Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 and Asus Rampage IV Black Edition

[Infikiran]

Okay so I have an interesting question. Thinking of downsizing equipment and consolidating my server and gaming PC in one. Here's what I have:

As listed I have the Asus Rampage IV Black edition coupled with the Intel 4930 CPU. I'm selling some older rack mount servers due to the excessive noise, power consumption, and space.

I have the Rosewill Blackhawk supertower case and was able to fit all my drives and already have a couple of virtual servers installed and running fine but am quickly running out of CPU resources as I like to have at least 2 dedicated cores (4 threads) dedicated to each server.

The CPU "Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2" is listed as supported by my motherboard but have not really seen a whole lot of reviews as to how well it works with this board and any stability issues. I know some technologies like ECC are not supported but that's not important to me.

My thoughts were that I could by a 64GB ram kit, this CPU, and dedicate the first 4 cores and 16GB of ram for everyday computing and gaming, and the rest to my virtual servers.

Theoretically it should work according to paper but wanted to know some opinions before I drop $3,000 in CPU and RAM.

All other specs are as follows:

Power Supply: Corsair 1000RM
CPU and chipset are cooled in a custom watercooled loop.
16GB Kingston Hyper X 2133mhz ram

250GB Samsung EVO SSD (for OS)
2 TB Seagate hybrid drive (for steam folder)
2 3TB Western Digital drives and 1 4TB Hitachi drive for web hosting and media

Primary OS: Windows 10 Pro
VIrutal OS: 2 Instances of Ubuntu Server and 1 instance of WIndows 2008 Server Standard Running off of VMware Workstation 10.

 

[iamacow]

considering its a $1700 CPU. Might as well just buy a X99 platform and save some money. Unless you NEED ECC ram or the benefits of a Xeon cpu. its not worth the money unless you buying it off ebay. I saw a E5-2680 on ebay for $400 last week.

Also that MB doesn't support ECC ram, you need to buy a sever board.

 

[Infikiran]

As stated ECC is not really important to me. Plus as stated I will also be gaming on this machine as well and the server boards I've seen typically don't sport more than 8 dedicated PCIe lanes which would cripple performance on modern day cards.
Considering I would have to buy a new motherboard as well as a CPU if I changed to the x99 platform, I don't see how I'm saving money, no offense. Don't really want to fight Microsoft for software licensing on different hardware between the Windows 10 Pro and Windows Server OS that I currently have running either.
Plus I already have the CPU, VM, and Chipset Waterblocks that I have money in as well, which is custom fitted to this motherboard :/.

If we're comparing single core performance there is hardly a difference between the E5-2680 and E%-2697, but we're comparing 8-core to 12-core, which means more VM machines, which is why I'm upgrading. I'm currently running an i7 4930k which is a 6 core with HT and I'm running out of resources.

I'm already prepared to pay what's needed once I sell off some un-needed equipment. I just need to know if there will be any stability issues or snags I may run into by buying this CPU for this board. If I have to change boards than so be it, but I'd rather not if I can help it.

I'll most likely be buying off of ebay unless I find it on sale. If there was a similar I7 with 12 Cores on my platform I'd consider it but it is what it is I guess.

 

[Karsten75]

Exactly how many of which graphics cards are you planning to run on your rig? Unless I misunderstood you, you are saying that a server board only allows 8 PCI-e lanes per card slot? That is sufficient for most (all?) current GPUs to my knowledge. I know we like to stick them into x16 slots, but realistically, x8 should work fine.


Not that I'm endorsing the previous poster that recommended you switch motherboards, I'm just curious as I look through your proposed configuration.


You also is aware that the Intel Xeon you are considering has a max frequency of 2.90 GHz, as opposed to the 3.90 GHz Max of the i7-4930K, right? That is substantial.

 

[Infikiran]

The graphics card I currently have is a Sapphire Vapor X 7970 GHz 6GB edition. Currently no performance hit would be noticed but if I decide to upgrade to an R9 Fury X, the bandwidth loss would be substantial, especially if crossfire is attempted.

If you count the turbo boost than yes but for what I'm using it for I don't mind taking a hit on frequency for the higher core count.