Looking to do a fairly inexpensive (<$700) build for a software compilation server. Have a large C++ project (thousands of files), and compiling is heavily compute bound on my current Haswell (4670K) system.
So far, I'm leaning toward building a dual socket Westmere (LGA 1366) system from mostly secondhand parts. I see that 6 core Westmere Xeons are pretty inexpensive on eBay ($130 for a 2.9GHZ X5670), and dual socket 1366 motherboards from SuperMicro can be had for $120 or so. I figure $200 for RAM and SSD, and $100 for Case and PSU should should keep me well within budget. My thinking is that 12 cores, even if each is 30% slower than the current Haswell, should cut my build times at least in half.
Wondering if anybody has any better ideas though. I know AMD has inexpensive 8 core options, but my understanding is that the IPC there is much lower than even the 1st generation Core i{5,7} architecture.
Thanks!
So far, I'm leaning toward building a dual socket Westmere (LGA 1366) system from mostly secondhand parts. I see that 6 core Westmere Xeons are pretty inexpensive on eBay ($130 for a 2.9GHZ X5670), and dual socket 1366 motherboards from SuperMicro can be had for $120 or so. I figure $200 for RAM and SSD, and $100 for Case and PSU should should keep me well within budget. My thinking is that 12 cores, even if each is 30% slower than the current Haswell, should cut my build times at least in half.
Wondering if anybody has any better ideas though. I know AMD has inexpensive 8 core options, but my understanding is that the IPC there is much lower than even the 1st generation Core i{5,7} architecture.
Thanks!
