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If you don't mind buying slightly old and power hungry stuff, server grade hardware is actually much cheaper. 24GB DDR2 ECC RAM - £16 (I was VERY lucky to get

If you don't mind buying slightly old and power hungry stuff, server grade hardware is actually much cheaper. 24GB DDR2 ECC RAM - £16 (I was VERY lucky to get this one) 2x Xeon X5450 - £22 Intel S5000PALR Motherboard - £30 These specs are roughly equivalent to a 2008 mac pro, which costs around £500.

jotm 11y ago
Yeah, used HP Z600/Z800 workstations (dual hexacore Xeons and everything) go really cheap these days...
- Osmium 11y ago
  Where do you get them from? I use a HP workstation at work, and I'm going to be sad to leave it when I leave my current job.
  - jotm 11y ago
    eBay is a good place to go: http://www.ebay.de/itm/HP-Z800-Workstation-2-x-Xeon-6-Core-X5670-Ram-24GB-SSD-128GB-Quadro-2000-USB-3-0-/252004163277?hash=item3aac9e5ecd http://www.ebay.de/itm/HP-Z800-Workstation-2-x-Xeon-6-Core-X... The Lenovo Thinkstation C20 is also a good dual Xeon choice if you can live with a 24GB RAM limit (it's also very compact). There's also specialized resellers like ITSCO.de and ESM-Computer in Germany (they ship EU-wide). For ~$1000, a dual X5670 workstation with 12 ECC RAM slots, I think it's an excellent deal. If you want something newer, the Z820/Z620 are a good choice, they should start rapidly dropping in price soon enough. These computers are designed extremely well (the 800+ Watt PSUs alone are eons ahead of anything on the consumer market), but even in the rare cases they break the parts are cheap (a replacement system board for ~$100, older but still powerful Xeons also drop in price insanely fast). I don't know why people buy new midrange PCs for the same price anymore, unless they need the latest processors :-)
    - Osmium 11y ago
      Thanks very much for this. It's the Z620 I'm using at the moment, and I think it's excellent. Such a productive machine. Very nice internals too, logically laid out and seems like it'd be easy to upgrade in future.
      - jotm 11y ago
        The performance difference between Westmere (X5000 series in the Z600/Z800) and Sandy Bridge (E5 used in the Z620) looks negligible. The high end X5670 or X5690 should outperform all but the top first gen Xeon E5. It uses more power at idle, but the upfront cost is almost halved at the moment... I'd say you should get a unit with the highest end processors you can find (it will end up way cheaper than upgrading them) and preferably with the 1100 Watt PSU, the rest can be upgraded later and you should have plenty of power for anything (dual GTX 9xx for gaming and stuff :-))
        hhw 11y ago
        That's not correct. Sandy Bridge was a huge performance jump over Westmere, with ~50% performance for most applications on equivalent models between these two generations. A first gen E5 2640 should handily outperform the X5690, and a current gen (v3) E5 2620 would even outperform that. http://cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html http://cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html Obviously, the upfront cost of the older hardware is still better value when ignoring power consumption, but the v3 will also support much more and faster RAM, PCI-E 3.0, USB 3.0, and other newer technologies which will matter more as time goes on. You'll also have the option of a CPU only upgrade to higher end E5 v3's or even E5 v4's at a later point in time when those CPU models are more affordable.
        jotm 11y ago
        I totally missed the fact that the HP Z620/820 supports v2 and v3 E5s. That definitely makes it a better choice for future upgrades. The X5690 is comparable to the first generation E5-2640 (slightly slower), and the X5670 is comparable to the E5-2620. Even the first gen E5 has the AVX instruction set, 4 memory channels (vs 3 for the Westmere-EP) and a faster QPI, so it might have better performance in certain applications.
Perdition 11y ago
What's the power cost per year compared to modern stuff?
cft 11y ago
Are there benchmarks comparing those X56nn with modern E5-nnnns ?

jotm 11y ago

Yeah, used HP Z600/Z800 workstations (dual hexacore Xeons and everything) go really cheap these days...

Osmium 11y ago
Where do you get them from? I use a HP workstation at work, and I'm going to be sad to leave it when I leave my current job.
- jotm 11y ago
  eBay is a good place to go: http://www.ebay.de/itm/HP-Z800-Workstation-2-x-Xeon-6-Core-X5670-Ram-24GB-SSD-128GB-Quadro-2000-USB-3-0-/252004163277?hash=item3aac9e5ecd http://www.ebay.de/itm/HP-Z800-Workstation-2-x-Xeon-6-Core-X... The Lenovo Thinkstation C20 is also a good dual Xeon choice if you can live with a 24GB RAM limit (it's also very compact). There's also specialized resellers like ITSCO.de and ESM-Computer in Germany (they ship EU-wide). For ~$1000, a dual X5670 workstation with 12 ECC RAM slots, I think it's an excellent deal. If you want something newer, the Z820/Z620 are a good choice, they should start rapidly dropping in price soon enough. These computers are designed extremely well (the 800+ Watt PSUs alone are eons ahead of anything on the consumer market), but even in the rare cases they break the parts are cheap (a replacement system board for ~$100, older but still powerful Xeons also drop in price insanely fast). I don't know why people buy new midrange PCs for the same price anymore, unless they need the latest processors :-)
  - Osmium 11y ago
    Thanks very much for this. It's the Z620 I'm using at the moment, and I think it's excellent. Such a productive machine. Very nice internals too, logically laid out and seems like it'd be easy to upgrade in future.
    - jotm 11y ago
      The performance difference between Westmere (X5000 series in the Z600/Z800) and Sandy Bridge (E5 used in the Z620) looks negligible. The high end X5670 or X5690 should outperform all but the top first gen Xeon E5. It uses more power at idle, but the upfront cost is almost halved at the moment... I'd say you should get a unit with the highest end processors you can find (it will end up way cheaper than upgrading them) and preferably with the 1100 Watt PSU, the rest can be upgraded later and you should have plenty of power for anything (dual GTX 9xx for gaming and stuff :-))
      - hhw 11y ago
        That's not correct. Sandy Bridge was a huge performance jump over Westmere, with ~50% performance for most applications on equivalent models between these two generations. A first gen E5 2640 should handily outperform the X5690, and a current gen (v3) E5 2620 would even outperform that. http://cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html http://cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html Obviously, the upfront cost of the older hardware is still better value when ignoring power consumption, but the v3 will also support much more and faster RAM, PCI-E 3.0, USB 3.0, and other newer technologies which will matter more as time goes on. You'll also have the option of a CPU only upgrade to higher end E5 v3's or even E5 v4's at a later point in time when those CPU models are more affordable.
        jotm 11y ago
        I totally missed the fact that the HP Z620/820 supports v2 and v3 E5s. That definitely makes it a better choice for future upgrades. The X5690 is comparable to the first generation E5-2640 (slightly slower), and the X5670 is comparable to the E5-2620. Even the first gen E5 has the AVX instruction set, 4 memory channels (vs 3 for the Westmere-EP) and a faster QPI, so it might have better performance in certain applications.

Perdition 11y ago

What's the power cost per year compared to modern stuff?

cft 11y ago

Are there benchmarks comparing those X56nn with modern E5-nnnns ?