2016 Workstation & Gaming Build

ED E

Hey all,

So finally, after eeking every bit of life I could out of 775 its time for a platform upgrade into this decade. Parts list is pretty well sorted at this point bar the GPU which I'm hoping to have patience enough to leave until Polaris.

The one bit I'm unsure on is actually kind of trivial, the OS. I'd love to continue with W7Pro but the lack of DX12 support is a big big mark on its name. At the same time W10 has problems and just generally bad workflows(currently run 7, 8.1 and 10 side by side) that have me very reluctant to use it on my main rig, fine on the ultrabook. So this leads me to a weird suggestion, Server 2016.

I have developer access so keys are free when it leaves the TP/IP phase and as far as I can tell it should fully support DX12 with the same codebase as 10 while having all the annoying crap pulled out. Have a test VM running at the mo and the're still some of the new UI fluff present but its not terrible. The one concern I have is software licencing. Some 3rd party software will detect a server branch OS and insist on a corporate licence, bit of a budget buster. The question is how prevalent will this be? When it cropped up for a backup provider I just picked another option but its hard to validate every bit of software I may need in the next couple years. Anyone done it? Thoughts?

Cheers,
ED-E

Xenoronin

No idea! Sounds like it wouldn't be much of an issue. Unless the software has servers in mind, it probably isn't going to look for a license.

Serephucus

Am I the only one who's horrified that people who know what they're doing have to jump through hoops as ridiculous as running server OSs simply to remove what amounts to Microsoft-issued bloatware?

Your idea sounds really cool, actually. I can't give you any advise because I haven't a clue. :P I know I haven't had any problems on my server (2012 R2) installing stuff, but then I haven't really got much on it, certainly no heavy workstation type stuff.

Cuddlesworth

Don't do it. I tried it with 2012R2 and ran into nothing but random problems with .net installs, drivers and most games. I just gave up in the end. Fundamentally it shouldn't make a difference and it didn't with everything but games.

ED E

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Don't do it. I tried it with 2012R2 and ran into nothing but random problems with .net installs, drivers and most games. I just gave up in the end. Fundamentally it shouldn't make a difference and it didn't with everything but games.

Was it on a traditional platform? Id have thought drivers could be installed in compatibility mode if they did have issues.

.net seems nuts as there's a big use case for ASP running on IIS.

Starting to think it might be worth grabbing a spare disk and testing anyrhing and everything I can think of, could be informative.

Cuddlesworth

Its been 2 years so the specific issues are hard to remember now. But the essence of it was I was constantly fixing things and getting annoyed, always related to media of some type.

So much so, that I remember this website now.

http://www.win2012workstation.com

ED E

Great link, thanks.



This is the correct security posture, but I can see how it'd be annoying.

justsomebloke

why not just use VMs, especially if the keys are free? Try 2016 but have a windows 10 machine for any specific tasks that 2016 can't do?

ED E

I'm testing it in a VM now and I can do that but some things really have to be in the host. Say for example Synergy didnt work, running that in a guest would be useless. (Just an example, no idea if it does)

Cuddlesworth

justsomebloke wrote: »

why not just use VMs, especially if the keys are free? Try 2016 but have a windows 10 machine for any specific tasks that 2016 can't do?

Gaming on a VM only works with hardware passthrough. KVM was really the only solid option for that but it's not exactly a walk in the park.

justsomebloke

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Gaming on a VM only works with hardware passthrough. KVM was really the only solid option for that but it's not exactly a walk in the park.

2016 has GPU pass through so could be a better candidate. Also the option is to use the 2016 host as the gaming machine and just use VMs of desktop OSs when needed for the software package that won't work on 2016

ED E

TBH I'd deal with 10s crap using a few re-skins if there was regular need to drop into VMs for day to day apps. Obviously you can spin up easy enough, especially with virtual disks on SSD, but even just file management with shared directories etc is awkward and a crap experience.

Pretty set on a test install with a real GPU (vs using the home server with an Asmedia onboard).

ED E

Anyone know if its possible to get detailed measurements of the inside of Corsair cases? Trying to bend the rules a little.

Serephucus

I have a 730T that I can measure. E-ATX/EEB motherboard?

ED E

Yup!

Its the same height as full size ATX so I've taken an image of an ATX board in it and mapped an image based on its proportions. As far as I can tell it'll cover the leftmost grommets but otherwise fit fine. The one concern is if it might hit the drive bays on the top left corner. Not sure if the layout of the 730T matches exactly (but not inverted)?

Serephucus

Just had a quick measure with mine. Looks like the case actually has E-ATX holes drilled already, so it would certainly fit. Blocks the grommets completely though.

ED E

Serephucus wrote: »

Just had a quick measure with mine. Looks like the case actually has E-ATX holes drilled already, so it would certainly fit. Blocks the grommets completely though.

Sweet, thanks for that.

I'm going to miss 3x mounting holes but using AIOs means there should be reduced load on the board anyways. A neat bit of cable routing will be fine grommets wise.

Almost time to hit that checkout button

Serephucus

Yeah, from what I remember EEB aligns with E-ATX in all but three screw holes, up around the CPU/RAM area.

What's the specs of this yoke anyway?

ED E

Keeping that super secrets until I post in the build p0rn thread :pac:

Serephucus

Colour me intrigued!

I'm guessing... Dual socket 2011 madness!

ED E

So, expensive new motherboard, everything correct, POSTing fine, BMC wont work. Here's me thinking they've not enabled DHCP by default, drag out monitor and KB, set details, nada. "Well f'ck...". 90 mins after first POST I realise the assembler put the jumper on BMC disable not BMC enable. You may work for $3.00/day but man am I annoyed at you right now....

On a more positive note, Enermax cheapo line of AIOs seem to be really great for what you pay, pump is quieter than EVGA PSU by a fair chunk.

Serephucus

Pics pics pics pics pics pics pics

ED E

Serephucus wrote: »

Pics pics pics pics pics pics pics

Have to wait for AnPost for the case :pac:

ED E

Pictures


Build notes:

• Damn the employee in Taiwan that got the BMC jumper wrong
• Bootup is slow, gonna try shorten the post
• Cable management space is lovely
• IPMI is the same Megarac SP as on C2750D4I from American Megatrends
• Interestinly HDD LED should be labelled as a SATA LED, doesnt work for NVME! Another confused moment
• Shoulda bought black DIMMs
• Shoulda bought museum gloves
• 7870 to go in now for a short time until I grab a 480
• Enermax had to go upside down or vertical, no room for the correct orientation due to VRM cooler
• Very impressed with the 750W G2 from EVGA, 2x Xeons running full tilt and the fan doesnt even spin up. Great packaging and quality.
• Short ATX power is a bit tricky thanks to inverted ATX layout
• Sooo many empty DIMMs......

Z10PE-D16 WS (D8 lacks the IPMI)
2x 2667v3
32GB ECC Reg
2x Liqmax 240 (Great for a budget option)
950 Pro NVME (830 has served well, big upgrade)
2TB WD Blue

BTW the light is a cheapo USB LED, you can order them for pennies and they're super handy to light up your IO area for under the desk fiddling.

Benchmarks to come.

Serephucus

I had no idea WS boards had IPMI! (I assume it's only some of them, because I know I've looked at a few, and none of them had it)

Is there a reason you went with 2677s (did you really spend €4K on CPUs?) rather than two 2670s? The board would have been a bit of a bitch to find, but would be soooo cheap.

What's all this being used for?!

Cuddlesworth

I'm curious as well. That's a lot of CPU horsepower.

ED E

Its currently total overkill, the hardest workload I'll be putting on it immediately will be h.265 encodes (HEVC) which are cripplingly slow at 1080 and end of the solar system slow at 4K. As I built the low power server I'm not putting too many VMs on there so there'll be some running on this along with development work, video work. The way I look at it I spend more hours than Id like to count on my main box, I might as well go all out.

And no, didnt pay MSRP for those beauties 2267 has the slightly better clock speeds, 2687W is kinda cool too but they're less available. Single core performance cant't be terrible for the bit of gaming that I end up doing.

Asus do offer a 10G version but the nice thing about the abundance of PCIE lanes is I can extend and grow as needs be. Lots of options.

Serephucus

Very nice. Encoding stuff to be direct-play friendly with Plex I assume? Just a note on H.265: I dunno whether it's holding on to an old standard or not, but lots of people online trumpet 264 as superior to 265 for quality. Apparently blockiness something something artefacts something something. I thought about re-encoding a lot of stuff I have to 265 as well, but it'd take years on the D41...

K.O.Kiki

Serephucus wrote: »

I had no idea WS boards had IPMI! (I assume it's only some of them, because I know I've looked at a few, and none of them had it)

Is there a reason you went with 2677s (did you really spend €4K on CPUs?) rather than two 2670s? The board would have been a bit of a bitch to find, but would be soooo cheap.

What's all this being used for?!

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Intel-Xeon-L3406-2-26-GHz-2267-SLBT8-So-1156-Dual-Core-Clarkdale-Handler-/282008531375?hash=item41a904b1af:g:MOcAAOSwqbZXE~sU

€76 incl. shipping :eek:

Cuddlesworth

Serephucus wrote: »

Just a note on H.265: I dunno whether it's holding on to an old standard or not, but lots of people online trumpet 264 as superior to 265 for quality.

If its encoded right and the network is fine, then H265 is simply superior to H264 for file size. But if its on a home network, I don't see the point.

The main difference between the two is when H264 screws up, you get that whole messed up screen thing that fixes itself on a keyframe. But when H265 screws up, its on a small part of the screen, which usually comes across as a loss in detail.

The reason why people online don't like H265 is that it can save "up to 50%" of the bandwidth. But if you have a service like youtube, they simply reduced the bandwidth available to 50%. So if you have a gameplay capture, with the entire screen moving frequently, you would need the bandwidth of H264 as there are no savings to be had with the newer compression tool. But youtube of course doesn't allow that(VP8/9 is effectively the same thing)

ED E

Serephucus wrote: »

Very nice. Encoding stuff to be direct-play friendly with Plex I assume? Just a note on H.265: I dunno whether it's holding on to an old standard or not, but lots of people online trumpet 264 as superior to 265 for quality. Apparently blockiness something something artefacts something something. I thought about re-encoding a lot of stuff I have to 265 as well, but it'd take years on the D41...

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

If its encoded right and the network is fine, then H265 is simply superior to H264 for file size. But if its on a home network, I don't see the point.

The main difference between the two is when H264 screws up, you get that whole messed up screen thing that fixes itself on a keyframe. But when H265 screws up, its on a small part of the screen, which usually comes across as a loss in detail.

The reason why people online don't like H265 is that it can save "up to 50%" of the bandwidth. But if you have a service like youtube, they simply reduced the bandwidth available to 50%. So if you have a gameplay capture, with the entire screen moving frequently, you would need the bandwidth of H264 as there are no savings to be had with the newer compression tool. But youtube of course doesn't allow that(VP8/9 is effectively the same thing)

The bad name 265 gets is from people posting a 1GB 720P 264 at 200MB with 265. This is pushing it way too far. BBC rated it as equal at ~50% the size but I'd go for about 60% of the original. If you're storing a lot of video then 40% smaller files is 40% less drives you need to buy.

Without HW decoders its use is limited now, but when I swap my phone and maybe laptop it'll be a winner. Currently the only HW capable device in the house is a Surface Pro4. Try 4K 265 playback and watch your CPU melt :P

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Intel-Xeon-L3406-2-26-GHz-2267-SLBT8-So-1156-Dual-Core-Clarkdale-Handler-/282008531375?hash=item41a904b1af:g:MOcAAOSwqbZXE~sU

€76 incl. shipping :eek:

Thats V1 32nm stuff, quite long in the tooth now.

Serephucus

ED E wrote: »

The bad name 265 gets is from people posting a 1GB 720P 264 at 200MB with 265.

I figured it was something like this. I've never done any real testing myself, aside from a few quick and dirty encodes when I wanted to send myself something over crappy WiFi.

(It's actually faster to have the server transcode a 2GB TV episode to a 200MB 265 file, and send that, than it is to send the original, and it looks surprisingly decent too).

How's the noise with those AIOs? Temps decent?

ED E

I've been playing with cooling/tweaking. Annoying bit is if I push the BCLK (for fun) too much the CMOS reset is via a jumper in the most awkward place ever.

The corsair 140mms that were included are probably better than the Enermax ones but wont fit the rad. They seem pretty quiet at lower RPMs but buzz at higher speeds.



Thats with relatively high RPMs but I've only tried 100, 70 and 30 %. Pumps seem ok, you can hear them on bootup but then its only really the fans I notice.

ED E

Bump for an important note to any potential Z10PE-x buyers.

The Z10PE-D16 has a 2x M.2 Port while the Z10PE-D8 has a 4x M.2 Port. I missed the significance of that when shopping. Nobody wants to run their shiny 950 Pro through a bottleneck.



2x fast reads really warrants that £17 adapter card. Doesnt look nearly as clean though.

Oh, and this is what 2400CB points looks like (Not as fast as linus' but I can live with that)

Serephucus

You jammy ****er.

Makes me want to do a new build (I've been mostly unimpressed with recent stuff, so haven't bothered).

What's NVME like? Do you actually notice anything in terms of general use?

Metric Tensor

ED E - what OS did you go for in the end?

I'm about to commence a new build and have been on W7 Pro for many years - very happy with it - but this new computer is going to be on the go for most likely 8+ years and much as I'd like to think it'll be wiped and rebuilt every year - it won't!

Unfortunately I don't have access to developer licenses so I'm going to have to stump up for something!

ED E

Serephucus wrote: »

What's NVME like? Do you actually notice anything in terms of general use?

TBH I think storage tech has moved so far on in the last 5yrs that its just way ahead of the rest of the system. I haven't yet seen a case where they're pushed fully outside of CDN/Webcache use. My old 830 was stuck on a Sata2 3Gb port so any change is a biiiig jump anyways.

Metric Tensor wrote: »

ED E - what OS did you go for in the end?

I'm about to commence a new build and have been on W7 Pro for many years - very happy with it - but this new computer is going to be on the go for most likely 8+ years and much as I'd like to think it'll be wiped and rebuilt every year - it won't!

Unfortunately I don't have access to developer licenses so I'm going to have to stump up for something!

Using Server 2016 (A preview build) pretty happily. Its Windows 10 with a lot less crap. Few niggles with software but everything has been easy to fix so far. Cinebench thinks its S2012 btw as not every application will recognise the OS string yet.

I'd love if 7 was viable now, but the risk of unpatched 0Days is too significant and no DX 12. Grab 10 then customize it to a usable state (eg enable manual update controls).

ED E

God f*cking damn you Linus

Current board: https://www.asus.com/ie/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/Z10PED16_WS/
Younger brother: https://www.asus.com/ie/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/WS-C621E-SAGE/

New board: €590
Chips: Price of a new beamer...

Note:
Old - 16 x DIMM, Max. 1024GB, DDR4 2400/2133/1866/1600 MHz RDIMM, LR-DIMM Memory
New - 12 x DIMM, Max. 768GB, DDR4 2666/2400 MHz RDIMM, LR-DIMM Memory

Serephucus

When 768GB isn't enough. Talk about first world problems.

Also, no IPMI. They can keep their board.
From using X399 for a while now, I don't think I could bring myself to by a board that doesn't have it.

ED E

Well spotted, totally missed that.