HEDT- a smart buy?

[Lepton87]

HEDT is supposed to be the high-end platform which is not focused at providing value at all but it occurred to me that in certain circumstances it is a great value much better than the mainstream platform. It seems that INTEL has taken some preventive measure to avoid that. I'm going to elucidate. I thought about putting my old unsold hardware to good use and build a computer for things like NAS, torrents and maybe HTCP along with a capability to run some games on the TV. So, my previous computer was a i7 2600K cooled by Noctua NH D14, ASUS ROG MAXIMUS IV. I sold the CPU but people offered me such a meager sum for the MOBO and the RAM modules that I decided to keep them. I sold very little hardware because I just hate selling my parts unless its something that's in demand and hold its value at least just a little bit like my previous CPU only then I sell. BTW. ROG mobos seem to hold their value exceptionally bad people were only going to offer me the same amount as for a cheap mobo with the same socket so it was only a tiny fraction of its sticker price. So for completing the build I need a CPU so I checked both new and used CPUs and it turns out CPUs for the socket 1155 are really expensive. Now I compared the prices to the HEDT CPUs from the same period and it turns out that the i5 2400 4C/4T 3.1/3.4 is the same price as the Xeon E5-2670 which is a 8c/16t 2.6 GHz/3.3 GHz so the Xeon probably offers a bit better ST performance due to its spacious cache and its MT performance is very close to my current CPU. So if someone intends to keep the computer for quite a while choosing the cheapest HEDT cpu and upgrading it later seems hard to bit in terms of value. Nowadays one needs to buy a motherboard with a C series mobo but it seems to be the right choice unless someone upgrade constantly. The slowing down of rapid improvement in CPU performance started a very interesting trend in terms of value. Servers are replaced in 4-6 years cadence and what used to be a time period in which CPUs improved tremendously is now only minor improvement by comparison. That made decommissioned server CPUs a very appealing piece of hardware. If that trend continues I'm going to stop buying new CPUs and I'll switch to 4 year old server CPUs for a tiny fraction of its asking price. If a CPU that cost 1500$ 4 years ago only costs 70$ with current pace of progress then that's what I'm going to buy. The biggest cost will be the entry cost of a new platform as you need to buy a good HEDT mobo that supports XEON CPUs and the cheapest CPU which is 400$. Still, that seems like a great choice as you would pay upwards of 300$ for a mainstream i7. What do you think?

 

[deanx0r]

It would only work if you are willing to buy on a used market with no warranties, spend the time doing research and hunting for all those parts. I am looking at your signature, and it really seems you like to tinker with high end gear. Would you be okay with tinkering with a X58 platform knowing what you have available now? It would be a hard sale for a hobbyist.

 

[Yuriman]

I agree that it's nice to get very cheap retired server CPUs, but I wonder if this won't go away within a generation or two. For instance, to my knowledge you can't use an 1151 Xeon in a non-C chipset motherboard. Hopefully this won't also begin to happen with HEDT, too.

 

[Lepton87]

It would only work if you are willing to buy on a used market with no warranties, spend the time doing research and hunting for all those parts. I am looking at your signature, and it really seems you like to tinker with high end gear. Would you be okay with tinkering with a X58 platform knowing what you have available now? It would be a hard sale for a hobbyist.

Yes I do like to tinker with hardware. X58 not really nehalem is too slow and it shows its age in a few games but I would probably be fine with SB-E.

I agree that it's nice to get very cheap retired server CPUs, but I wonder if this won't go away within a generation or two. For instance, to my knowledge you can't use an 1151 Xeon in a non-C chipset motherboard. Hopefully this won't also begin to happen with HEDT, too.

I already mentioned that in my post, the way out of this is to buy motherboards with C-series chipsets. Fortunately mobo makers already cater to that market with C-series consumer motherboards. Intel might lock business chipsets to Xeons and consumer chipsets to the Core line. Fortunately C series works with all CPUs.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I agree that it's nice to get very cheap retired server CPUs, but I wonder if this won't go away within a generation or two. For instance, to my knowledge you can't use an 1151 Xeon in a non-C chipset motherboard. Hopefully this won't also begin to happen with HEDT, too.

This will go away with SKL-E, I believe.

 

[jhu]

I agree that it's nice to get very cheap retired server CPUs, but I wonder if this won't go away within a generation or two. For instance, to my knowledge you can't use an 1151 Xeon in a non-C chipset motherboard. Hopefully this won't also begin to happen with HEDT, too.

For multiprocessor systems, there's no other choice than C chipsets.

Using cheap retired server CPUs in consumer grade motherboards will go away with Skylake. It took 4 years for the Xeon E5 2670 to reach rock bottom prices (I think it took about the same time those Westmere chips too), so I expect the same for subsequent generations (ie two more years for cheap Ivy Bridges, four more years for cheap Haswell).

 

[Denithor]

Go read these threads:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2464901
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2469531