Good day folks. I usually don't ask these kind of things since I consider the topic way too broad and open for debate, but I'm planning an upgrade to my rig....and by upgrade I mean replace it with a server...no no no, I know...wait wait, don't shoot yet Sounds stupid, I know (it could very well be ), that's why I decided to discuss the idea before diving into a potentially stupid and wasteful project.
Where the idea came from and why it may not be that crazy: for years now I've been using a Xeon X5460 as my CPU - it plays very nicely with my Asus P5Q Premium and I even pulled off some moderate overclocking thanks to the Noctua NH D15 it's got on top. The RAM is a bit MEH, being only DDR2, a set of 4, 2GB Corsair Vengeance for a total of 8GB which can't go higher than that unfortunately. Add a Radeon R9 390 to this and you've got my current specs right there and a pretty....decent (?) rig.
During one of my random searches for "Xeon" on my favourite auction site, I came across some interesting setups, with stuff like 6,8 and even 10 core CPUs for reasonable prices, sometimes bundled with 2 or even 4 CPU motherboards, with hundreds of GB or RAM ! Remember, the only reason I jumped on the Xeon bandwagon in the first place is because the price-performance ratio was more than positive, offering more than just bang-for-buck performance. While the prices for more advanced Xeons I found are not exactly cheap, they're still perfectly reasonable for what they offer, compared to "mainstream" alternatives from the "iX" family....where are you going to find a 2 CPU motherboard and 2 10 core CPUs ? You're not getting that at your local PC store, that's for sure....
Another alternative is similar to my current setup, which is a CPU normally designed for servers, installed on a desktop motherboard which is not normally intended for: I found a Xeon E5-2680V2 10 core CPU which supposedly works with an LGA2011 MB, which can be obtained relatively easy from the "desktop" category. Would such combo even fire up ? A very quick and superficial search showed that such a CPU COULD work with a consumer MB as long as you match some socket version or some sh!t like that - haven't dug too deep yet, although if you think about it my current setup is the same thing, just an older generation, so my guess is that it ought to work with more recent releases as well if you do your research.
To recap:
1) can a setup built entirely with server parts, multiple CPUs, overblown specs and dedicated hardware function as your every day computer ? Is it feasible to build something like this and attempt to use it as a PC ? I'm thinking mostly about compatibility issues down the line and things like lack of drivers and support for anything other than Win Server.
2) if not, what would be your best shot at stuffing a ridiculous number of cores a "commercial" MB that can still run ?
Where the idea came from and why it may not be that crazy: for years now I've been using a Xeon X5460 as my CPU - it plays very nicely with my Asus P5Q Premium and I even pulled off some moderate overclocking thanks to the Noctua NH D15 it's got on top. The RAM is a bit MEH, being only DDR2, a set of 4, 2GB Corsair Vengeance for a total of 8GB which can't go higher than that unfortunately. Add a Radeon R9 390 to this and you've got my current specs right there and a pretty....decent (?) rig.
During one of my random searches for "Xeon" on my favourite auction site, I came across some interesting setups, with stuff like 6,8 and even 10 core CPUs for reasonable prices, sometimes bundled with 2 or even 4 CPU motherboards, with hundreds of GB or RAM ! Remember, the only reason I jumped on the Xeon bandwagon in the first place is because the price-performance ratio was more than positive, offering more than just bang-for-buck performance. While the prices for more advanced Xeons I found are not exactly cheap, they're still perfectly reasonable for what they offer, compared to "mainstream" alternatives from the "iX" family....where are you going to find a 2 CPU motherboard and 2 10 core CPUs ? You're not getting that at your local PC store, that's for sure....
Another alternative is similar to my current setup, which is a CPU normally designed for servers, installed on a desktop motherboard which is not normally intended for: I found a Xeon E5-2680V2 10 core CPU which supposedly works with an LGA2011 MB, which can be obtained relatively easy from the "desktop" category. Would such combo even fire up ? A very quick and superficial search showed that such a CPU COULD work with a consumer MB as long as you match some socket version or some sh!t like that - haven't dug too deep yet, although if you think about it my current setup is the same thing, just an older generation, so my guess is that it ought to work with more recent releases as well if you do your research.
To recap:
1) can a setup built entirely with server parts, multiple CPUs, overblown specs and dedicated hardware function as your every day computer ? Is it feasible to build something like this and attempt to use it as a PC ? I'm thinking mostly about compatibility issues down the line and things like lack of drivers and support for anything other than Win Server.
2) if not, what would be your best shot at stuffing a ridiculous number of cores a "commercial" MB that can still run ?
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