Need Recommendations on a New Build

[John P. Myers]

That is true

[zombie67]

Glad to see this form factor spread to the full size boards. No more data cables and power cables! Fast too.

Edit: If I understand correctly, the key is to look for NVMe (faster), instead of AHCI (slower). Newegg doesn't have a filter for that. They have PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 3.0 x4. Does PCIe 3.0 x4 = NVMe? Or are those different things?

[John P. Myers]

Glad to see this form factor spread to the full size boards. No more data cables and power cables! Fast too.

Edit: If I understand correctly, the key is to look for NVMe (faster), instead of AHCI (slower). Newegg doesn't have a filter for that. They have PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 3.0 x4. Does PCIe 3.0 x4 = NVMe? Or are those different things?

They're different things. Your motherboard will decide the max throughput on the m.2 slot, up to PCIe x4. Cheaper boards reduce m.2 to x2 or even x1. Cheaper m.2 SSDs do the same. They just use the same SATA 3 controller on an m.2 form factor and obviously get the same ~500MB/s speed. The m.2 SSDs with controllers meant for the m.2 standard will make use of PCIe x4 in the m.2 socket.

As for NVMe, newer SSDs are moving to that, such as the Samsung 950's. It could be a pain, but until the NVMe aspect isn't so new, you may have to read individual item descriptions to see if something is NVMe or not.

Another note is boards that support m.2 also only support certain sizes, most commonly 2260 and 2280. 22110 is another fairly common size (22mm wide and 60, 80 or 110mm long).

[Fire$torm]

Question: What are the KW/H costs on dual Xeon vs. dual Haswell-E? And what are the credits per day/KWH ratio's?

[Al]

That sounds like math and better left to someone else. What I will say is that I have 3-T5500s with dual x5650 cpus and 24gb ram and I love them. 72 threads of rock stability that I bought for less than the price of 2-5960 cpus. As a pure crunching rig these are a very affordable alternative to a new build.

[Bryan]

If anyone really wants the crunching results then look at the "top computers" on Denis. There is a 5960 running the AVX app and Xeon 56?? running SSE. I think I looked at the numbers and the 5960 was outproducing the T5500 by about 15k/day - 140 vs 125k. That's 16 threads running AVX. On most projects the Xeons will outproduce the 5960. Regardless, that is a $600 complete machine versus a $1000 CPU.

Pretty good bang for the buck

[Mike029]

I'm eyeballing this one. What do you think?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precisi...item1ea68e760a

[Bryan]

For the 5687 that is a very good price with 24Gb of RAM! I'd offer them $625 and then take what ever they come back with.

[scole of TSBT]

The 5687 is 8 threads, not 12 and it's a 130 watt cpu vs. a 12 thread 95 watt 5675/5670/5650.

[Bryan]

The 5687 is 8 threads, not 12 and it's a 130 watt cpu vs. a 12 thread 95 watt 5675/5670/5650.

My bad, I was thinking of the 5690!! My machines are the 5675s.