Cruncher Replacement Project

I need some help making a decision. My main cruncher is currently a Dell Precision T7400 workstation with dual Xeon E5450 processors (Quad Core, No HT). It's a beast but I'm happy with its reliability. I'd like to move to something a bit smaller and a generation newer; I'm thinking the T5500 (thanks cineon_lut for the idea). I can get into one for about 275, upgrade the two processors to 6-Core X5650s for about 280, and add some RAM for around 50-100. Total investment of about $600-650 for 24 threads, more efficient power, and retain the dual-GPU use I have now.

My question is... is it worth it? Is having 24 threads of older technology better than having 8 threads (or AMD cores) of current technology? For $600, could I build a complete system with new components that would compete with or outperform this one? I want to be able to have an impact on CPU projects, particularly during challenges, while racking up hours and keeping two GPUs humming. Let me know what you think-

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Originally Posted by FourOh

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My question is... is it worth it? Is having 24 threads of older technology better than having 8 threads (or AMD cores) of current technology?...

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Let me think about this for a bit. Zombie's had old XEONs before so he might add a couple cents, and Al has some as well. I'll have to see what generation mine are, but generally speaking they seem to be about 2:1 ratio in crunching power. Meaning, it takes all 16 cores of one bank of my XEONs (that is 4 Quad cores, no HT) to roughly equal ONE i7 8320 CPU - that is 8 threads - and it is O/Ced to the hilt @ 4.75GHz when I did the comparison. You cannot O/C the XEONs (at least not easily) so they are what they are. The clencher is, those 16 XEON cores only cost me $295 if I rmember right. Try getting into a Socket 2011 rig for that! :P ;)

the other major consideration is power consumption. If the cost of running your hardware is not your burden, ie. systems are at work, then that is a non-issue as long as your employer doesn't use any power management system/service. If the burden is yours then it may be prudent to do a total cost of ownership analysis to help you make a wise decision.

Jed is correct on the price, pretty cheap, but it's no i7 in crunching ability or power draw. I guess it depends on your goals. I've been focusing on wuprop stars and to gain more hours you need more cores/threads, regardless of their speed, so the xeons work okay for me. If credits are more important you probably want to go with a newer processor.

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Originally Posted by Fire$torm

the other major consideration is power consumption. If the cost of running your hardware is not your burden, ie. systems are at work, then that is a non-issue as long as your employer doesn't use any power management system/service. If the burden is yours then it may be prudent to do a total cost of ownership analysis to help you make a wise decision.

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*If you are my employer do not read beyond this point* This system, once up and running, will be used at work. One of the reasons for the Dell case is that they blend in well.

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Originally Posted by FourOh

*If you are my employer do not read beyond this point* This system, once up and running, will be used at work. One of the reasons for the Dell case is that they blend in well.

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Well, you won't be sliding in one of my xeons unnoticed, it sounds like an F-14 taking off.

I have 3 old Xeon's with duel p-4's and HT servers laying around, for the cost of shipping, if you want them. they haven't been started for several years. :)

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Originally Posted by Al McAdams

Well, you won't be sliding in one of my xeons unnoticed, it sounds like an F-14 taking off.

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LOL! :D haha...that is mostly because of the way our racks are configured - if you had a traditional HSF on them, they'd be no louder than a Core2 Quad was of course...but yeah, definitely plan out the noise part for better "blending" in! :D

From what i recall, while i stick my nose in here, DrPop's and Al's Xeons are from the 5400 series (5430's?) So by using 5650's, that are 18 months newer, i'm quite sure you wouldn't need 16 of them to equal an i7-3820 OC'd to 4.75GHz :p I'll guess that a 3820 running at stock would equal about 10 5430s? Sound about right? I don't know how much IPC was increased from the 5400 to 5600 series, but you wouldn't need anywhere near 16, or even 10 of them to equal a 3820. The increased core count alone brings that number down to 6.66. Throw in HT and now you're at 5 maybe. Throw in whatever the IPC increase is and who knows...

The 5430 offers 4 threads @ 50W TDP
The 5650 offers 12 threads @ 95W TDP. Looks like a major increase in efficiency there. Also the 5400 series was made at 45nm and the 5600 series at 32nm.

Like Al said, if you're looking to earn alot of WuProp hours, this plan is perfect. If you're looking for something to smoke 5430s, your idea definitely does that as well.

Hmmm...JPM has got me to questioning my memory! I might be more than a little off. :p Maybe the XEONs were way better than I thought. I know it's kind of project specific too - sometimes they do better than I think they will compared to the i7 and sometimes worse. Most people don't crunch their i7s at 4.75GHz either, so that makes the i7 look a lot better as well.
Let me take a look at the POGs WUs they are crunching now and get back to this thread. I don't want to be giving out bad info - XEONs can be pretty good crunchers for the money I think, as long as one does not have to worry about electric too much! :)

EDIT: Al and I have Intel Xeon CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz

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Originally Posted by DrPop

EDIT: Al and I have Intel Xeon CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz

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Even better! (For FourOh :D ) Now he can add another 7% increase on top of everything else from the clock differential <:-P

OK, I just did a calculation off the POGs WUS for you (it varies with different projects!). The ratio of the Xeon L5420 @ 2.50GHz to the i7 3820 @4.5GHz is 1.69:1.

So the 8 threads the i7 is running at 4.5GHz are equal to 13.52 XEON L5420 cores. (when I O/C to 4.75GHz, the ratio goes up to 1.75:1 or 14 XEON L5420 cores to = 8 i7 threads, but that is truly O/Ced to the hilt.)

As JPM said, if you have more efficient XEONs (sounds like you do!) then it's more favorable to the XEONs.

I have 1 E5345 @2.33 with 8 gb Ram and 2 e5440 @2.83 with 16gb ram.

Having 5420s and 5650s, there is a HUGE difference.

@fouroh, I hide my computers, but if you look up Susa member Haunted Forest on Rosetta, eon, or Leiden, he has a system exactly like the one you're describing.

Most of my fleet is 56xx series. When you get those spinning up, they can pull down some credit. The threads make the difference. 2x5650s give you 24 threads.


Vic (mobile)

Wow, thanks for all the feedback! I'm down in New Orleans for the weekend, but when I get home I'll get on top of this project!

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Originally Posted by Fire$torm

the other major consideration is power consumption. If the cost of running your hardware is not your burden, ie. systems are at work, then that is a non-issue as long as your employer doesn't use any power management system/service. If the burden is yours then it may be prudent to do a total cost of ownership analysis to help you make a wise decision.

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You mean like when you blow the 30A breaker on the UPS when you started crunching on all the servers?

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Originally Posted by Slicker

You mean like when you blow the 30A breaker on the UPS when you started crunching on all the servers?

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Well, that is one way to "Spill the beans"

Update: I've purchased the Dell Precision T5500 (Dual Quad Xeon, 6Gb Ram, 2x250Gb HD, 875W Silver PSU, Win7 Pro) here-
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251445663395 Seller accepted best offer of $255
I also purchased two Xeon X5650 Hex-Core processors here-
http://www.ebay.com/itm/131092988378 Seller accepted best offer of $245

I'll probably end up needing more memory (1Gb per core?) but $500 all in for a complete 24-Thread machine isn't bad! Should be up and running by 2/18, helping in the POGS challenge and keeping my guest bedroom warm.

Wow that's a really great deal. Grats on your new build :-bd

Very nice! FourOh!!!

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Originally Posted by FourOh

Update: I've purchased the Dell Precision T5500 (Dual Quad Xeon, 6Gb Ram, 2x250Gb HD, 875W Silver PSU, Win7 Pro) here-
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251445663395 Seller accepted best offer of $255
I also purchased two Xeon X5650 Hex-Core processors here-
http://www.ebay.com/itm/131092988378 Seller accepted best offer of $245

I'll probably end up needing more memory (1Gb per core?) but $500 all in for a complete 24-Thread machine isn't bad! Should be up and running by 2/18, helping in the POGS challenge and keeping my guest bedroom warm.

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Well done on getting those prices! Can't wait to see you spin those Xeons up! Wuprop loves machines like that too!

SWEET!!!!!

Funny, this is nearly exact the thing Im hunting for on ebay since 5 days.
The cpu is no big problem, but Im not so sure which MB Chipset supports a 5660 Xeon.
5520 or x58 and for 2 CPUs, one would run on a cheap asus board but 2 are only from
Supermicro so far and these cost about 500$ in Europe.
General question : you have 110 Volt but for mainboards its the same worldwide I presume, only the power supply varies. Right ?
Edit.:
one more question : does a motherboard for Xeon 5500 automatically fit for 5600 ?

Memory: 1gb per thread at a minimum. 2gb per thread is better.

There are a number of project that 1gb per thread will not be enough.

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Originally Posted by conf

Funny, this is nearly exact the thing Im hunting for on ebay since 5 days.
The cpu is no big problem, but Im not so sure which MB Chipset supports a 5660 Xeon.
5520 or x58 and for 2 CPUs, one would run on a cheap asus board but 2 are only from
Supermicro so far and these cost about 500$ in Europe.
General question : you have 110 Volt but for mainboards its the same worldwide I presume, only the power supply varies. Right ?
Edit.:
one more question : does a motherboard for Xeon 5500 automatically fit for 5600 ?

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All motherboards, chips, drives, graphics cards, etc. all use the same DC voltage regardless of which country you bought them in. All power supplies convert to 12v, 5v and 3.3v DC current. All power supplies will also work in any country. AC Voltage is detected automatically, then converted to the same DC voltage used by all motherboards. Edit: or sometimes there's a switch you have to manually flip to use the right voltage.

The X58 chipset is for desktop CPUs and some single-socket W35xx series Xeons. The 5520 chipset supports both 5500 and 5600 series Xeons. You can also look at the EVGA SR-2 motherboard, though it'll likely cost as much as FourOh paid for all his stuff :p

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Originally Posted by zombie67

Memory: 1gb per thread at a minimum. 2gb per thread is better.

There are a number of project that 1gb per thread will not be enough.

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I took your advice and sprung for 24gb of DDR3 1333Mhz RAM - another $120. Can you identify the projects that may require 2gb per thread? If I run those, I can disable HT.

SO, all in for a dual-hex Xeon X5650, 24gb DDR3 memory, 2x 250gb HD, and some left over cpus and memory sticks was $620. BUT WAIT. This hunk of junk doesn't like to start up! When I hit the power button (that's the silver one on front) it shows an error code and power cycles on and off repeatedly until eventually (5-12 minutes) one of the starts will catch, it will POST and Windows starts. Once Win7 is running, it seems to be fine and stable - I've run POGS, Collatz, Milkyway and GPUGrid to test. However, when the need to restart comes around, as it does, this brutal cycle starts again. Seller has no solution, so RMA is in the works. Of course that means ol' Dave gets to pony up the 50 bucks to ship this beast back to Cali. Bummer dude.

Total cost: $670 (and counting)

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Originally Posted by FourOh

I took your advice and sprung for 24gb of DDR3 1333Mhz RAM - another $120. Can you identify the projects that may require 2gb per thread? If I run those, I can disable HT.

SO, all in for a dual-hex Xeon X5650, 24gb DDR3 memory, 2x 250gb HD, and some left over cpus and memory sticks was $620. BUT WAIT. This hunk of junk doesn't like to start up! When I hit the power button (that's the silver one on front) it shows an error code and power cycles on and off repeatedly until eventually (5-12 minutes) one of the starts will catch, it will POST and Windows starts. Once Win7 is running, it seems to be fine and stable - I've run POGS, Collatz, Milkyway and GPUGrid to test. However, when the need to restart comes around, as it does, this brutal cycle starts again. Seller has no solution, so RMA is in the works. Of course that means ol' Dave gets to pony up the 50 bucks to ship this beast back to Cali. Bummer dude.

Total cost: $670 (and counting)

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I had an i7 box that did the same thing. It turned out to be a problem with the memory. The memory reported its settings but when the machine tried posting, it woudln't work so the MB would automatically change the settings and try again, and again, and again. When it finally booted, it was only recognizing half the RAM.

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Originally Posted by Slicker

I had an i7 box that did the same thing. It turned out to be a problem with the memory. The memory reported its settings but when the machine tried posting, it woudln't work so the MB would automatically change the settings and try again, and again, and again. When it finally booted, it was only recognizing half the RAM.

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Thanks for the tip. This weekend I'll pull the 2nd CPU riser and try one stick of RAM in each socket and see if I can isolate the problem. It's probably a memory socket on the system board, because I replaced all the RAM and the problem persists.

Bummer, sorry about your rig issues. This thread inspired me to seek out my own X5650 T5500. I paid about what you're paying, but got it configured the way I wanted and "tested" from a fairly large refitter with a big B&M facility. I'm hoping their actual business presence and buyer protection means I don't have to knock on too much wood for what I get out of the box Tuesday.

Let us know how it works out. Hope it turns a corner soon so I can think positive about mine, then we can all be merrily crunching along.

Sent from my HTC6500LVW using Tapatalk

I've had my T5500 workstation back from RMA for a few days and it is cranking out the credits! I have it driving a 7950 and 5850 right now, soon I will attempt to replace the 5850 with a GTX 580 that is in my other dedicated cruncher. Not sure if the 7950 & GTX 580 will play nice together on this platform; even if they do I'm not sure there is enough ventilation to keep both cards from cooking.

Running Collatz on both GPUs, it's producing at a rate of over 1 million a day plus 22 threads of CPU projects. It draws 585 Watts at the plug at full load, for about 1750 credits/day/watt.

http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?p...50e2593f3de1dd
http://boinc.thesonntags.com/collatz...?hostid=141784