PCIe ram?

Pauleh · August 4, 2016

I was looking at purchasing a Dell Poweredge R900 server second hand off of ebay, and I saw that the ram connected through a PCIe "hub". Is there any disadvantages of doing this (i.e. is ram slower or are the processors bottlenecked by this the potentially longer times to get to the memory)?

As a side note, do yall have any tips for buying servers, or have any experience / tips for this server in particular? I don't have much experience with servers. I'm looking to use this to render videos fast on the cheap + just as a side project "icebreaker" for me to get into the server world.

Electronics Wizardy · August 4, 2016

The ram isn't connected over pice. its fbddr2.

Id stay away from a r900. It would be about 1000 a year in power.

Id get something like a dell r710 or c2100

Pauleh · August 4, 2016

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The ram isn't connected over pice. its fbddr2.

Id stay away from a r900. It would be about 1000 a year in power.

Id get something like a dell r710 or c2100

Are you sure? looks exactly like PCIe to me (at glance, I ain't counting pins or nothin).

+ I couldn't give a shit about power cost, I ain't payin for my power.

Also thanks for the r710 recommendation, I never considered that before.

Electronics Wizardy · August 4, 2016

Just now, Pauleh said:

Are you sure? looks exactly like PCIe to me (at glance, I ain't counting pins or nothin).

+ I couldn't give a shit about power cost, I ain't payin for my power.

Also thanks for the r710 recommendation, I never considered that before.

Thats not pcie, thats a custom connector. Its probably the same plug as its cheaper to reuse connectors.

The r9-- is missing many featuer that newer servers like a r710 have like vt-d, greater than 2tb drive support, better drac, gpu support.

Pauleh · August 4, 2016

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Thats not pcie, thats a custom connector. Its probably the same plug as its cheaper to reuse connectors.

The r9-- is missing many featuer that newer servers like a r710 have like vt-d, greater than 2tb drive support, better drac, gpu support.

Ah, thanks.

And yea, you are right. Its better in every way. Its basically the same price, DDR3, GPU support and in terms of processing power it's not THAT much slower. In passmark the r900 gets 12k and the R710 gets 7.5k. Also I have a more solid upgrade path. So, yea. thanks for the recommendation, I never saw this before.