Server guide

[moderategamer]

I'm thinking about investing in a second hand server to use as a render farm/ file server the problem is I don't keep up to date on server gear and don't really know what to look for. The main goal for the build is to get a tonne of cores for rendering and lots of ram but that's a given. Any tips you could send my way like things to watch out for, Xeons that are known to be good and cheap etc would be greatly appreciated. I'm not in any rush to get this set up and I don't need to get the best of the best just a good cheap rig to suite my small scale needs.  

[Electronics Wizardy]

how much do you want to spend?

 

Id probalby look for a dual lga 2011 system, like a dell r720. About 500-1500 usd depending on spec, max 768gb ram, max 24 cores.

 

If you can scale for 4 sockets, look at a dell r820. About 800 usd for 4 8 cores.

[Crunchy Dragon]

-Moved to New Builds and Planning-

[moderategamer]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

how much do you want to spend?

 

Id probalby look for a dual lga 2011 system, like a dell r720. About 500-1500 usd depending on spec, max 768gb ram, max 24 cores.

 

If you can scale for 4 sockets, look at a dell r820. About 800 usd for 4 8 cores.

That's a bit more than I would like to pay, I mean I have just over 2000 saved up but don't want to spend that much. I was more hoping to spend like 300 or in that ball park do you think it's possible to get anything worth while at that price point doesn't need to be amazing just something with a good amount of cores.

[moderategamer]

I know that's probably a tall ask but I was under the assumption you could get good deals on old server hardware

[Electronics Wizardy]

19 minutes ago, moderategamer said:

That's a bit more than I would like to pay, I mean I have just over 2000 saved up but don't want to spend that much. I was more hoping to spend like 300 or in that ball park do you think it's possible to get anything worth while at that price point doesn't need to be amazing just something with a good amount of cores.

go dual lga 1366 then. look for something like a dell r710.

[suchamoneypit]

Look into AMD Opteron servers, maybe something like Dell PowerEdge servers. Lot of decent used hardware in your price range.

[moderategamer]

13 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

go dual lga 1366 then. look for something like a dell r710.

Thanks very helpful

[moderategamer]

12 hours ago, suchamoneypit said:

Look into AMD Opteron servers, maybe something like Dell PowerEdge servers. Lot of decent used hardware in your price range.

Thanks, I never even considered going AMD are they any good?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, moderategamer said:

Thanks, I never even considered going AMD are they any good?

 

What programs are you running. 

 

The answer for opterons is normally no, there slower in most tasks compared to a 1366 xeon, use more power. Its basically just two low clocked fx chips in on e socket.

[moderategamer]

just 3ds max's backburner and probably plex to begin with so mostly just the usual functions like a file server and render farm for 3ds max but eventually I would be turning it in to a ZFS server and probably host my website from it. 

[moderategamer]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What programs are you running. 

 

The answer for opterons is normally no, there slower in most tasks compared to a 1366 xeon, use more power. Its basically just two low clocked fx chips in on e socket.

Are either of these two servers good/good value? 

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-R710-PowerEdge-2-x-Intel-Xeon-Quad-Core-E5640-2-66GHz-48GB-RAM-PERC6/123141291559?epid=4007941303&hash=item1cabcafe27:g:25kAAOSwHvpa~tKL

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-2-x-L5640-2-26GHz-Six-core-72GB-of-RAM-Perc6i-Raid-Card/382473536567?hash=item590d330437:g:oAYAAOSwtZJY-H1R

 

edit: I have also been looking at duel Xeon X5660 servers they seem to fit the bill a bit better?

[Electronics Wizardy]

20 minutes ago, moderategamer said:

Are either of these two servers good/good value? 

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-R710-PowerEdge-2-x-Intel-Xeon-Quad-Core-E5640-2-66GHz-48GB-RAM-PERC6/123141291559?epid=4007941303&hash=item1cabcafe27:g:25kAAOSwHvpa~tKL

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-2-x-L5640-2-26GHz-Six-core-72GB-of-RAM-Perc6i-Raid-Card/382473536567?hash=item590d330437:g:oAYAAOSwtZJY-H1R

 

edit: I have also been looking at duel Xeon X5660 servers they seem to fit the bill a bit better?

You probalby want 6 cores if you wnt more rendering power, so id go with the l5640.

 

What are you doing sorage wise, replace the prec 6i if your using internal storage much.

[moderategamer]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You probalby want 6 cores if you wnt more rendering power, so id go with the l5640.

 

What are you doing sorage wise, replace the prec 6i if your using internal storage much.

Probably Raid 0 or 10 and not a huge capacity I think probably around 8 TB will be sufficient. I think 6 cores would be ideal because for rendering that would give me 16 cores to render on if you include my desktop.

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, moderategamer said:

Probably Raid 0 or 10 and not a huge capacity I think probably around 8 TB will be sufficient. I think 6 cores would be ideal because for rendering that would give me 16 cores to render on if you include my desktop.

what is your desktop, it may be faster than these.

 

what programs?

 

yea dont get a 6/i, replace it with a h200

[moderategamer]

CPU is i5-4690K only got 8GB Ram. would the duel Xeon X5660 be better for my application? I'm not really overly fussed on how fast I can render, I mean I am but at the same time it's more so that I can offload the render from my laptop to the array of server and desktop meaning I can still use my laptop as the render happens in the background but I'm more looking in to getting a server for fun so I can learn how to set up ZFS and stuff and have free hosting of websites as I'm studying computing/web design.

 

Laptop has i7 6700HQ quad core 8 thread CPU and 16GB DDR4 Ram

[suchamoneypit]

On 6/3/2018 at 1:18 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

What programs are you running. 

 

The answer for opterons is normally no, there slower in most tasks compared to a 1366 xeon, use more power. Its basically just two low clocked fx chips in on e socket.

 

On 6/3/2018 at 1:01 PM, moderategamer said:

Thanks, I never even considered going AMD are they any good?

 

$400 for 64 cores  (CPU price only) which score 2200 in cinebench using 600 watts. My 5820K oveeclocked to 4.8ghz scored 1300 in cinebench. Most efficient ? No. But it terms of bang per buck it's pretty good. If you are ok with dropping electricity efficency you can get half that peformance for like $60 in CPUs (at like 500 watts)

[moderategamer]

thanks, you'd think that you would get a better score than that with 64 cores I'm not sure how cinebench scales but you'd think you would at the very least get double the score