- Feb 17, 2017
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Hello Tom's Forum community, some commenters on pcgamer.com suggested posted build questions to the experts on Tom's hardware forum which is why I am here. So your reputation preceeds you.
What I and a colleague are trying to do is build a Full Size tower that will be a Server 2016 Hypervisor by day and a Gaming rig that can do SLI x16 by night. The limit we are looking at is $2500.00. The build timeline is September 2017 so perhaps Ryzen/Naples 12-16 core CPU's and motherboards may be an option we'll revisit this summer.
Here are the primary requirements we are looking for:
Current Research status: 02/17/2017
Candidate #1 The ASUS Z10PE-D16 WS or the ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16which are dual socket motherboards to get around having to drop $1200-1600 on a 10-12 core Intel Xeon processor. ASUS has dual USB 3.1 expansion boards and RAID 0, 1, 10 - so all I would have to do is purchase a 10 Gbe NIC and I should have what I need.
Candidate #2 - The ASRock Z270 SuperCarrier is pretty compelling , but only has a single socket so it would seem that we would be limited to an Intel 6 core processor like an I7 6800k to keep our costs reasonable, sure wish this motherboard had a dual socket configuration.. http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z270%20SuperCarrier/index.us.asp
Candidate #3 - AMD Ryzer 10-16 core options I need to see how well the new CPU/Chipset performs compared to Intel, but this could be a reasonable solution since AMD Opterons already come with 10-16 core configurations.
Thoughts and suggestions appreciated. Has there been any dual socket motherboards come out in 2017 worth a look?
Kind Regards,
Koinonos
What I and a colleague are trying to do is build a Full Size tower that will be a Server 2016 Hypervisor by day and a Gaming rig that can do SLI x16 by night. The limit we are looking at is $2500.00. The build timeline is September 2017 so perhaps Ryzen/Naples 12-16 core CPU's and motherboards may be an option we'll revisit this summer.
Here are the primary requirements we are looking for:
* 8 cores minimum, 12-16 preferred since this is a Hyper-V system that will be running 4-8 VM's with (2) vCPU's per VM.
* 32 GB of RAM, DDR4 preferred. The VM's were are running are just for learning various Microsoft technologies like SCCM, OpsMgr, Active Directory, Windows 10, Azure hybrid cloud, etc.
* A 10 Gbe NIC, but a motherboard that has 1 Gbe + a riser or expansion board that has an option to install a 10 Gbe NIC would be fine as well. This is for being able to test Storage Spaces Direct, Stretch clusters via a couple of inexpensive iSCSI controllers so 10 Gbe is strongly preferred.
* USB 3.1 front and back
* Onboard HBA/RAID controller that can do RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10
* At least 4 and preferrably 6 SATA3 (6.0 Gbps) SATA ports
* Dual PCI x16 slots for SLI - We are looking at SLI Nvidia 1070's or a 1080 FTW GPU with a possible 2nd next year to allow 1440p or 4k VR since I have a full room to hook things up in. The benchmarks I have seen suggest a single 1080 GPU does not appear to have enough 'oomph' to do 4k VR or 4k gaming @ 60fps or faster without a 2nd GPU.
* Air cooling is preferred, and overclocking will not be an issue.
* We'll probably purchase a 1TB SSD for OS+Games and (2) 2TB HD's for the VM's and add more next year for a RAID 10 configuration or S2D option.
Current Research status: 02/17/2017
Candidate #1 The ASUS Z10PE-D16 WS or the ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16which are dual socket motherboards to get around having to drop $1200-1600 on a 10-12 core Intel Xeon processor. ASUS has dual USB 3.1 expansion boards and RAID 0, 1, 10 - so all I would have to do is purchase a 10 Gbe NIC and I should have what I need.
Candidate #2 - The ASRock Z270 SuperCarrier is pretty compelling , but only has a single socket so it would seem that we would be limited to an Intel 6 core processor like an I7 6800k to keep our costs reasonable, sure wish this motherboard had a dual socket configuration.. http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z270%20SuperCarrier/index.us.asp
Candidate #3 - AMD Ryzer 10-16 core options I need to see how well the new CPU/Chipset performs compared to Intel, but this could be a reasonable solution since AMD Opterons already come with 10-16 core configurations.
Thoughts and suggestions appreciated. Has there been any dual socket motherboards come out in 2017 worth a look?
Kind Regards,
Koinonos
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