Need Help Choosing Server Motherboard

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bambiboom
montecpa,

Summary Answer > Buy a dual Xeon LGA2011 motherboard from the ASUS Z9PA-D8 series- $360- $535 to be able to add a second processor later. Consider building with a single CPU of 6 or 8 cores and a higher clock speed and adding a second later.

In my view, a system like this to be optimized needs to consider all uses and if possible future applications. For example, if there is any kind of visual work, or high intensity calculation, it may be advisable to have two higher speed 6 or 8-core Xeons than one 10-core. Or, if you buy a dual CPU board, you might build initially with single, faster 6 or 8 core and then add a second one later.

If there is a need or desire for PCIe drives like Ocz Revodrives and/ or future...
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bambiboom

bambiboom

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Apr 7, 2012
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montecpa,

Summary Answer > Buy a dual Xeon LGA2011 motherboard from the ASUS Z9PA-D8 series- $360- $535 to be able to add a second processor later. Consider building with a single CPU of 6 or 8 cores and a higher clock speed and adding a second later.

In my view, a system like this to be optimized needs to consider all uses and if possible future applications. For example, if there is any kind of visual work, or high intensity calculation, it may be advisable to have two higher speed 6 or 8-core Xeons than one 10-core. Or, if you buy a dual CPU board, you might build initially with single, faster 6 or 8 core and then add a second one later.

If there is a need or desire for PCIe drives like Ocz Revodrives and/ or future Tesla or Xeon Phi coprocessors, a dual CPU may be desirable so as to add PCIe lanes.

Some questions>

1. Will you be using one Xeon E5-2690 V2 or two?

2. How many VM's do you plan to have loaded at one time?

3. What do you have in mind for file storage?

4. List the applications and uses? Are you doing MATLAB, 3D modeling, or video processing for example?

5. Is there a reason you chose 4 X 16GB for the RAM? Most single CPU server motherboards have 8 slots and good dual Xeon borads have 16 slots. Is your idea to eventually have 128GB or more of RAM?

6. Do you have an overall system budget?

As a conversation starter, follows is a of a kind of generic system- on the level your inquiry suggests. This is more or less a kind of ideal system for my uses, which is heavily image-based- 2D and 3D CAD and rendering. This starts with 2X 4-core Xeon, but with 6 and 8 core as options. My first choice would be to start with a single E5-2687W V2 8-core which is about $50 more than the 10-core E5-2690 V2. The motherboard is the one I would recommend for your use if you have dual CPU's, expensive but high performance, and a lot of desirable features, including having 7X PCIe X16 slots- taking advantage of the extra lanes that dual CPU's provide. I would suggest that you consider building the system on a dual CPU motherboard with the idea to add the second CPU and more RAM later. There are some motherboard options listed below that are in the same series but are less expensive configurations. The choice of Quadro K5000 is to provide a high level of performance for image-based work and of course may be surplus to need. If you are not involved in 3D, I would suggest a Quadro K600. These are very good in 2D (3D is not terrible but not great) and the cost of about $170 will subtract almost $1,000 from the total cost >

BambiBoom PixelCannon Cadamodirendacompilarific ExtremeTurboSignature IWork 9000 ®©$$™®£™©™ _2.7.14

CPU > (2) Xeon E5-2643 V2 Six Core 3.5 / 3.8 GHz LGA2011 25MB > $3146 ($1578 ea)

____ http://www.provantage.com/intel-cm8063501287403~7ITEP3WR.htm

CPU OPT’L > (2) Intel Xeon Processor E5-2637 v2 Four core 3.5 / 3.8 GHz 15M Cache >$1992 ($996 each)

http://ark.intel.com/products/75792/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2637-v2-15M-Cache-3_50-GHz

CPU OPT'L > (2) Intel Xeon E5-2687W v2 Ivy Bridge-EP 3.4/ 4.0GHz 25MB L3 Cache LGA 2011 150W 8-Core Server Processor BX80635E52687V2 $4,400 ($2,200 ea)(this is among the top five most powerful CPU's.

Motherboard > ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 Intel C602 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 SSI EEB > $534

____ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131817

OPT'L > ASUS Z9PE-D16 SSI EEB Server Motherboard Dual LGA 2011 DDR3 1600 > $440

OPT'L> ASUS Z9PA-D8 ATX Server Motherboard Dual LGA 2011 DDR3 1600/1333/1066 > $360

CPU Cooler > CORSAIR Hydro Series H60 (CW-9060007-WW) High Performance Water / Liquid CPU Cooler. 120mm > $130 or $65

____ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181030

RAM > 64GB (4) Kingston 1X16GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Server Memory Model KVR18R13D4/16 $745 ($185 ea) > VERIFY

___ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239756

GPU > NVIDIA Quadro K5000 4GB GDDR5 Graphics card > $1689.

____www.amazon.com/NVIDIA-Quadro-K5000-Graphics-PNY/dp/B009L8E4UO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391826733&sr=8-1&keywords=quadro+K5000

HD 1 > SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD512BW 2.5" 512GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) > $400 (OS and Applications)

___ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147194

HD 2 and 3 > (2) Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST2000NM0033 2TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive > $ 294 ($197 ea) (RAID 1) (Files, system Image)

___ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178296

Power Supply > CORSAIR HX Series HX850 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply > $160.

____http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011


Optical Drive > SAMSUNG DVD Burner 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM SATA Model SH-224DB/BEBE - OEM > $20

Case > Case Labs > Mercury S8 > with options $400

___ http://www.caselabs-store.com/mercury-s8/

OS > Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit- OEM > $190

____ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832416808

_________________________________________________________

TOTAL = $6,135 or $4,981 with Xeon E5-2637 V2


Cheers,

BambiBoom

HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro 4000 (2GB)> Samsung 840 SSD 250GB /Western Digital WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > AE3000 USB WiFi > HP 2711X, 27" 1920 X 1080 > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 >[Passmark system rating = 3815, 2D= 767 / 3D=2044]

Dell Precision T5400 (2008) > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @3.16GHz > 16GB ECC 667> Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 500GB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB > M-Audio 2496 Sound Card / Linksys 600N WiFi > Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit >[Passmark system rating = 1859, 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]

2D, 3D CAD, Image Processing, Rendering, Text > Architecture, industrial design, graphic design, written projects [AutoCad, Revit, 3ds Max, Vray, Solidworks, Sketchup Adobe CS, WordPerfect, MS Office]


 
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montecpa

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bambiboom,
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. I've reconsidered completely based on your recommendation of possible future applications. A dual CPU server motherboard makes complete sense, especially since I'm not sure what we'll get into in the future. We'll have 8-12 VMs loaded at any given time mostly running business apps with some industrial design apps.
 
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bambiboom

bambiboom

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Apr 7, 2012
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montecpa,

It's an interesting discussion as the system proposed encapsulates what appears to be a strong trend.

An irony of computer use today is that in proportion to the components becoming more specifically optimized, the applications used on any given system diversifies- the parts specialize and the systems diversify.

This means that a system of the kind you are considering > running VM's, intensive calculation, industrial design, is demanding high performance in all it's subsystems > processor (= 2X high clock, high core count, high single and double precision), a high quality full featured motherboard ( fast and full featured chipset, 8 or 16 RAM slots, plenty of PCIe X16 slots, dual or quad LAN, good SATA and USB connections and onboard RAID), memory ( a lot of fast, error-correcting RAM, graphics (High clock speed, many CUDA cores, large bandwidth, 4GB or more error-correcting memory), and disk. and all this must run at this high performance level is needs be, all the time with complete reliability and data security.

As the use asks a lot of the system, so does the specification become one of finding components that are high performance in every way. This is particularily difficult with GPU's as 3D modeling and rendering are using CPU, CUDA, GPU, OpenGL, OpenCL, and DirectX. In some applications, a $1,000 GTX Titan will be the hot rod, and in another, a $175 Firepro will best the Titan by a wide margin. Have a look at this test of workstation grpahics card on this site >

"Workstation Cards_Tom’s Hardware Review of 14 Firepro and Quadro Cards"

Igor Wallossek July 7, 2013

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493.html

> and the difficulties of choosing the best graphics card today become apparent. I have been thinking of a way in which I could easily switch between a Quadro and a GTX on a single system, but neither dual boot or VM's offer a solution as the primary card need to be changed in BIOS every time and possibly the physical connection. So, the logical solution is to buy a graphics card that does everything well, which Is why the Quadro K5000 appeals- except the $1,800 price,...

I apologize for a this kind of rambling on, but I wanted to emphasize the need to integrate diversified optimized components as a hedge against limitations on use and future expansion. The best solution would involve having a list of applications and uses, typical projects in each application, the size of projects, the budget, and then analyzing the optimum components in each subsystem. The uses drive the choice of applications, the applications drive the choice of the hardware. If you would like, as an exercise, I could create a components list similar to the one in my earlier post, but in response to more specific requirements ( the more specific the better) and a budget.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

My motto, Never use one word when twenty will do just as well.
 
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