Need Recommendations on a New Build

[Mike029]

I'm replacing my AMD 1090T and with Black Friday approaching, we will all be inundated with component "deals" from one retailer or another. I've been delaying a X99 upgrade for 6 months and have decided to pull the trigger by Black Friday. I want to increase my CPU crunching power run VM, while being able to play games on this rig. I hope to run it 24/7 so a quality motherboard is a must. I've been out of the loop on component/upgrades and can use some help. Any and ALL recommendations are appreciated.

I plan to save money and use some of my current components.

Here is what I have so far;

Swifteck H240-x http://www.swiftech.com/H240-X.aspx
Azza Hurrican 2000 Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811517010
EVGA 120-G2 1300w PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-011-_-Product
2 R9 280x GPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-678-_-Product
SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148443
HDD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-792-_-Product
My monitor is NOT 4k. I won't upgrade till it dies.

I need some recommendations on a motherboard I've been looking at the Asus Sabertooth 3.1, the Asus Pro\3.1 and a couple of MSI boards below.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813132518
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813132517
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130840
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130839

The CPU for consideration there are only two. The 5960x and the 5930K
Micro Center has the 5960x for $899.00+ tax and the 5930K for $529 +tax which still beats Newegg pricing. Spend the $370.00 premium for the 2 extra cores or put my money somewhere else like a single gpu upgrade or one of the newer SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147467
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820167359
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820167358

Memory 32gb or 64gb? My guess is if I went with the 5930k 32gb for crunching would be enough. Would I need 64gb on the 8 core? This is the memory I'm looking into.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231834
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231795


I keep going back and forth on the 6 core or 8 core cpu?
Get the six core and the newer ssd or use my old ssd and go balls out on the 8 core.
Get the six core and upgrade my GPU?
Asus mb or MSI mb?
64gb ram or just buy the fastest 32gb for the mb?

I think that covers it all. Money is not a big concern just putting together the best practical machine.
Can I say practical when talking about spending money like this?

[MindCrime]

Firstly I'd like to say: I like the cut of your jib. I would love to have the budget to be building this. I'm a big tahiti fanboy so dual 280x all the way. Alright consider my bias, budget, frame of mind...whatever. I think you need to decide if you want this to be a GPU beast or CPU beast. Imo you can't have a CPU beast on a single socket, so I'd build this with the mindset that its a GPU-centric build which would mean 6 or 8 threads would suffice in feeding them, and 32gb of ram would be more than enough for BOINC on a single cpu. With all that blabbing:

CPU: I'd go with the 5930k, both have 40 pci-e lanes, it's plenty for the rest of the system. if you want more cpu threads buy a 24 thread t5500/t7500/z600/z800 for the price difference between the two cpus.

MOBO: I've been using a z77 sabertooth for about 5 years straight, no problems very reliable board. Obviously you'll be on x99, keep an eye out for ASUS workstation grade boards (usually has -WS). Full featured, top of the line components, they do cost a bit but they are no bullshit top of the line workstation boards.

RAM: 32gb, I have a dual x5650 (12c/24t) with 36GB and have never had memory issues, I imagine if you wanted to run 6-8 threads of Lattice that use 1-4gb each you might have some problems. If you're going to running VMs on it then yes I would say go for the 64gb. Great thing about RAM though you can always add more (well in this case), start with 32 and go from there. Also remember some windows versions have limits on RAM size. I believe it went up with windows 10, and anything "pro" should be at least 64gb, but Im quite certain windows 7 home is limited to 16gbs.

SSD: I haven't been looking at them much lately but I was pretty sure the PCI-e ones have been faster and have been coming down in price to be very competitive. Since you've got 40 pcie lanes to work with, why not.

PSU: That PSU is made by SuperFlower, one of the better PSU manufacturers out there and is very well reviewed. This guy seriously tests power supplies: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...tory6&reid=349


Not sure how you feel about buying used (ebay), but to give you an idea the 7970s/280x are going for about 150-160(shipped) via buy it now.

My xfx 7970 non reference, runs pretty hot and loud when maxed out. I would be concerned about having two in the same case sharing the same hot air, it'd be good to get another cruncher's experience on running dual gpu 24/7 especially on high end cards. Maybe with the right mobo you can run the cards in slots that aren't right next to each other to keep temps down.

here is a high end PCI-e SSD, about as fast as you can get right now http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820167300

[c303a]

I have a Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark 2 board and love it. But then again I also have a small bias. I use nothing but Asus boards and if I do have a problem I get them cross shipped to me and am up and running is short order.

[John P. Myers]

SSD: I haven't been looking at them much lately but I was pretty sure the PCI-e ones have been faster and have been coming down in price to be very competitive. Since you've got 40 pcie lanes to work with, why not.

Actually the M.2 SSDs are faster than that, such as this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-467-_-Product Costs $40 less, has 112GB more capacity and doesn't use any PCIe slots

[Mike029]

Firstly I'd like to say: I like the cut of your jib. I would love to have the budget to be building this. I'm a big tahiti fanboy so dual 280x all the way. Alright consider my bias, budget, frame of mind...whatever. I think you need to decide if you want this to be a GPU beast or CPU beast. Imo you can't have a CPU beast on a single socket, so I'd build this with the mindset that its a GPU-centric build which would mean 6 or 8 threads would suffice in feeding them, and 32gb of ram would be more than enough for BOINC on a single cpu. With all that blabbing:

CPU: I'd go with the 5930k, both have 40 pci-e lanes, it's plenty for the rest of the system. if you want more cpu threads buy a 24 thread t5500/t7500/z600/z800 for the price difference between the two cpus.

I think I want a cpu beast. So, i'm going to build the 5930k with the Sabertooth MB. With the savings you mention I could get a 24 thread system? What would a build like that look like parts wise? I guess I could run it as a nas or perhaps a mail server? At least that's what I'll tell the misses. Can I run a 24 thread system as I regular computer? Meaning the kids could access the internet, do homework, watch a movie? No gaming on it as that is what the 5930k will be used for. My guess is that if I wanted an energy efficient 24 thread box, that is going to jack up the price?
Thanks for the replies guys.

Perhaps I can have a bit of both if I cutback here and there. A new PC and a CPU crunching beast.

[Bok]

Just look for Dell T7500 on ebay And go for the dual hexcore xeons with at least 24Gb Ram. They run fine with windows or linux and you can pick them up for $600-$700. Very quiet too even at full load.

24threads and up to 3.6Ghz

*EDIT* like this one.

[Bryan]

The 24 thread machine he is referring to is a Dell T5500 server off of Ebay. They are equivalent to running 24 I7-950s and will outproduce your 5930k machine. The 5930 running AVX might be close but on most projects you will get a 30-50% boost in credits with the T5500. Of course you will also get double the WuProp hours. Those servers with dual Xeon 5650s and 24G memory are in the $600 range.

On Denis, my I7-3930Ks @ 4.2G are paying 84k/day. My dual X5675 (3.2G) T5500s are giving 124k/day or 47% more credits. All machines are running the Linux SSE41 opti app.

They are servers, but they work just like any other computer with Windows or Linux installed.

EDIT: BOK and I were apparently typing at the same time The only difference in the T5500 and 7500 is the size of the case ... the guts are identical. Be sure to look for DUAL processor machines.

[FourOh]

T7500 also has a bigger power supply than the T5500: 1100W vs 875W. But, in my experience you wouldn't want to put two high power GPUs in either of these boxes. They aren't exactly designed with the best airflow, so blower type GPUs perform better, especially with added intake fans. Good luck!

[MindCrime]

As Bok, Bryan, and FourOh have expanded on the dell/hp socket 1366 workstations are hard to beat in price/performance. There's at least 4-6 of us active on the forums here with at least 1 of them, so theres a good knowledge base on them here. Theres generally 3-4 "sizes" per generation, t3500, t5500, t7500 are all the same generation but are small, medium and large, and for the Hp side it's z400, z600, z800.

The dual socket setups are generally going to be found in the t5500/t7500 and z600/z800. There are tons and tons of listings for them so you really gotta sift through them. Some charge a lot of shipping some are free which could be 10-20% of your total price. You can often find them with a windows COA (save you 50bucks), but its usually not installed. RAM seems to be the biggest price component. Since its ECC ram it's a big more expensive. Try to shoot for an initial build that has all the ram you want for the price you want or buy more ram seperately if you can find it at a good deal. I believe it was FourOh that said something almost a year ago about trying to get it for less than 5dollars a GB is good.

I initially started a thread like: "Dual 1366 CPU build?", after I stumbled upon how cheap the 1366 xeons were. Then Sphynx and the other t5500 crew said check these out and I never looked at supermicro 1366 boards again until I saw the Deathstar.

I put a 750ti in mine, I wanted something descent but I didn't want too much more heat. It came with a 512mb nvidia quadro card. It's very quiet, I'd say the loudest things in there are the old hard drives and they're pretty subtle. I'm moving mine out behind the entertainment system where I can use the 750ti to watch movies on the tv as well as a browser. It'll put out a good amount of heat, you're running two ~80w-100w cpus, and we've discovered the primary cpu often comes with a passive heatsink (13dollar fix). I plan to move mine to act as a HTPC in the living room for a while, and to spread the heat around the house.

Now, it's a good CPU cruncher but if you're going to be regularly using it and want something snappy you're going to feel let down. It boots slow!!, i've never seen a BIOS take so long but its a very well put together BIOS actually, for dell in this case. After the BIOS im sure an SSD would be welcomed. What I'm getting at is don't buy one of these to replace your dream machine build. Build your dream machine, but fill your CPU crunch power craving with a cost effective off lease workstation thats flooding ebay.

This is who I bought mine from, no shipping charges (for me at least) and competitive pricing/setups: http://stores.ebay.com/ESISOdotCOM/D...=p4634.c0.m322

thats just their t5500 store link, check our their t7500/z600/z800 too. It's hard to find a balance of all the components you want, remember ram is easy to install after you get it if you find one with less ram than you'd like.

[MindCrime]

Actually the M.2 SSDs are faster than that, such as this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-467-_-Product Costs $40 less, has 112GB more capacity and doesn't use any PCIe slots

Is it true m.2 is a connector standard that communicates via pcie lanes?