Suggestions for Sever Computer build?

[Nick91]

Hello,

 

I'm having a debate at work with a co-worker. He's building a server computer and all I know is that he chose an AMD Ryzen 16 core as the CPU. From my knowledge, you would want to run a different CPU designed for sever rooms and not gaming. Would that AMD Ryzen work or what would be recommended instead for use? 

 

Thanks for any info. Sorry for the lack of computer knowledge. I really appreciate everyone's help. 

 

Nick

[Thinkfreely]

So you have it backwards, but its not your fault, its marketing. The threadrippers, aren't meant to be "gaming" cpu's. They are built for things like servers, or creation based PC's. People just use them for gaming, and lump them in with the more gamer oriented CPU's, but honestly they perform worse in a lot of gaming situations. AMD just didn't stop people from viewing them that way, and marketed that you COULD use them for gaming, but that is not their primary purpose. Their purpose is to offer a better value option for cores and threads for those who need things like a server, or a pc for video editing, 3d modeling, etc.

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

It depends on what Server means, so what is the machine going to do?

 

 

[Lurick]

A CPU is a CPU is a CPU

Their target market might be different but they all roughly do the same thing. Sure you might pair them with different hardware but there isn't anything stopping you from using a server CPU for gaming or vice versa. Some CPUs are better at games because they are more optimized towards better single core performance but they can be used in server applications just fine, it's just the server application might not be able to run as effectively on a more limited amount of cores/threads. It mostly depends on the application, what it needs, and what environment it was designed to run in such as many slower cores or a couple very fast cores.

 

Edit:

Should have mentioned there are some features on a server grade CPU that aren't usually found in consumer grade CPUs but if the application(s) being used don't need those features then it's perfectly fine.

[AnonymousGuy]

You can use consumer hardware and call it a "server".  The difference between a Xeon and a Core CPU is whether or not it supports ECC.  I don't have any "must work 100% of the time" usage scenarios to justify having to use a server motherboard with a Xeon CPU and ECC memory.  I tried converting my storage server over to Xeon and it was a fucking nightmare when the new motherboard didn't really want to boot with the existing OS install.

 

Whether you want 8 cores or 16 cores depends on the workload.

[Coaxialgamer]

It's actually perfectly capable of doing so. It even supports ECC, for redundancy, as long as your board supports it. Xeons do have some features not shared with their consumer counterparts, but epyc and threadripper are actually quite similar in this regard. 

[Nick91]

That's very interesting stuff. I really had no idea. The sever will be operating our files, Quickbooks, images, programs such as shipping, and etc. 

 

Nick