Need help evaluating a Xeon E5-2670 workstation at eBay

[vkiuru]

I was looking at this workstation:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z800-LC-2x-X5680-96GB-RAM-500GB-SSD-6TB-HDD-Quadro-6000-Tesla-C2075-Win-7-/291753617232?hash=item43eddee750:g:MIAAAMXQWzNSiAAT

Could one of you more up to date with the technological stuff and price/quality please give me some estimates about this rig overall - my main goal is to get 96GB-128GB RAM, and I checked the CPUs out at Corona benchmark results and they seem to be pretty solid but am I in the right ballpark regarding the price? Also I've never owned a Quadro card - are these beneficial in 3DS Max viewport when dealing with large polygon counts?

I would really appreciate help with this, I'm not too great with numbers to begin with and got started on a heavy epilepsy medication 2 months ago, it seems to really crush my attention span and make precise things like these even more harder. The one thing that bothers me is the 96GB RAM. I know I'd regret it up until I upgraded to 128GB which if I understood right would not even be an option with this motherboard. I should mention apart from the rig being pretty effective (as far as I understand these things:) one thing that has me leaning on this specific seller is that he offers quick shipping to Finland.. for a price of course but all in all I'd rather not wait weeks as I have some heavy duty projects starting right now and would desperately need the extra rendering power ASAP.

So please, guys and girls.. could you please help me out here.. am I making a mistake ordering this rig, or is the price ok? and if it is, as a eBay newbie I'm left wondering if there are any shortcuts to getting the same kind of deal with the quick shipping BUT with the full 128GB RAM? :)

[Juraj]

Hi,

are you sure you provided a correct link ? You linked to  X5680, not E5-2670. And one which costs 2700 dollars :- O  ( for total old garbage can )

X5680 is 30perc. weaker than 2670v1, it's previous generation before SandyBridge came out. And it's quite old by now. Still a solid performer.

It has 96GB because X5680 is Tripple-channel, as opposed to quad-channel of all following chipsets that came after it. 2670v1 can be with 128GB just fine, it needs 8x16 GB ECC modules.

Quadro cards DO NOT ( don't trust anyone who writes otherwise ) provide ANY benefit compared to 'same-architecture' GTX counterpart ( For example Quadro M6000 is Titan-X with x5 price difference ) for 3dsMax with nitrous viewport running on DirectX 11.
Quadro cards do have many benefits, but not for media CGI/DCC aps like use. They have ECC memory, dual-precision floating point calculation (actually, since it's the same card, this feature is in GTX too, just crippled ), 14bit LUT support (same story, GTX also "would" have it if it wasn't locked ), specialized OpenGl driver (more useful for developers, and specialized niche CAD suites like Siemens NXT or Catia ), and dev support from nVidia.

The above linked workstation has Quadro 6000 (don't confuse with newer K6000 and M6000, these are drastically different, different generation cards ), which was computational workhorse with lot of memory..... in 2010. It's 7 years old card with incredibly low performance compared to 100 euro GTX 750. So it's OK, but... nothing special.

Sorry about the meds. Hope the jobs are not too stressful.

[vkiuru]

Hi Juraj thanks for the reply!

Damn, that would be the meds in effect.. :D I meant to post this link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z620-Workstation-2x-E5-2670-96GB-RAM-500GB-SSD-2TB-HDD-Quadro-K5000-Win-7-x64/301759525643?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D37577%26meid%3D9b9aaab3ee8f469c90ae59be9c8db390%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D4%26sd%3D301759546371

Does that make any more sense? BTW thanks, I'm ok with the meds I just figured since my own processing power is a bit off for some time it would be refreshing to have a workstation that wasn't so sluggish the minute I dropped too many and too heavy Forest Objects in to the scene ;)

I appreciate the response. The part about Quadro especially, I guess since the seller offers a chance to customize the build I could ask a delivery without the card since I currently have a 980TI which performs just fine and I guess there would be enough room for a SLI system assuming Max could make use of it. So did I understand you correctly about the RAM triple/quad-channel part, the processors provided in this new link would support the 128GB? so maybe I could try and negotiate about that part with the seller, too.

[Juraj]

The price is very steep for 2x2670v1, probably because of the K5000 quadro. Use your 980ti, it is 3 times faster card in pure DirectX performance (12k vs 4k passmark score). That's not 3 times faster in 3dsMax, but that's 3dsMax (it would be in perfectly scaling Maya viewport 2.0 ).

Try to get it without SSD/HDD. Don't use second hand storage drives, you don't know what kind of usage they had and you can buy much newer, better options for cheap. 500GB Samsung 850 EVO will be absolute superior to whatever old crap is in this, and it's 150 euro disc. And safe to use for future.
Without GPU and discs, I would still not pay more than 900 euros for it (price for which you can buy used 128 GB DDR3 ECC, 2x2670 used, and new PSU,Case ).

[vkiuru]

The price is very steep for 2x2670v1, probably because of the K5000 quadro. Use your 980ti, it is 3 times faster card in pure DirectX performance (12k vs 4k passmark score). That's not 3 times faster in 3dsMax, but that's 3dsMax (it would be in perfectly scaling Maya viewport 2.0 ).

Try to get it without SSD/HDD. Don't use second hand storage drives, you don't know what kind of usage they had and you can buy much newer, better options for cheap. 500GB Samsung 850 EVO will be absolute superior to whatever old crap is in this, and it's 150 euro disc. And safe to use for future.
Without GPU and discs, I would still not pay more than 900 euros for it (price for which you can buy used 128 GB DDR3 ECC, 2x2670 used, and new PSU,Case ).

Yeah about that 900 euros budget - I read your article mentioning the same price range and was just rushing in there to ask if it would be doable to follow your basic guidelines for the rendering node build but just change the structure so that I'd get Xeons that are way more efficient than my current i7 and also support 128GM RAM :) I'm gonna explore that option now starting from hunting down those 2670 Xeons. Your information has been invaluable, I now have a starting point I feel more secure with so thank you, again, for your time! I'll update this thread if I have more questions but right it's eBay-time :)

[Juraj]

Do not hunt 2670 xeons, there are still thousands of them, tens of thousands.

But finding a cheap board is the crucial part :- ) I should have maybe stress that more, doing otherwise is lotery.

[Freakaz]

From personal experience with used HP z620. I've got mine for 920 euro without useless GPU, with half dead HDD, and 32 gigs of ram, later updated to 64 for +~70 euro. After a month of heavy usage the motherboard got cooked, luckily there's a warranty so will send for a replacement. Google says, that HP mobo's like to burn. Also they have 18 pin power connectors which excludes any usage of third party PSU's. Did not replace the coolers, and the originals are louder than a vacuum-cleaner working @full power. I'd advise to build something according to Juraj's guide and have a decent half new workstation rather than used Z620 with a chance that it'll burn on you two days before a deadline.     

[vkiuru]

Ouch, ok.. thanks guys :) I found this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2x-Intel-Xeon-E5-2670-SR0KX-CPU-2-6GHz-Eight-Core-Processor-20MB-Smart-Cache/401130447014?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D37256%26meid%3De85fee52fe1c48ca9ee97bcecec57e19%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D122003013868

Now according to my very limited knowledge that doesn't seem like a bad deal? Why I'm leaning towards it is because there's a slight chance it would ship during this week. Keeping in mind this would be a workstation build, I'm leaning on the  Asus Z9PE-D8 WS which Juraj mentioned. The cheapest I've found it new in Finland is 517€, reducing 24% VAT from it and I think it's bearable. Two parts down, maybe? :P the case and the 128MB RAM would be the next challenge.

Thanks again! and please, do try to warn me if it looks like I'm going off the rails with this :)

[Freakaz]

Do you realy need 128 gigs of ram? Asus Z9PE-D8 WS has 8 ram slots so 8x16 gb sticks which is somewhere around 80$ per piece will considerably increase the overall price of your workstation.

[vkiuru]

Yeah well I'm obsessed with getting more and more detail packed into renderings and with Exlevel trees and Forest Pack I'd really like to see the leap from 32GB to 128GB. That's assuming the gain is pretty much linear.

[vkiuru]

To continue on the subject, would this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-128GB-16x8GB-HP-500205-071-501536-001-PC3-10600R-ECC-DDR3-1333MHz-/262381330099?hash=item3d17255eb3:g:D5IAAOSwIzNXPYi2 work with the Asus Z9PE-D8 WS?

[Freakaz]

you'd need 8x16 gb, not 16x8 gb

[vkiuru]

Ah, sorry. Gotta be more careful.. thanks :)