for the response, but if I'm sharding minecraft servers so I may use up to 30 threads will the scheduling be that much of a problem with the 13900 (its cheaper if I get an ES version).

If you're going to be loading up the CPU, then scheduling won't be much of an issue since all threads/cores will be loaded anyway.

[Quarke]

k, will the e cores affect performance for strictly single threaded processes?

[Quarke]

12 minutes ago, igormp said:

If you're going to be loading up the CPU, then scheduling won't be much of an issue since all threads/cores will be loaded anyway.

i basically just need the best per thread performance

[igormp]

40 minutes ago, Quarke said:

k, will the e cores affect performance for strictly single threaded processes?

They are slower than the P cores and also slower than the 5950x's cores, so any process that ends up stuck in there are going to be running slower than the others in the other cores.

35 minutes ago, Quarke said:

i basically just need the best per thread performance

13900 it is then, unless you can manage a 7950x as cheap.

[toasty99]

Why would you get an engineering sample 13900? The i9 13900 engineering samples don't run at very high clock speeds. That's a bad idea if you need single thread performance.