collins165,
Of motherboard manufacturers, I think only Supermicro still offers new LGA2011 boards- all other are making LGA2011-3. These are of extremely high quality, performance, and reliability"
Supermicro X9SRL-F-B LGA2011/ Intel C602/ DDR3/ SATA3/ V&2GbE/ ATX Server Motherboard > $253
For comparison, LGA2011-3 with the very fast X99 chipset such as the ASRock Extreme 4 are only about $200.
The least expensive solution to a complete Xeon E5 2670 system would be to buy a used workstation with a lower specification. Example:
HP Z420 Intel Xeon Quad Core E5-1620 3.60GHz/16GB/1TB SATA > sold for $270 (4.22.16)
Dell Precision T3600 Xeon E5-1607, 3.0GHZ, 8GB RAM, 500 GB HD, WIN7 x64Pro > Buy It Now $300
And in both these examples, a whole system with case, RAM GPU, Drives, PSU is only $20-50 more than the Supermicro motherboard. With the addition of the 2nd CPU assemblies the HP z620 and Dell Precision T5600 and T7600 could add another Xeon E5, although the initial cost will be more as well. As you might imgaine, it's much easier to only change the CPU, GPU, and drives than to build a new system.
You mentioned alternatives to the E5-2670 but I would say that in the current cost structure of used Xeons, - a flood of hundreds of E5-2670's from decommissioned servers, there is no better cost /performance choice. If you are using the system for 3D modeling though, consider an E5-2680 or even E5-2690 to have a higher single-threaded performance.
Here is that series with: a. Average Passmark CPU rating, b. Single Threaded, and c. Power
E5-2660 8-core @ 2.6 / 3.0Ghz)
a. 11891____
b. 1517
c. 95W
2. E5-2670 (8-core @ 2.6 / 3.3Ghz)
a. 12502____ 18459 (dual)
b. 1620
c. 115W
3. E5-2680 (8-core @ 2.7 /3.5GHz)
a. 13410____ 18833 (dual)
b. 1709
c. 130W
4. E5-2690 (8-core @ 2.9 /3.8Ghz)
a. 14438____ 20826 (dual)
b. 1873
c. 135W
It's a great opportunity to have a lot of cores.
Important: Some multi-threaded Adobe applications have peak efficiency at 5-8 cores and respond
negatively to dual CPU's
Cheers,
BambiBoom
Modeling: HP z420 (Xeon E5-1660v2 / 32GB / Quadro K4200 /Intel 730 480GB + WD Black 1TB)
Rendering: Dell Precision T5500 (2X Xeon X5680 / 48GB / Quadro K2200 / Samsung 840 240GB + WD RE4 1ITB)
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