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Thread: Is this a viable option ( second hand 2 x xeon server) |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 14
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Byteball_730a2960
Senior Cruncher Joined: Oct 29, 2010 Post Count: 318 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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So, inspired by Movieman building his beast, I was idly looking on the internet and thinking about building a Dual/Quad CPU beast.
Then I came across this... http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-CS24-TY-1U-2x-XE...s&hash=item2ec7cb2c31 In a nutshell, this looks like a steal to me. I get 2 Xeons which gives me 24 threads for $439. However, is it too good to be true? I looked at cpubenchmark and they give it a mark of 9207. Is that per cpu or for both? Surely for just one? If I get it, what would I need to do to get it to work? I know nothing about servers at all. By the looks of it, would it be as simple as adding harddrives and then an OS? |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7687 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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It does look like a good deal. The processors are the low power version rated at 60 watts. The ad states 36gb memory capacity, but it does not say how much is installed. Make sure it comes with at least some memory installed. If it comes with the full 36 GB installed, then it is a steal. The harddrives you will need to get separately, but they should be reasonable (you probably only need one). I have found you can install a generic Linux package (I use Linux Mint because it is easy to install) and it will run just fine. With 2 processors and hyperthreading you will be able run 24 threads. The good thing about the servers is they are made to run 24/7. The downside is they are heavy and when they are running can be quite loud. Perhaps someone else will give another opinion for you. Hope it works out for you.
----------------------------------------Cheers
Sgt. Joe
----------------------------------------*Minnesota Crunchers* [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sgt.Joe at Nov 3, 2013 4:15:32 PM] |
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OldChap
Veteran Cruncher UK Joined: Jun 5, 2009 Post Count: 978 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I too was inspired by mm's forays into modern cpu's etc
----------------------------------------My motivation was to cut down on power use. Yep, I think you have it right. Add 1 hdd and put linux on it and you are good. Like Sgt Joe I too use Mint and have found the process fairly straightforward when setting up a cruncher performance ? well it is nehelem that will run at 2.4 with turbo all cores loaded. I will take a punt on ~8K ppd Boinc as one of our team runs a pair of e5645's that are a bit faster that get about 6K8 on windows  |
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Movieman
Veteran Cruncher Joined: Sep 9, 2006 Post Count: 1042 Status: Offline |
Build a 4770K single socket instead.. That is the best bang for the buck I can see,,
----------------------------------------Best of luck!  |
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widdershins
Veteran Cruncher Scotland Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Post Count: 674 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Well I just bought an HP version of one of these blade servers with dual L5639 chips. Got it running late Friday evening. I bought it for what seems a bargain price off ebay with 48Gb of Ram installed. The HP one could take a max of 288GB of RAM. No HDD's fitted, I booted it off a Linux Mint USB stick and installed BOINC. There's a lot of units in PV so it hasn't built up an average days credit yet. Really I'm just trying it out at present to get an idea of how it performs.
----------------------------------------It's running a mix of CEP and FAAH units and CEP isn't as good points wise as FAAH. If you're interested and can wait a day or two I'll flush out the CEP units and put it hard at work on FAAH only and give you an idea of how it performs. I've not hooked up a power metering plug yet to see the power draw yet, that'll come later, but from putting my hand over the exhaust grating and feeling only a light breeze of tepid air, I've a feeling it's not going to be a lot. [Edit 2 times, last edit by widdershins at Nov 3, 2013 8:46:51 PM] |
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ryan222h
Senior Cruncher Joined: Sep 4, 2006 Post Count: 425 Status: Offline |
The clock speed of those CPU's is probably a bit slow to run CEP2 I would think.
----------------------------------------Let us know what kind of PPD you're getting out of it. Also is it loud? Benchmarks show that a i7-4770k should have more performance but most of those benchmarks don't scale well with more cores like WCG does, so you might have a winner there.  |
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Sgt.Joe
Ace Cruncher USA Joined: Jul 4, 2006 Post Count: 7687 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Well I just bought an HP version of one of these blade servers with dual L5639 chips. Got it running late Friday evening. I bought it for what seems a bargain price off ebay with 48Gb of Ram installed. The HP one could take a max of 288GB of RAM. No HDD's fitted, I booted it off a Linux Mint USB stick and installed BOINC. There's a lot of units in PV so it hasn't built up an average days credit yet. Really I'm just trying it out at present to get an idea of how it performs. It's running a mix of CEP and FAAH units and CEP isn't as good points wise as FAAH. If you're interested and can wait a day or two I'll flush out the CEP units and put it hard at work on FAAH only and give you an idea of how it performs. I've not hooked up a power metering plug yet to see the power draw yet, that'll come later, but from putting my hand over the exhaust grating and feeling only a light breeze of tepid air, I've a feeling it's not going to be a lot. You know I wish I had thought about that solution. If it has 36gb of memory, who needs a hard drive. I like it. Cheers
Sgt. Joe
*Minnesota Crunchers* |
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widdershins
Veteran Cruncher Scotland Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Post Count: 674 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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The clock speed of those CPU's is probably a bit slow to run CEP2 I would think. Let us know what kind of PPD you're getting out of it. Also is it loud? Benchmarks show that a i7-4770k should have more performance but most of those benchmarks don't scale well with more cores like WCG does, so you might have a winner there. Don't be fooled by the dire warnings about CEP units I've done CEP units on a MK1 Intel Atom with 1GB of ram occasionally. The points suck but they run fine, so 2GHz is fine for CEP units. I'll need a few days of FAAH only to get a true PPD figure, it is louder than a standard home PC base unit that hasn't been overclocked, but I've heard oc'd ones with high end graphics cards that sound like a jet plane taking off. Well, to be more precice it's more the frequency of the noise that's most annoying. The fans have to be smaller to fit the case. That means they need to rotate faster to move the same amount of air, which means the noise is at a higher pitch. Personally, I'd find the noise unacceptable if I had to share a room with it, but set up in the spare bedroom with the door shut I can't hear it scream.  As a long term solution I may unplug the small fans and substitute a 120mm one by sliding the top cover back a bit and putting in a piece of plywood with a big fan in a suitable position. Running diskless means less power and so heat to remove so probably a 120mm fan is overkill, but it'd be quiet.  |
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widdershins
Veteran Cruncher Scotland Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Post Count: 674 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Well I just bought an HP version of one of these blade servers with dual L5639 chips. Got it running late Friday evening. I bought it for what seems a bargain price off ebay with 48Gb of Ram installed. The HP one could take a max of 288GB of RAM. No HDD's fitted, I booted it off a Linux Mint USB stick and installed BOINC. There's a lot of units in PV so it hasn't built up an average days credit yet. Really I'm just trying it out at present to get an idea of how it performs. It's running a mix of CEP and FAAH units and CEP isn't as good points wise as FAAH. If you're interested and can wait a day or two I'll flush out the CEP units and put it hard at work on FAAH only and give you an idea of how it performs. I've not hooked up a power metering plug yet to see the power draw yet, that'll come later, but from putting my hand over the exhaust grating and feeling only a light breeze of tepid air, I've a feeling it's not going to be a lot. You know I wish I had thought about that solution. If it has 36gb of memory, who needs a hard drive. I like it. Cheers It's more about power consumption than anything, disks use extra power if I can crunch the same no of WU's at lower cost I'm pleased. Only downside is I cobbled together the USB distro in a hurry so BOINC wasn't installed on the stick. So I reckon when I turn the power off/reboot I'll lose not just the WU's in progress, but the whole BOINC client as well. So it's staying on 24/7 for a while till I get the time to do things a bit better. |
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widdershins
Veteran Cruncher Scotland Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Post Count: 674 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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OK, just had a brainwave, I fired up WCGDAWS and sucked down the stats for the units produced so far. CEP is running with 96% CPU efficiency apparently and delivering 186.8pph for each unit crunched FAAH is running with 99% CPU efficiency but only delivering 46.6pph.
---------------------------------------- So I don't think FAAH only will deliver realistic PPD figures. I may need to do two runs one FAAH only and one CEP only to try and get real figures. [Edit 1 times, last edit by widdershins at Nov 3, 2013 11:57:10 PM] |
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