El_Capitan Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 Asking this question on the ComputerEd show via e-mail, but would like to know other people's opinions. Are server components worthwhile, anymore? First, I do a lot of work with servers as well as workstation, media, and gaming builds. However, server components, particularly XEON CPU's and ECC memory modules are incredibly expensive, and can't be overclocked on most server motherboards. Now that Sandy Bridge is around, efficiency along with lower power consumption is no longer an issue. I can buy an i7 2600K and a Z68 motherboard 50% cheaper than a XEON E5520 and a server motherboard that I bought 3 years ago, and it has less power consumption after overclocking. Prices for non-ECC DDR3 memory are also incredibly cheap (16GB 1600MHz DDR3 can be found for $75, whilst 16GB 1066MHz ECC DDR3 can be found for $450). Basically, I can build two servers, overclocked, using non-server components and cluster them together while having better availability and faster performance for the same price than a single server with server components that can't be overclocked, for the same number of cores/threads and memory. What are your thoughts? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpeedCrazy Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 For most uses i would say no. But if you need really low failure rate i think that they are worth it, they aren't that expensive on a whim. But for most of us i don't see the point in ECC and that class of stuff. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_bowtie Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 it depends if you are building a mission critical data server that others can access... if you are then yes it will be worth the cost as consumer PCs parts have a much higher fault tolerance. where as Server parts do not. For home based media serving consumer PC stuff is more than adequate.... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
greengiant912 Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 (edited) Asking this question on the ComputerEd show via e-mail, but would like to know other people's opinions. Are server components worthwhile, anymore? First, I do a lot of work with servers as well as workstation, media, and gaming builds. However, server components, particularly XEON CPU's and ECC memory modules are incredibly expensive, and can't be overclocked on most server motherboards. Now that Sandy Bridge is around, efficiency along with lower power consumption is no longer an issue. I can buy an i7 2600K and a Z68 motherboard 50% cheaper than a XEON E5520 and a server motherboard that I bought 3 years ago, and it has less power consumption after overclocking. Prices for non-ECC DDR3 memory are also incredibly cheap (16GB 1600MHz DDR3 can be found for $75, whilst 16GB 1066MHz ECC DDR3 can be found for $450). Basically, I can build two servers, overclocked, using non-server components and cluster them together while having better availability and faster performance for the same price than a single server with server components that can't be overclocked, for the same number of cores/threads and memory. What are your thoughts? You don't want to overclock servers. You gotta remember these components are made for servers, and are made to meet enterprise requirements. In an enterprise environment uptime and stability are the most important. For personal use sure do whatever you want. In a business though you want to be able to maintain those 5 nines (99.999% uptime). ECC focuses more on data accuracy which obviously is more important to a server environment. It might not be the fastest, but it dose provide that accuracy that is so important to businesses... Server components are all about redundancy and fault tolerance. Also for virtualization suites like ESXi it is very picky about what hardware it uses. While my home server might use consumer grade hardware, I had to kinda tweak the software to be able to run on the hardware. Edited October 23, 2011 by greengiant912 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 ECC is a must for any server. I don't think I'd overclock anything that was intended to be up 24/7 either. It's just not worth the downtime. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaporX Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 I think everyone here has hit the nail on the head, for a true server setup the advanatge that cost gives is a higher reliability and fault tolerance. However I would say that for many people it is possible to build a reliable server out ofd plain computer parts. I have done this for a few clients that needed a solid file server but needed to the costs kept low and we build a system using stock PC parts and years later they are still running fine. I do believe it is possible to build a server class computer using normal PC parts with care taken to use the best quality components you can get and worrying less about raw performance and more about quality. This question has been targetted for our First Saturday show coming up the 29th and we will look at this more indepth. It is a great question not just for the geek but for the small business owner and even home user looking at a home server. Thanks for an awesome show segment idea El! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
medbor Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 Also multisocket servers offer very much higher performance for some tasks than any single socket combination over Gbit lan ever would. Another thing worth noting is that server compnents can often fit into 1U or 2U cases, even with multiple processors, this is far more space efficient if you need much performance. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_bowtie Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 for me and my family the LAN/Network Performance has mattered much more than actual server performance.... for home media servers it doesnt matter if its an old single core or a 6 core CPU...the cycles are always minimal and the only thing that matters is the network speed to and from the server... so my money is better spent on Gigabit network gear than a server setup.... even on the old 10/100 set up I had and the old AM2 dual core set up down clocked to 1.8ghz I could still run 4 instance of movies to 6 different rigs and not get any stuttering on my movie...and the CPU on the server never went above 1% work load... even now I have a Quad core 955BE down clocked and a Gigabit set up and I never worry... same server been running for quite a good while.... for personal stuff in house i'd say a consumer PC/Hardware will do just fine... for mission critical stuff I;d probably start migrating to a server class board and CPU and hardware Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 for me and my family the LAN/Network Performance has mattered much more than actual server performance.... for home media servers it doesnt matter if its an old single core or a 6 core CPU...the cycles are always minimal and the only thing that matters is the network speed to and from the server... so my money is better spent on Gigabit network gear than a server setup.... even on the old 10/100 set up I had and the old AM2 dual core set up down clocked to 1.8ghz I could still run 4 instance of movies to 6 different rigs and not get any stuttering on my movie...and the CPU on the server never went above 1% work load... even now I have a Quad core 955BE down clocked and a Gigabit set up and I never worry... same server been running for quite a good while.... for personal stuff in house i'd say a consumer PC/Hardware will do just fine... for mission critical stuff I;d probably start migrating to a server class board and CPU and hardware Yeah for NAS stuff the speed of the disks is almost always the limiting factor. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
greengiant912 Posted October 23, 2011 Posted October 23, 2011 (edited) I think everyone here has hit the nail on the head, for a true server setup the advanatge that cost gives is a higher reliability and fault tolerance. However I would say that for many people it is possible to build a reliable server out ofd plain computer parts. I have done this for a few clients that needed a solid file server but needed to the costs kept low and we build a system using stock PC parts and years later they are still running fine. I do believe it is possible to build a server class computer using normal PC parts with care taken to use the best quality components you can get and worrying less about raw performance and more about quality. This question has been targetted for our First Saturday show coming up the 29th and we will look at this more indepth. It is a great question not just for the geek but for the small business owner and even home user looking at a home server. Thanks for an awesome show segment idea El! It really depends on what kind of business your utilizing this server for too... A small to medium sized business might be perfectly ok with regular PC components, at least until they start to grow. There are other options for small businesses too, such as managed services. Edited October 23, 2011 by greengiant912 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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