Used servers on ebay... can they be useful? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 05:30:57 pm
content: I've been thinking lately about upping my game in the simulation and compilation domain..I own a macbook and an intel NUC and while their performance is perfectly adequate 90% of the time they become annoyingly slow when it comes to simulations and compilations of projects with many files.So i have been thinking about these servers you find on ebay which are basically being thrown away with a multitude of Xeon processors and while they don't have stellar single core performances they have an abundance of cores to sort of make up for it.I remember there being other threads on the subject but i'm unable to find them so.. what's the catch?my idea here would be to switch it on when necessary (NOT 24/7) and talk to it through the console with no monitor: prepare the project on the desktop, send the project to the machine, hit compile/simulate and retreive the result.Other uses?

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 05:36:11 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on December 23, 2020, 05:30:57 pmThey're huge and generally quite loud.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 05:39:29 pm
content: Having watched a couple of simulation projects based on this concept, I can't give you any real details but can tell you that it works, and works well. If done properly it also scales fairly easily (you can start with a few servers and add more as budget/needs grow). Doing task allocation and synchronization is non-trivial. I know a lot of work went into it and that it was all done using the GNU compilers. Also wants/needs grow pretty fast too and the electric bill can be surprising.What I don't know are any of the critical details. Are all servers useful, or does it require a specific set of capabilities? How are the compilers used/how much of the task is automated? How many programmer years of effort were involved? I do know that programmer years is an appropriate unit of measure.

author: radar_macgyver
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 05:41:51 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on December 23, 2020, 05:30:57 pmMost BIOSes intended for server use tend to be very slow, and boot times can be several minutes long.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 07:59:54 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on December 23, 2020, 05:30:57 pmyour simulator/compiler need to support parallel/multi processing, esp the special kind of networked parallel processing you mentioned.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 08:42:17 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on December 23, 2020, 05:30:57 pmMeh, been here, done that, defunct servers tend to be either cheap, slow, knackered and unreliable or damned expensive.Buy a desktop, max it out and use that.

author: Fred27
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 08:48:14 pm
content: Cheap servers can be fine. I got a nice Proliant DL380 G5 for £18 (collection only) and it's great. The downside is of course that they're big and noisy. SAS drives are also a bit more expensive that SATA if you want to max it out as a file server.If it's not on 24/7 then as has been mentioned, expect a reasonably long boot up and for it to sound like a plane taking off until the fan control kicks in.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 08:57:09 pm
content: Quote from: Fred27 on December 23, 2020, 08:48:14 pmIt will work quite happily with SATA drives, SAS is backward compatible.But DL380 G5 has to be at least 12 years old now, it'll be slow as a three legged dog running through molasses and a monstrous power hog compared to a 4 year old laptop with a decent spec which will run rings round it..The only advantages are the RAID controller which in HP machines is pretty damn bulletproof if you configure it correctly and the hotswap functionality is useful if you're running 24x7 but as you're not, it's a waste of time.The port wine levers are pretty though.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2020, 09:01:59 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on December 23, 2020, 05:30:57 pmWhat Xeons do you mean? How many cores?I put my blind bet on cheap Ryzen 3/5600X will beat dust from most of these Xeons...

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 03:16:31 am
content: AMD has made some real advancement in CPU speed in the last few years.Unfortunately the world has gone crasy and CPU prices have Ryzen.However, for quick comparisons of CPU performance I like cpubenchmark.net

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 03:28:37 am
content: The concept is fine. I used to work in online gaming years ago, and all the backup server hardware got put to work supplementing the dedicated render farm for the artists.Whether it's practical for you is another matter.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 05:13:22 am
content: Used servers can work just fine, usually they get replaced because they are technologically outdated, not because there is anything wrong with them. I dragged home a few decommissioned servers at a former job and played with them for a while. The problem with domestic use is that they're big heavy things that suck a lot of power and usually they have noisy fans. If you just want to play with one or learn about heavy duty IT equipment go for it, if you get something sold as working there is a very good chance it will work perfectly fine. A more modern PC may be cheaper in the long run if you pay for your electricity though.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 05:44:06 am
content: if we are into buying serious (in the past) workstation. after a recommendation and clue in this forum a while ago i quickly browsed ebay and scored HP Z800 for like $250 (with another $250 for shipping half the globe), replaced the 2X Xeon X5675 (now as spare parts) with 2X X5690 @ $150, add existing 24GB with 48GB ECC DDR3 @ < $100, and Radeon (mining) RX470 GPU @ ~$60. boot is slow but not bad slow, maybe 1-2 minutes to Windows. its now my secondary machine when i want to do secondary job and simulation/number crunching utilizing all its 12 real cores. i can leave it for days while i'm doing my main task (including foruming) on my old Intel Q9400 CPU main machine.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 06:08:42 am
content: I have also asked a couple of people (like PhD friend that offloads simulation on pretty expensive servers) and they basically said the same thing, it depends on the machine you're looking at and it depends on the task.I am pretty sure that cross compilation (projects for MCUs or large projects for desktop.. anything QT will be like 100 files when you do a clean build) will benefit hands down from a larger number of cores/threadsRegarding simulations, i have a job coming up that will require tons of, and just a sketch of it is taking about 3-4 minutes on my current machine, i can't really work like this.However a brand new desktop is not a go because it's either my money and i don't have a real use for it (games i would play run perfectly fine on the NUC, diptrace and QCAD run perfectly fine) - and i have other addictions to feed beside electronics - or company's money which could be spent better in other equipment, because i really need to have a laptop and a powerful laptop is still a laptop.But wait I just thought... maybe this could benefit the graphics guy as well. If we add another (serious) rack to our server i could offload compilation/simulation and he could offload the rendering so he doesn't have to wait x minutes everytime. maybe it will be slower than on his workstation but he always has a long to do list.Argh..NEED. TO. EXPERIMENT.Ah, thanks for the point about noise/boot time.. i didn't really think about that

author: george.b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 03:42:06 pm
content: Quote from: radar_macgyver on December 23, 2020, 05:41:51 pmIt's not that their BIOSes are slow, it's that servers tend to run much more extensive POSTs than consumer-grade computers. Their BIOSes work just fine.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 06:09:50 pm
content: Quote from: george.b on December 24, 2020, 03:42:06 pmI don't think he was implying that there is anything wrong with the BIOS, just that the boot process is very slow, for the reason you point out.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 06:15:06 pm
content: There is no reason to buy second hand servers which is why they’re worth not much more than scrap.They’re expensive to run, unreliable, expensive to populate, noisy and slow.If you need compute, buy a ryzen desktop or rent it from Amazon or somewhere.If you need storage, buy a NUC and attach an external array to it.Both will have a lower TCO over three years and probably won’t leave a hole in the ozone layer above them.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 07:21:22 pm
content: Hi,I bought myself 3x IBM X3650 M3. This come with two Intel Xeon with a total os 12/24 cores/threads and lots of memory. You can fit many SAS disks and they have the remote access (it's like having remote keyboard, mouse and monitor from boot to OS).I got them for 100-150 Euro each and then upgraded them a bit for maximum performance.They are great for:- learning how to install, configure and maintain a server- learning about virtualization- multi-core processing: Cinebench rocks compared to my Intel Core i7They are not so great:- noise: they are loud and I have to switch them off at night otherwise it is hard to fall asleep- power: I guess the consume a lot of power- big and heavyFor the money spent it was a great training course on Windows Server, Hyper-v and VMWare ESXi.I have some (few) applications where it is worth to use them. For instance, I have now many virtual Windows/Linux machines that can be used to test unknown applications, etc. Or when I do support on CAD/CAM/CAE and need to replicate an installation scenario.Encouraged by the positive results, I asked my company if I could buy a server like these, but a bit better. I got an OK and for around 1000 Euro I got a second hand Dell i910 with a total of 40/80 cores/threads and 256GB memory. I used them to do some heavy parallel CAM calculation and the results were amazing. It allowed us to demonstrate to a big customer that they can reduce calculation time with the process I developed. While they did not invest in this, at least they stopped complaining and nagging about calculation time, which paid the server!And on this Dell, Cinebench is ridiculously quickly calculated.Interestingly this server is not as loud as my personal IBM X3650 M3, but I guess it is still too loud for an apartment. If you have a basement where it can be left running, it is an excellent way to virtualize all the family computers!Regards,Vitor

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 08:18:52 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on December 23, 2020, 05:36:11 pm...and power hungry.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2020, 11:52:35 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on December 24, 2020, 08:18:52 pmMany are not that power hungry. Electricity costs for data centres too, paying over the top for idle resources is not good business.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 09:03:20 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on December 24, 2020, 11:52:35 pmIf you load them up and make them work then they're efficient for the power you put in but running dual, triple, even quad PSUs in a rack mounted server with multiple fans is never going to be a low power consumption scenario so you better make sure you're getting the most work out of it you can.

author: Fred27
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 09:48:51 am
content: Mine didn't seem particularly per hungry when I measured it. I can't remember the figures though. I tend to run it on one PSU, but it didn't draw significantly more when running from two.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 10:30:56 am
content: I think that the most relevant power consumption issue is with the standby mode. You will have multiple PSUs and an always active system monitor which is basically a whole computer itself.If you do switch the machine completely off then you will have a boot time of several minutes. More like 5-10 minutes! Starting from standby will take about 3-5 minutes.These machines may be interesting as second hand computer as cheap calculation servers. Netfabb Local Sim or Moldflow Synergy. But these are expensive software licenses so why go cheap on the machines?I think the only real application is self education or use as R&D machines.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 12:25:07 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on December 25, 2020, 10:30:56 amWell yes, i have come to the same conclusion, especially because i've given myself a pretty low budget, way lower than what a new PC with an adequate processor and adequate cooling would cost.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 05:03:44 pm
content: Quote from: Fred27 on December 25, 2020, 09:48:51 amGenerally better to run them on as many PSUs as they have installed because the cooling solution is designed for that, any fewer and it could well ramp up the fans to compensate, some will even count down to a shutdown if they detect an installed PSU with no power or a failed fan and if it did draw significantly more when running on 2 PSUs then something is very wrong.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 05:07:14 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on December 25, 2020, 10:30:56 amCertainly the ones with ILO, DRAC or whatever IBM/Lenovo call theirs these days, they used to be PowerPC based and were exceptionally useful, the better ones had their own PSU so you could query the status of the server and perform certain tasks without having the main PSUs powered.

author: LeonR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 10:30:11 pm
content: Boot up time (even the POST) will depend on both model and configuration (how much RAM you have, how many expansion cards with BIOSes, etc). Some can have as little as 2 minutes, while some may take up to 6-7 minutes, althought that's pretty rare. I'm considering what I've worked with before - Dell PEs gen 9-13 and HP ProLiant gen 8-12.There are two main problems for rack servers whe they are being used outside a rack: 1. Their fans are tiny and sometimes they need to move massive amounts of air, so they can get very LOUD and 2. they might take considerable more space that a standard tower server.You can also grab an EATX/SSI EEB dual socket 2011-3 motherboard and couple Xeons E5 v2/v3 plus some RAM (don't go for chinese brands or sellers, I've read cases that sellers were rebranding lower-spec RAM via SPD writes to upsell slower chips) with for a good price. Just need to pair it up with good PSU (I recommend at least 650W, with two EPS 12V cables) and a case. Look for cases that can fit a 12 x 13 in. (305 x 330mm) motherboard since there isn't a proper EATX standard and many companies take liberties in putting whatever sizes they want.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 10:38:12 pm
content: I forgot to mention that I bought a Hp Z600 workstation, too. It cost less than 200 Euro and I fitted a SSD, GeForce GTX960, 40GB RAM and replaced the CPUs with 2x Xeon X5670 @2.93GHz (total of 12/24 cores/logic cores). The highest CPU of this series would have been the X5680, but that would require replacement of the coolers and that would have been expensive.This gets me a similar machine to my X3650M3 servers, except that I can fit a graphics card, no noise, less power consumption, but no remote administration module, either. For the price paid, the performance is amazing!So you might consider looking at decomissioned workstations, too! Replacing the CPU's was easy and very cheap, though the shipping took long (China).Regards,Vitor

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 10:53:09 pm
content: The problem is that AMD blew the doors off the multicore market not too long ago. A stupendously expensive system then may be outpaced by a modest investment now. Old technology tends to be loud and not very efficient. It's downright silly what a modest budget desktop computer can do nowadays. If you still need more you may want to look at cloud providers. Buy compute when you need it, don't worry about it the rest of the time. It's a nice trick to have up your sleeve when you suddenly need to scale.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 06:10:06 am
content: Quote from: Bicurico on December 25, 2020, 10:38:12 pmi'vementioned earlier, X5690 3.46GHz is highest in the gang... not sure if your HP Z600 MoBo can support it. and yes once i upgraded, the bios complaint about underspeced fans on bigger CPUs, browsing ebay for 2nd hand highest model cooler is unreasonably expensive, then i found a mod in the net, just a matter of wire jumper to fool MoBo to think it has higher grade fans. fwiw, you are theperson who responsibleto get me into this mess, thanks to you...

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 07:49:01 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on December 25, 2020, 10:53:09 pm+1With the new Ryzen generation, they're not that expensive either, and say with octa-cores one, will blow out all those old server's cpu even they have >8 cores in total. Its like night and day in performance, and also very-very power efficient. Just calculate the electricity bill, as these server grade chassis, power units and etc all are power hungry.Regarding reliability, on the mobo part, new mobo is not that expensive, and ram as well as Ryzen supports ECC, yes, I have it on my Ryzen desktop grade mobo. And if the mobo is broken, its easily swapped with new one as you using standard desktop chassis, while on server, if you have trouble with mobo, basically you throw it out all together (including PSUs) as all are proprietary form factor.While on the storage front, apart from the SSD, if redundancy and big storage (using multiple spinning disks) is the requirement, while on plain desktop PC, just buy the used server grade disk controller, and if you're worry of single point of failure as its proprietary, just buy two, they're dirt cheap and very powerful.Example on my desktop, use this Dell PERC H730 (below actual photo) with 1GB cache with battery backup based RAID controller, yes, I have two, one as backup, as they're relatively cheap as I bought them used. And my wifey's rig, I equipped her desktop with even more powerful ones H740 with a whopping 8GB cache and with BBU too, as she loves to pile up tons of her phone/digicam's photos and videos.At the end, its all about money spent at front "and ongoing", with used server, especially for compute, used server actually is far more expensive, not to mention the noise/heat.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 08:41:01 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on December 26, 2020, 06:10:06 amMy mistake: I wanted to say 3690 - these require new cooler and fans. My Z600 does support them (there are two Z600 revisions the former does not support the 36x0 series, if I rememeber correctly).I did not go for two 3680 because the price/performance ratio did n ot justify it at all.Regarding the Ryzen: Yes, they have huge performance. BUT: this requires a whole new computer, which costs a lot more money than what we are talking about. Also, I did have issues with AMD in the past (>20 years ago, though), where professional CAD/CAM/CAE software was not compatible due to missing extentions. Again, I don't remember the details exactly, but since them I never considered AMD again for CPU.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 09:03:54 am
content: Quote from: Bicurico on December 26, 2020, 08:41:01 amNo, you don't have any idea how powerful the new Ryzen CPU is, even the medium class ones, compared to those old Intel server multicores CPU.Few months ago, bought a Ryzen octa-cores "laptop", an Asus Zephyrus G14, equipped with 64GB memory, and just for giggle, we did a benchmark with friend's newly acquired used Xeon based server that has 16 cores, don't remember the CPU type, and it has 128GB memory, he uses this for his chemical analysis simulation in Linux, while he bragged on his server, we boot up with USB stick on Linux and loaded the simulation application, and test run, his pride server took about >30 minutes to complete, while my puny laptop finished it in < 10 minutes, and was running on battery, go figure.I assume people here in this discussion are tech savvy enough, that do not afraid of assembling their own PC, and regarding the new PC, just use the existing PC case if available and also existing desktop grade PSU assuming >= Gold standard efficiency, I've done the calculation, and for compute purpose, its way cheaper.Quote from: Bicurico on December 26, 2020, 08:41:01 amAh, no wonder, you're the same kind as Mechatrommer, that see AMD cpu has incompatibilities problem, c'mon ... we're at the end of 2020, that issues were hot may be in 1990s ?Its like you guys are still whining about this AMD problem like people bragging how cool and good quality the film based camera compared to early days of digital camera, pity you guys.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 09:04:52 am
content: Quote from: BravoV on December 26, 2020, 07:49:01 ami dont call only ahead by few cb's is day and night.. maybe its more like between 10.00am and 10.10am... and Ryzen 7 1700X CPU's alone is near the price i got Z800 with 2x X5675 and 24GB ECC RAM. try to cost a complete Ryzen system 24GB (or even my upgrade 72GB ECC) if its any near the price. and CineBench marking involves OpenGL/DirectX that dont really contribute much in physics simulation, only for sweet graphical representation when the hours or days of simulation is completed. is there any benchmark comparison on FPU/CPU alone leaving GPU to the side?

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 09:32:57 am
content: Quote from: BravoV on December 26, 2020, 09:03:54 amwhy got me involved? you are basing your judgement on my post few years ago. with more exposures in Ryzen CPUs i may consider it if the price is right or can compete with 2nd hand Intel pro CPUs. so your judgement is outdated, pity is on you. why should i invest in another complete system (full priced as any other Intel PC with same spec) when my Intel Q9400 still works for 10years+? i bought Z800 because its $250 ($500 incl shipping) cheap. can you show any Ryzen 8 cores complete system that is near the price?Quote from: BravoV on December 26, 2020, 09:03:54 amnow dont get me into this... how much you are willing to pay for 80-400 Mpixels DSLR vs any other used/available medium format SLR?https://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/film-vs-digital-a-comparison-of-the-advantages-and-disadvantages/who is pity now?

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 01:31:50 pm
content: Some of us have been around the PC scene since before 80386 was new and we've seen/suffered first hand with AMD CPUs.Their 286 and its compatibility issues (Novell Netware and SCO Xenix IIRC), the 386 and compatibility issues, their 486 and the compatibility/performance issues, their K6 compatibility/performance issues, their Athlon and Sempron with the double whammy of performance and volcano style overheating issues that often took out not only the CPU but the motherboard as well.The coup de grace that finally killed AMD for my employer at the time was the IO bandwidth issues with the HP DL585 Opteron servers that some 'genius' AMD fanboi with the ear of management decided would solve all our server woes and cost us less but actually crippled our production DB because it bogged down more often than the two year old HP DL580 Intel boxes they were meant to replace.That particular foray into AMD ended up with almost £15000 worth of four month old servers being sat in a corner as monument to stupidity because nobody wanted to even use them for 'development' or 'testing', they stayed there until we could write them off and send them out for recycling.I think it's not unreasonable to have developed an aversion to AMD after 30ish years of seeing their crap.If you had a neighbourhood dog that bit you every time you petted it you'd probably learn to stop petting it no?Ryzen might be the most amazing CPU ever but I'm sure as hell not going to buy one new, if a well priced or free one comes my way then I'd give it a sceptical look over but I'm not going to go out of my way to get my hands on one.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 02:13:13 pm
content: Quote from: CJay on December 26, 2020, 01:31:50 pmThat is why I know for sure there is type of people exactly like you and like few others here above (no stereotyping), as its a fact by your own post above, and I've seen and know personally in real life too people like you, let alone in the internet worlds that you can read still have tons of AMD haters.I've been using PC long enough that I still own NEC V20 CPU (old timers will instantly recognize it without Google), and yes, I've suffered and stung by AMD, but that was in the past, I moved on and I do not have brand loyalty/fan boyism, nor brand hatred blindly.Used servers are fully Intel as they owned that segment "while ago", as Ryzen based still relatively new, they're currently penetrating really-really hard "and deep" at Intel's server market as we speak, while at laptop and desktop's front, Intel is confirmed loser, big time, and for performance/dollar wise, you just can not deny the fact and market reality.->AMD Is Hitting Market Share It Hasn’t Held in a Decade

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 02:21:02 pm
content: there must be reasoning why 3.4GHz R-cpu can run twice the speed as contender 3.4GHz I-cpu, maybe there are more instruction sets? i doubt it. faster implementation in FPU? (which physics simulator heavily rely on)? or what? why dont just call it 6.8GHz R-cpu if its really can run twice the speed? or 10.2GHz if thrice the speed?

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 02:32:26 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on December 26, 2020, 02:21:02 pmJust put it simple, AMD has better design, period. And with addition they are one step ahead in nano meter race, Intel already lost one step behind (the tick-tock thingy), hence the big difference.Understand the feeling of sinister when watching AMD related stuff, but just be patience, as currently at laptop and desktop's war front, Intel basically loosing big time.I'm not very fond of Linus Tech Tips video blog normally, and I find it abit annoying on his style, but these basically tell all, just take a deep breath watching this as I'm aware of the hatred that will make you stop the video instantly before it even started.BTW, the world is not evolve around CineBench only.And no, Ryzen aficionados are not gamers or FPS junkies only.

author: LeonR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 03:32:51 pm
content: Puget Systems have quite some reviews/benchmarks for professional applications. For those interested:https://www.pugetsystems.com/all_articles.php

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 03:54:44 pm
content: Quote from: LeonR on December 26, 2020, 03:32:51 pmYep, at pro apps, example on Solidwork rendering which will squeeze out CPU raw power, AMD beats Intel by almost two folds. While Intel Core i9 10900K needs 76.6 seconds to finish the job, Ryzen 9 5950X finished it at 45.6 seconds.This is clearly not just another boring tiny incremental difference.Also from what I gathered and learned around my friends here locally which are AMD haters, an assumption that Ryzen's users are all about latest bling2 games, will loose sleep just because of loosing/dropping few Frame Per Second (FPS) at the game is just wrong, heck, at my Ryzen main desktop, I use those 50 bucks graphic card as I do not game nor do graphic thingy.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 03:56:51 pm
content: It's not like Intel hasn't had its problems over the years as well. The most famous likely being the floating point division error on Pentiums, which Intel tried very hard to logic away at first. But since the error was visible to everyone who bothered to type in simple test numbers, it became a very public relations disaster. Never mind that even small math errors are a big deal for science or finance customers. End result was a recall offer to replace any affected CPU which ended up costing Intel about $500 million (~$750 million in today's dollars), and they're still living it down.More recently, there's the Meltdown and Spectre security exploits that affect most of the last 20 years of Intel production. Fixes have been in software at the firmware and OS levels (some of those "emergency" patches), which resulted in a performance loss. Not enough for the general public to notice, but measurable.The point is, when it comes to design of very complicated devices (CPU, GPU, etc), every manufacturer has had their issues over the years. The question is, how are they performing NOW, and at what price do you get performance.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 04:07:03 pm
content: Quote from: Nusa on December 26, 2020, 03:56:51 pmYep, especially those Intel server CPUs, the performance penalty of fixing the vulnerabilities is big.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 04:10:21 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on December 26, 2020, 02:32:26 pmthats not the kind of reasoning i'm expecting. you tell that to audiophools they maybe buying that3.4GHz is 3.4GHz per op clock, unless it is 3.4GHz per 2 ops clock.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 04:15:34 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on December 26, 2020, 04:10:21 pmIts clearly you've avoided to watch the video on Ryzen laptop as I posted above.Let me help as its clear you will avoid to watch it like a plague, just google and read and digest what is IPC (Instruction Per Cycle) means.And start imagine when CPU is working those after gazillion cycles have passed, what does IPC have to do with performance and the argument you raised above.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 05:23:56 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on December 26, 2020, 02:13:13 pm*Sigh* I'm not an AMD hater, I'm just somebody who's been bitten by them too many times to trust them, if somebody offers me a Ryzen to evaluate then I'll evaluate it but I'm not going to spend my own money or my budget on them while I can rely on other manufacturers to offer solid, consistent product.The price/performance difference for my world is too small, I order batches of 150 machines at a time and believe me, I get *big* discounts (commercial sensitive but list price is for other people).We rely on the IT enough that £1000 worth of machine is disposable, it's more important to keep somebody productive than save a few pennies here or there so we buy reliability.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 05:26:47 pm
content: Quote from: Nusa on December 26, 2020, 03:56:51 pmHate to be the bearer of bad news, but AMD are also vulnerable:https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/product-security

author: paf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 05:40:41 pm
content: Things that are absent from this discussion, and that may invalidate absolute answers:Used server prices can vary wildly depending on which part of the world you are and what kind of "searching skills" you have.There are lies, damned lies and benchmarks. You must measure the performance of a system with your application.Disk performance can vary. Do you have HDD SATA, SSD SATA, M2.SATA or M2.NVME?How many disks can you connect to it? Can you do stripping?How many DDR channels does the motherboard have? Xeons can have big memory bandwidths with low cost RAM.Does the size of the CPU cache impacts you app?Does your app scale well with an increase in the number of cores?Without specific CPU models, RAM size and organization and storage info, a benchmark is useless.What is the price of electricity where you live?Do you mind having a "heater" in your house, or is it a good thing?As you are on eevblog, I assume you have the skill to upgrade a computer by yourself.My suggestion of something to consider would be a refurbished "workstation" or a "top business line" desktop machine from HP, Lenovo or DELL, that can be easily upgraded. You get good build quality, low fan noise, and low price.Advantages of compiling "hard stuff" on another machine: less thermal stress on your NUC or laptop.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 05:49:53 pm
content: Quote from: CJay on December 26, 2020, 05:23:56 pmUhm.. you have been watching Intel products over the last decade, right? Faulty chipsets all over the place, stupid security holes, massive performance regressions to fix them..

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 05:57:46 pm
content: Oh don’t get me started on intel failures. Total shit show. One of ours blew up on Xmas day.Also shitty thermal engineering means that we have to shut nodes down and reseat RAM regularly as the RDIMMs work their way loose during thermal cycling dailyThis doesn’t vary much between vendors (mixed Dell and HPE)

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 06:07:42 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on December 26, 2020, 05:49:53 pmYeah, compared to AMD's totally secure stuff:https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/product-securityhttps://www.zdnet.com/article/amd-processors-from-2011-to-2019-vulnerable-to-two-new-attacks/

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 06:19:23 pm
content: Quote from: CJay on December 26, 2020, 06:07:42 pmWhere did I say AMD are perfect? You're discounting AMD because you have "reliable vendors" and totally ignoring the track record of said vendors. Neither are perfect, you're being a fanboy.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 06:26:52 pm
content: Quote from: CJay on December 26, 2020, 05:26:47 pmDid I ever say they weren't? Although that page does seem to say that Meltdown doesn't affect AMD. Can you find a similar security page for Intel?Your "bad news" angle is only reflecting your own bias, not mine. I'm not pushing a particular choice and you missed the point of what I said in my post (the whole thing, not the partial snip quoted here). Also, I only mentioned a couple examples...there are many more, some of which only affect one brand or the other.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 07:14:33 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on December 26, 2020, 04:15:34 pmfor your sake i've watch it and wasted 99% of my time looking at CineBench, Shadow of Tomb Raiders and other Rendering SWs. benchmark. only a glimpse explanation on IPC (i'll google later), the rest mostly realted to games and anything that involve rendering. since i've wasted time, lets wasted somemore...1) comparing laptop brand is not a fair game imho.. granted your Zephyrus has 8 cores and more powerfull Ryzen compared to Zenbook 4 cores, but the pricing will take into account many things, not just the CPU alone. such as peripherals, RAM, BOM etc etc endless list in manufacturing flow, and also esp "the brand" how much people look up or have high expectation into "the brand", much like Tektronix vs Rigol. AMD may have put fighting campaign in pricing much like Rigol did to the rest of Agilent and Tektronix. but will the Agilent and Tektronix die? will the Intel die because of this pricing campaign? we'll see. if i'm into buying laptop, probably i'll get the Zephyrus too after watching the video, but i'm not a laptop fan. and few weeks ago i helped a friend to find bang per buck laptop (i usually search in range of $500-$700) in our nearest biggest capital state city and all i can see are lines of Intel laptops in all shops, so Ryzen laptops hasnt penetrate into our place here yet unfortunately.2) in the second video (i only watch half), similarly benchmark on gaming/render prone applications (when i see Tomb Raider i will always remember Angelina Jolie), cant we find someone who know how to program to make a review? and then wow! (minute 3:57 as reference) Ryzen9 5950X in significantly powerful compared to $488 i9-10900k.. but when checking online shop, its $799. so its no wonder... lets check the almost similar performance Ryzen 7 5800X, its $449. well, you can say its the most bang per buck, but imho its not so far. why should i save few dollars on a CPU who also win in bugs count? i know about intel FP error and security, that was in the past (wake up guys!)... should i dig how many complaints on Ryzen CPU in the net until recently? i just read about driver bug/error/incompatibility issue just now posted last year.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 08:03:36 pm
content: Player 3 enters the building. Just about to sell my Ryzen 3600 because my M1 is faster

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 09:59:41 pm
content: Quote from: CJay on December 26, 2020, 01:31:50 pmIntel has had more than its share of fuckery. Degrading CPUs and denying anything is wrong as long as they can, shitty behaviour towards developers and major vulnerabilities which can't be fixed and with the partial fix costing a lot of performance. Imagine running a platform with an extensive server farm and losing 15 percent of your performance overnight. That's the equivalent of a lot of servers vaporizing because Intel gambled with their speculative branch prediction.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 10:08:39 pm
content: Some other of the very shitty practices of Intel:Forcing vendors to only sell their CPU's with very shady deals.Putting compilers on the market that deliver significantly lower performance if it can't find the "(c) Genuine intel" text string in the processor.I'm not sure but I think both of these issues have been turned back only after being forced by courts.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2020, 10:29:51 pm
content: Quote from: Doctorandus_P on December 26, 2020, 10:08:39 pmThere are countless of programs which are slower and less energy efficient than they should because Intel dicked around with compilers and which for all kinds of reasons won't be recompiled with a new compiler. It's the kind of shitty behaviour that hurts everyone except the perpetrator. They've done that a lot. Bunch of unlikeable cunts.

author: LeonR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2020, 03:55:51 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on December 26, 2020, 05:57:46 pmDang, never saw this happening. Which chassis/model are you experiencing those?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2020, 10:28:32 am
content: Quote from: LeonR on December 27, 2020, 03:55:51 amDL580g9 is the most common but I’ve seen it on a couple of C7000 blades.

author: macboy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2021, 05:27:11 pm
content: My main PC is based on a dual socket Supermicro board (X9DRL) with a pair of XEON E5-2690 (version 1) CPUs in it. Despite being 2012 or so tech, this is still an impressively fast system, and it cost me much less than $1k USD about 2 years ago to put together, due largely to the dirt-cheap server-specific CPUs and RAM. The MB is ATX (full size) so it fits most normal mid-tower cases. I didn't want to deal with rack-mount or small-diameter jet turbine cooling fans.Each CPU is 8C/16T with 20 MB of cache, so 16 core, 32 thread together. Each CPU has quad-channel DDR3, and I use eight 8 GB ECC RDIMMs for 64 GB of memory with 60 GB/s of memory bandwidth per CPU (at 1866 MHz). The CPUs are technically rated at 2.9 GHz, but they run at 3.3 GHz even with all cores fully loaded (just need to keep them cool). When only a single core is loaded, it can go to 3.8 GHz. The architecture of these XEONs is nearly identical to the more contemporary ones, but with fewer cores and higher power consumption.The main drawbacks are the lack of a small amount of more modern instructions, which might be desired or needed in very specific cases, lack of any type of hardware acceleration for video codecs (GPU needs to pick up that slack), and - of course - the power per performance. Thankfully, any modern O/S can use Speedstep to slow down the CPUs at idle so that the power consumption is very reasonable (for me, less than 100 W at the plug, including 6 spinning HDDs). Power consumption at full load is a much less reasonable >400 Watt. Add to that a fast video card and you had better have a big high quality power supply and good cooling.I don't hesitate to recommend buying older used XEON CPUs and cheap used server RAM to go with them. Think hard about the motherboard and case they go into though.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2021, 01:06:12 am
content: Quote from: macboy on January 05, 2021, 05:27:11 pmSounds impressive but how much power does it consume? That's a significant concern for me when building a PC these days. More efficient lighting and appliances have reduced my base load dramatically so if a PC draws 250W or more from the wall instead of 150W that adds up to a lot if it gets used heavily. When I built my current i7 desktop in 2015 I found it draws only around 140W under full CPU utilization, the Pentium4 it replaced would draw 250W despite being a lot less powerful. The i7 mobile I run Plex on is less powerful but only draws 20W, significant for a machine that is running 24/7.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 11:29:04 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 10, 2021, 01:06:12 amComputers tend to spend the vast majority of their time idling and idle power consumption tends to be horrid for older systems. A modern computer can go sub 5 watt idle whereas those 5-10 years old often consume one or even two orders of magnitude more. Few people boot their system to use them fully loaded until shutdown. So I agree and too am curious about the power consumption of macboy's system.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 01:49:15 pm
content: Yep. Efficiency is an important thing. My currentdesktopflat out pulls 26W and idles at 4W. That’s a £315 gain over 5 years on electricity on the Ryzen it replaced. That incidentally pays off 46% of the hardware investment.You can see where this is going because when you buy rack space in a data centre it’s priced on amps not U these days. Your second hand servers don’t make financial sense now which is why they are on the market.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 04:16:58 pm
content: What if you need CPU power now but cannot invest in something that takes 5 or more years to pay off?Not everything can or needs to be optimized.Example: imagine you have an idea and want to test if it works. Using a cheap second hand server is what you can afford. If it works - great, you will get a better platform in a new future. Otherwise, you did not waste too much money.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 04:36:23 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on January 17, 2021, 04:16:58 pmRent it from Amazon!Example: 192Gb RAM, 48 Intel Xeon Gold cores = $2.34 an hour. Fire it up, do your work, get the bill. Oh 20 minutes? 78 cents. Big spender!

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 04:54:09 pm
content: I have to admit that i never used Amazon to rent a sever.Still, in my particular case, just installing and configuring Windows, CAD/CAM/CAE software, getting the licenses, installing my particular automation, run it to benchmark the benefits... All that would take several days or weeks.lest go with 4 weeks = 4x7x24 = 672h672h x $2 = $1344 --> more than I spent on a Dell with 80 cores, which after this particular job is still mine (this particular case, it's owned by my company)But, don't worry, I got your point and you are not wrong at all.Regards,Vitor

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 04:55:32 pm
content: If you need compute time, renting it makes sense. If you need a system to work on, different matter.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 05:28:02 pm
content: These Xeons E5 pre v3 are really slow, I have used before switch finally to Ryzen (and EPYC), you literary need at least 2x-3x cores compare to a budget Ryzen... for very long-running tasks*imho, doesn't make any sence today spend $1K except if somebody donated for free* of course, parallel only, not single-threaded

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 05:54:01 pm
content: This is one reason I went with an ARM Mac mini. 99% of what I do is single threaded and the single thread performance is about the same as a 5900X. Whole damn machine cost £100 more than the Ryzen CPU would have on its own. Everything else goes in Amazon.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 06:00:56 pm
content: I'm awaiting M2 or whatever come up in Q3, rumors that PowerG4 cube Mac Pro Mini like back to the game (as well as macbook pro 14), so not rush - still can heat up my home over winter/spring with Ryzen & EPYCs

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 06:07:24 pm
content: Yeah lots of goodness coming. I’m going to put down the cash on a 27” iMac when one turns up if it’s got more performance cores in it.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 06:17:38 pm
content: Exactly, especially those days with Big Sur interface trend you need at least 27Hopefully they will take something from XDR to make much better and less reflected...

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 06:37:30 pm
content: Agree with that. UI is getting iOS-like. Got used to it now but it was a bit of a punch in the face.Yes bring on some XDR type goodness. I’ve got an OLED display on my phone and it sucks going back to an IPS LCD on the desktop. Half way to OLED would be good.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 07:27:21 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on January 17, 2021, 04:36:23 pmOut of interest, I have a look how much spent on RAM for in house EPYC...Eventually, I got 256GB RDIMM 2666 in total for far less than $500 (<1/4 of RRP) to fill available slots with same modules that patiently hunted on ebay over last 10 monthsQuote from: bd139 on January 17, 2021, 04:36:23 pmWhat CPU power do you need?Why you cannot let it run over 24+ hours to get a required result?

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2021, 02:11:47 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on January 17, 2021, 04:54:09 pmUse the tools available. Cloud providers let you automate setting machines up extensively. You can have a deployment on standby, hit the button and get a brand new deployment in no time. Need 15 more? No problem! I'm not a big fan of everything cloud but horsepower on tap is a neat ace to have up your sleeve. Letting things run overnight isn't always enough, sometimes not by a long shot.

author: tkamiya
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 03, 2021, 05:45:38 pm
content: I use multiple Dell T20 servers. They are quiet, low power, and sufficient for my use. When Dell was closing them out, I bought 5 like less than $200 each. Some of mine has been upgraded CPU to E3-1225 v3. Runs 24x7 as my file server and backup. Never had issues.I still see them on eBay for cheap.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2021, 01:10:37 am
content: I've been messing around with NVIDIA CUDA Cores. If rendering is the issue, CUDA is the solution. It is also the current solution to solving large matrix problems. Larger is better. The speedup can be enormous (like 20,000X) depending on the problem. Any time you can apply several thousand arithmetic units to solving a problem, things are bound to go fast. The newest graphics cards can do around 14 terraflops. The CDC 6400 that got us to the Moon was good for about 2 megaflops.As to compilation (assuming gcc), on Linux you can increase the heap size to around 2GB and then use the -j4 flag to run separate compilations in each thread. The numeric is the number of jobs 'make' will dispatch - one per thread is about right! Use 'top' to see how many instances of cc1 are running.Then there is concurrent Fortran if working on a new project. There is a written standard in Fortran 2008. Search for DO CONCURRENT. NVIDIA has such a compiler for the CUDA cores.The increase heap and 'make' thing is pretty easy to do. Concurrent (parallel) programming is a good deal more difficult.My only experience with a Dell Power Edge server in a quiet office is that it was very noisy. But this was a long time ago. Maybe things have improved. Or not...Here's something fun: MATLAB has a parallel computing toolbox. Here is the Mandelbrot Set where the GPUs finally get to a 700+X speeduphttps://www.mathworks.com/help/parallel-computing/illustrating-three-approaches-to-gpu-computing-the-mandelbrot-set.htmlI'm not sure how many cores they are using. I just looked at the pretty pictures.Xilinx Vivado allows for parallel processing. I think the WebPack (free) version is limited to 8 threads.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2021, 01:20:21 am
content: The biggest issue with Ebay is always shipping. A typical 2U box is going to cost 100's to ship. I've even seen some people asking like $900+ for shipping. By then time you factor that and exchange rate it ends up cheaper just ordering parts online and building your own.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2021, 07:04:30 am
content: That works out in favour of you sometimes. One reason you see old servers and network gear so cheap is it costs a lot to dispose of it officially. What you’re doing by buying it is saving the person who is selling it from having to pay to dispose of it. So as well as they make up the labour costs, a small profit and the shipping costs then they’re on a net gain.The $900+ lot are taking the piss mostly.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2021, 06:05:54 pm
content: Here you can recycle e-waste for free at any number of dropoff locations, most thrift stores will accept it and recycle anything they can't sell too. Does it cost money over there even for individuals?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2021, 07:34:38 pm
content: End users / public yes it's free here. But commercial e-waste costs money to dispose of. The odd server here and there is not an issue but most places, ours included until we moved cloud-wise, do a lift and shift every 5 years of a few tonnes of stuff at a time. You can't just turn up and get that recycled wherever you are.