matthewlai wrote:TomKerrigan wrote:Milos wrote:
They are still <100$ a piece on Aliexpress.
Amazing thing is that dual 2670s conf is as fast as Xeon E5-2690v4 which costs >2k$ just for CPU.
The processors are still very cheap on eBay too (although not quite as cheap as they were--I got mine for $70 each) but the computers you can plug them into are more rare and expensive. When I bought last year, there were a bunch of Dell T5610s and HP Z620s for around $400-$500.
Now that I look again, there's still one relatively cheap Dell ($750) and several HPs (with the riser card for a 2nd CPU) for around $400, but overall the options seem to have become more limited and expensive.
(Building your own computer from new parts is a non-starter in terms of cost, since dual LGA 2011 motherboards alone tend to be in the mid-$300 range...)
What I did was getting a 1U server and replacing the case. The servers are cheap presumably because they don't work very well as workstations out of the box (very loud, and most have pretty bad connectivity options that PC users care about). It was quite a bit of work because the screw hole locations are non-standard, and I had to build my own case with a laser cutter. It also requires a riser card to attach a video card (which is required because the motherboard only has VGA-out).
Probably wouldn't do that again, but it's one way to get a cheap dual-2011 motherboard.
Oh wow, that's very industrious of you.
A couple years ago I bought a 1U server with dual 12-core AMDs for only $200. My apartment had a storage room under it and I put the server down there and didn't have to listen to it. (That being said, the wifi connection was spotty between floors and that was a constant headache...)
But I moved last year and my new place has a different storage situation, so to use the server I had to lug it out of storage (man those things seem heavy even though they're only ~40 lbs... very awkward shape!) and then be annoyed by the noise the whole time, because the thing was so loud that there was nowhere in my condo I could put it and no number of doors that I could close between me and it that would effectively dampen the noise.
Besides the noise, the weight, and the shape, the server was also annoying because it used so much power (200W+ when idle) and it [understandably] had an ancient Matrox graphics chip from the mid-90s and if I plugged it into a monitor in order to configure anything, I would spend literally minutes waiting for windows, etc. to draw.
That all being said, it did have 24 cores that ran at a pretty respectable clip, and that was great.
After I bought my Dell, I ended up selling the server on eBay. I stupidly charged a flat $30 for shipping because that's what I had paid originally, but shipping ended up being $120 because of the shape and weight of the thing and I only made a few dollars on the whole transaction. Oops!
In comparison, the Dell has been really great. It's the same weight, but a more convenient shape and it has nice handles so it can be moved very easily. It only uses 70W idle (270W under full load) and it's as quiet as most other modern desktop computers when idle... under load it makes a very noticeable amount of noise but it's still an order of magnitude quieter than the server. The performance is somewhat better (fewer cores, but each one is twice as fast). The BIOS is super modern (GUI, mouse support, etc.) and the graphics is a very-low-end but recent Nvidia Quadro which is very snappy at regular GUI stuff even at 1440p. So, everything about it is much better and I would recommend a similar setup to anyone. (Although I guess it's a bit of an unfair comparison since it did cost 3x more...)