[scipy]

Hi all,

So, I came into some $$$ and for my very modest needs I've decided to make a workstation upgrade. Now, I don't really need advice regarding the CPUs, MBO and the RAM - it's the peripherals that I'm after here. I've also got an E-ATX case capable of fitting all this (old CM Stacker which previously held the ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS).

MBO - ASRock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16
CPU - 2 x Xeon E5-2680 V2
RAM - 8x16GB DDR3-1866MHz CL13 ECC REG 2Rx4
GPU - AMD FirePro W4100 (this gets moved from the old workstation)

I've also purchased a single E5-2603 V1 Xeon just in case the MBO is running an older BIOS version and needs to be updated in order to recognize V2 Xeons. This was a 20 EUR investment

First I'll list all the other stuff that is planned and then run down the comments and ask for your much appreciated advice.

HDD - Samsung SSD 960 EVO 500GB, M.2 (MZ-V6E500BW) + PCIe -> M.2 (PCIe) adapter card.
HDD - Western Digital WD Purple 8TB, SATA 6Gb/s (WD80PURZ)
FAN - 2 x Scythe Ninja 4 (SCNJ-4000)
PSU - Corsair HX Series HX750 80PLUS Platinum 750W ATX 2.4 (CP-9020137)
Monitor - LG Electronics 43UD79-B 42.5"

Obviously, my primary concern is the older generation motherboard and the NVMe PCIe SSD compatibility. After some research I've found the following:

https://forums.servethehome.com/inde...e-2#post-94798
http://www.userbenchmark.com/System/...02-4LD16/19469
https://www.win-raid.com/t871f50-Gui...UEFI-BIOS.html

So, judging from the 2nd link, at least 6 users have a NVMe disk in the listed MBO. However, I'm aware this still might mean it can't be an OS/bootable disk, and then it's simply useless to have it. Third link is a guide into BIOS modding to enable NVMe boot support for basically any UEFI board.

Does anyone have first hand experience or an ability to test if this board can boot a NVMe PCIe disk? Looking at you, Alex (flotus1)!

As far as CPU cooling goes, I've looked at comparisons tests and Noctua simply doesn't justify its price. I've had Katana 4's before on my dual E5-4617 and Ninja 4 is a more capable cooler and still nearly half the price of any Noctua for a ~1°C difference at load (for an overclocked i7, similar TDP to Xeons at load). Anyone has other ideas backed by arguments?

PSU - here I don't know quite what to do. Internet keeps yelling about EVGA quality (G3), some say that EVGA had problems with "eco" mode and was turning on the fans to quite high speeds even when load was 40-50%. These people say Seasonic might be the way to go. I was previously a Corsair user and never had any problems, but it also is a bit more expensive. Basically, I'm looking for something decently quiet and capable of running this system while being at 60-70% load (with a potential GPU card upgrade in the future - to something more power hungry than the W4100 with its 50W top draw) and have 5+ years of warranty. What's available to me is something from this list:

850W Thermaltake ToughPower DPS G, ATX 2.31, PS-TPG-0850DPCG
Zalman 1000W modular PSU, ZM1000-GVM
Corsair HX750 80PLUS Platinum 750W ATX 2.4 (CP-9020137)
850W Seasonic M12II-850 Bronze EVO Edition, ATX 2.3, SS-850AM2 - only 3 years warranty, though.
650W Fortron Hydro G 650W ATX 2.4, PPA6502804
850W EVGA 850 GQ, ATX 2.3, 210-GQ-0850-V2

That's pretty much it.. Monitor I want for TV shows and porn. Same goes for 8 TB mech disk.

Thanks for any contributions and regards.

P.S. I know about the AMD Epyc and everything, but I simply can't justify buying that now. If I'll have work for this system and a further investment will be justified, then I might decide on that. Unless someone can argue that a single CPU current AMD workstation with DDR4 can hold its own against this kind of system and cost about the same?

[flotus1]

Today is your lucky day, I just finished a similar build for a friend of mine
Well partly because I do not have a NVMe drive at hand, do not really care about them as boot drives and have no intentions to modify any bios.

That ASRock motherboard is the only reasonable choice, thumbs up. Mine came with the latest bios.
For the CPUs I picked 2x Xeon E5-2667v2 for their high clock speed and larger cache/core. But 2680v2 certainly give better performance/$.
A remark on RAM: ASRock allows you to overclock the memory. So you don't have to source expensive DDR3-1866 which goes for ~80$/16GB I guess. I am running 16x16GB Micron DDR3L-1333 reg ECC @1866MT/s with 1.4V. It is important to pick DDR3L because then you can increase the voltage without exceeding specifications and low power draw. This will not work with every RAM. Micron and Samsung worked for me, the cheap DDR3L-1333 modules from "Elpida" do not post beyond DDR3-1600. Since DDR3L-1333 and 1600 are MUCH less expensive than 1866 you can save a considerable amount of money. Bought mine for less than 20€/16GB, though 30€/16GB is a more realistic price nowadays.

Power supply: Seasonic Focus Plus Platinum 750W and I am very happy with it. Avoid Thermaltake and Zalman, not only for power supplies Same applies to 80+ Bronze power supplies in general. You can't go wrong with the higher end series from EVGA, Corsair or beQuiet.

CPU coolers: Those Scythe Ninja 4 might be too thick to fit comfortably into a dual-socket build. I would choose a thinner model. Thermal performance is not really an issue with these CPUs, they will draw less than 100W each. Some airflow inside the case is more important. I used Noctua NH-U14s, but there are certainly cheaper models that will get the job done.

HDD: WD purple is aimed at surveillance applications. At least in my region WD red 8TB are not more expensive, I would use those instead which leaves you the option to to use RAID later on. The caveat: WDs HDDs with 8TB and up are pretty loud, even the red series. I would consider the smaller models.

Which brings us to the SSD: I personally would not consider NVME as a boot drive in these older platforms. It is a rabbit hole and I don't see the benefit over a SATA SSD for the operating system. If you need fast I/O you can still use a PCIe-SSD as a data drive.

AMD Epyc: a single Epyc 7301 will match the performance of this dual-socket system or even surpass it slightly for parallel CFD workloads. Dual-socket Epyc boards can be run with a single CPU, so buying "cheap" now and upgrading later would be possible.
I personally ruled out this option because of the spare parts I had lying around, mainly memory and CPU coolers. Yet the plan is to upgrade Motherboard, CPUs and RAM as soon as memory prices drop significantly. So depending on how much money you have to spend on DDR3, you might reconsider this option.

[scipy]

Thanks for the detailed answer!

I don't know if links to sites are allowed here so I won't post anything, but on ebay.com I bought 128 GB of 1866 MHz DDR3 for 606$. Now I see that the same seller sells Samsung's quad ranked 1333 DDR3L for 500$. I guess I could've saved a 100$, but the price difference is nowhere near what you quoted, so I'm not going to try and cancel this purchase now.. Screw it.

You are completely right about the coolers! Goddamn, I never looked at it on a motherboard, just small thumbnails on web stores. No way 2 of these can fit one beside the other.I might just go with Katana 4 again (or a 2x more expensive Ashura) since it cooled 130W TDP cpus without problem on the quietest setting, should be more than fine for V2s.

No Seasonic Platinum here.. 750W Gold is available, but I think I'll just go with a 750 W Corsair HX. BTW, for a later upgrade of only 1 potential GPU (something like a GTX 1060 or 1070) - would even less W be enough without going into peak power outputs? Something like a 550-650 W? I'm not trying to be cheap, but I also don't want to buy stuff that simply isn't necessary.

HDDs - didn't find this loudness information mentioned online. I'll look into it. One of the local stores is running a decent discount on the 8TB Purple drive, that's the only reason why I picked it. I'm aware I don't need many of its functionalities, but these are more marketing anyway (and no, I don't really plan on RAID). I've considered 6TB RED but then again 8TB is nearly 10% cheaper per gb.. so might as well do it.. but now you've got me with the noise.

As far as Epyc goes.. screw it, I already bought from ebay and aliexpress, plus, even for the same/slightly better performance, this would still cost literally twice the money (for 128 GB of DDR4, single Epyc and a motherboard). This is for when this system becomes a bottleneck (which is going to be never ). It's worth more to me being able to fit a case in the RAM than to have it solve 2x quicker.

SSD - I'm going to be the experimental lab rat this time around and post my findings. I'd like to have the NVMe as a bootable disk, lately I've also been doing some FEM which is more I/O bound than steady state CFD, so if this doesn't work then I'll use it as temporary storage for projects (but in that case 256GB would've also been enough). We'll see.

[flotus1]

Quad-rank memory would not work for this anyway. Only 1R and 2R can be clocked significantly higher.
650W would still be sufficient for a GPU upgrade. The system without a GPU draws 250W tops. The only problem is that lower power PSUs sometimes don't have a second 12V EPS plug, in this case you would end up spending the saved money on adapters.
Edit: 8TB WD drives being much louder than the smaller models is my personal observation. Backed up by a considerable amount of online ratings. One of our workstations at the office uses 6 of them in a case with noise insulation, and I really would not want this machine sitting under my desk.

[scipy]

OK. Then I'm all set with the memory anyway.

I think I'll just go with 750 W with 2 EPS connectors and be done with it.

Hm, so, do I go for a 6TB one and I'm safe as far as noise or is even smaller a better option (2x4TB)?

[flotus1]

Doesn't matter, they are all similar in terms of noise. Which means about the quietest 3.5" HDDs I ever had. Take whatever suits your storage capacity requirements. WD only f***ed up with the 8TB versions. I can only assume 10 and 12 TB versions have similar problems, did not buy any of them yet.