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HAF XB Server - Dual Xeon Sandy Bridge-EP LGA 2011


sonic_agamemnon

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Looks like it could get fairly hot in there  :unsure:...nice build though, best of luck and good commentary  :thumbsup:

 

My primary area of concern with this smaller HAF XB foot print are temperature levels, especially in the bottom chamber. The top chamber is designed very well, especially for air cooling, and I expect good results with high-performance Noctua case fans all around.  However, the lower area is very cramped and the only active exhaust comes from two 80mm fans.  At least they are positioned directly in the path of the internal drive cage.  I wouldn't be as concerned if the drives were SSDs; I've never used these Seagate hybrid drives before, so I'm not sure how hot they will run.  I did check the power requirements, and the Seagate drives actually draw about the same power as pure SSDs and definitely less power than regular disk drives.  

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Although clearances between both Arctic Freezers and the memory slots are good, there is not enough wiggle room to replace every stick of DDR3 memory with the CPU heat-pipes mounted, especially the two slots nearest each CPU socket.

Unfortunately, both coolers had to be removed in order to install all eight sticks of 8GB Samsung memory. This also required removal of the prior Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound, cleaning all the surfaces and repeating the mounting process after installing all 64GB of server memory.




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It is a good thing the HAF XB is basically a test bench, because requirements and hardware keep changing even before the server has been deployed!

Due to an increase in expected scope/workload, both Xeon E5-2620 processors have been returned for an even bigger punch: two Xeon E5-2670 2.6GHz processors with 3.3GHz Turbo Boost and 20MB L3 Cache.

The number of developers is expected to increase from two to four later this year, a fifth VM needs to be spun up to support a CPU-intensive search engine (Solr), and the server has also been nominated for initial load-testing and baseline benchmark duty. An increase in both thread count and clock rate was deemed appropriate to maintain good performance.

Compared to the E5-2620, the E5-2670 provides eight cores instead of six. The 2670 also clocks at 2.6GHz instead of 2GHz, with a temporary boost up to 3.3GHz instead of 2.5GHz. The 2670 also provides 5GB of additional L3 cache, 20MB instead of 15MB. However, the 2670 does consume more power, 115W instead of 95W.

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Another requirements change is forcing a motherboard replacement and a graphics card switch as well. 

 

The server is morphing into a server/workstation hybrid, since a need for occasional modeling, rendering and video editing has been added.  Therefore, the small Radeon passive video card will not hack it, so a TBD workstation adapter (probably from the Quadro family) will replace it.  Also, the SuperMicro server motherboard does not provide a full 16x PCIE slot, so it will be exchanged for the ASUS Z9PA-D8 mainboard with a Pike RAID adapter.

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