Building a Dual-CPU Behemoth from Used Server Parts, ft. CaseLabs & Old Xeons

We bought a bunch of used or cheap parts (then asked for a few more) to build a dual-Xeon CPU transcoding machine with 48 threads from just $600.
Ad: Buy EVGA's GTX 1660 XC Ultra on Amazon (geni.us/Yx8Cc8R or SC Ultra geni.us/cnlD8w7)
This dual-Xeon build has been more of a passion project for us than anything. It's the equivalent of a "project car," and uses an eclectic mix of parts from dead companies (CaseLabs SMA-8) and from failed launches (EVGA SR-X), with the rest of the parts filled-in from decommissioned servers. We're using dual Xeon X5-2697v2 processors (12C/24T c. 2013), 64GB of ECC DDR3 1866MHz memory, an EVGA SR-X, CaseLabs case, and some filler parts. This video is one part history piece, one part build log, and one part benchmarks. We need to do something cool with this enclosure, too.
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Host, Editorial: Steve Burke
Editorial, Testing: Patrick Lathan
Video: Andrew Coleman
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[@GamersNexus]

Grab the GN toolkit here: store.gamersnexus.net/products/gamersnexus-tear-down-toolkit Watch TiN explain loadline and voltage here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGPHonunod6Kn9E

[@dongurudebro4579]

@Gamers Nexus LOL i edited my comment right at the moment you gave it a heart and now the heart is gone - did you know that that will happen? :D

[@tmi1234567]

Can we please see how the 3900X does against these cpu's? I would love to see how these compare.

[@chuvachokish]

On new China 2011 motherboards available 8 channel RAM (4 per CPU x2) btw. Check it!

[@DrProfMrGenTom]

to get the chinese board to work, did you ever move the com jumper? I know most dual gpu boards have a set of jumpers above the VRM's. usually its 4 poles and if not configured properly, then the two cpu's will or will not be able to talk to each other.

[@Admiral__]

Please keep doing what you're doing guys. You are amazing!

[@chikennuget3634]

the words under X79 on that chinese motherboard literally mean ‘pair of roads’, roughly translated to ‘dual socket’

[@GamersNexus]

Very cool. Thank you!

[@rednammoc]

Perhaps "two way" is the more applicable translation in this context.

[@ec1021501]

The phase of “two roads” also use in China as be the translation of “dual socket” and “duel channel memory”. BTW, The Chinese wrote all over the heatsink are crap like “we got the best technology “ and “we have good quality and durability”

[@linuxsubsystem1638]

双=dual/two/double/pair 路=road/way so i think it means "two ways" originally

[@ChadDidNothingWrong]

@@linuxsubsystem1638 It's just a term they use for dual socket I guess

[@techyescity]

OOoOOoo Steve, more Xeon content

[@thelostgeneration]

Been watching your videos in the interest of putting together a server build for Blender rendering. Do you guys have any data on how these perform for that? I believe Blender is a bit more GPU intensive but wanted to get your take. Thanks!

[@voxelfusion9894]

Luckily the forum guy at 13:25 didn't just say "Nerver mind, I've figured it out.", leaving it at that.

[@recreationalplutonium]

On StackOverflow that thread would have been closed as "not relevant" a long time ago and all comments would have been deleted because they "don't contribute".

[@stefanmisch5272]

Good gut, forum guy 😊

[@imkow]

Huananzhi, lterally means Made In South China. Chinese brand name: Huanan Jinpai , literally means "the gold brand from South China". A new brand started in 2010s which's famous for their new motherboards for old Xeons. In mid 2010s China used to import tons of old server hardware as electric trash for recycling. Meanwhile some PC geeks began to look into those trash parts and figured out ways to reuse them they discovered padding 771 xeons that works on 775 motherboard. then they started to make new x58 , x79 mobos with mysterious chipsets. the brand is for the PC geeks..or nicknamed trash collector Lajilao in Chinese.

[@GamersNexus]

Awesome! Thank you for the history.

[@-eMpTy-]

I still wonder how they make their x79 mainboards for example. Do they get the chipsets from Intel? Do they rip them out of old server mainboard and somehow transfer them onto the new boards?

[@Ty4ons]

It’s so awesome to see them take use of the old stuff. A few years back it was so frustrating to see all the cheap i7 920s for sale that were basically useless because the boards cost three times as much.

[@-eMpTy-]

@Martin M I know. Steve also mentioned that in the video. But how do they get the C600 series chipsets?

[@Godfrey180]

@@-eMpTy- Those are probably recycled chips from old servers

[@dongurudebro4579]

Glad you decided to make a main Channel video out of that - really apricate that. "A little Linus" like Video like that is very welcome. You could even do more small parts like that in a mini series while doing the project. I really enjoyed the more professional approach to that.

[@isfire8141]

Me too I like this fun type of content also, Thanks

[@Stryder_The_Nite_Owl]

I liked that Steve showed how difficult it can be to get old hardware working together, especially if you are coming in not necessarily knowing absolutely everything about what you're doing. The average consumer would have spent several times to get the end result, which would have resulted in an overall cost greater than a new modern system, which Steve demonstrated very well.

[@CraftComputing]

The problem was definitely the ES vs Retail chips. You can match two like chips together, but even the same SKUs will not work if not identical. I've been using the Huananzhi dual board for about 4 months and it's working just fine, if you ignore the dual channel memory. That said, I'm super jealous of the SR-X board, even with its history.

[@biocapsule7311]

I have seen your clip on the dual x79, been thinking on gambling on a cheap board just to experiment. But I was wondering why both of you purchase your board and cpu separately, not sure whether it does back in 2018, Aliexpress currently has entire sets that include board, cpus and rams. Apparently one of them have 8 dimm slots.

[@AIC_onyt]

All of my fav xeon channes here Tjc and you

[@maxcowgill3249]

I built a dual 10-core Xeon system for a customer using an SR-X board way back in the day. Spent 10 grand on the thing. That was one heck of a content creation workstation. To my knowledge he's still using it today.

[@samborton6613]

This was really really fun, and I absolutely loved it

[@Jasa12265]

Holy shit. A value build that a KZbinr actually USES for a functional purpose?

[@azzazz4408]

Great project Steve!!, great effort to put it all together.

[@matthewkuhl79]

i love this kind of thing - determination! This keeps me going when my projects aren't smooth like silk

[@piers389]

I really enjoyed this video and the project. If you do any more odd projects in the future, please make a small series - it's fun!

[@ajc-th5ei]

For another project, you could try picking up some cheap Epyc first gen ES CPUs, then try using ZenStates from Elmor or do RW-Everything to change the registers to OC them. Sometimes you need older BIOS to use it with the ES samples, but this is just a thought (plus a hell of a server after doing it). See this on OCing Epyc: forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/overclock-your-amd-epyc.23422/

[@hi_tech_reptiles]

This sounds fascinating, especially the process to unlock etc.

[@virtualtools_3021]

can oc epyc!!!! very epic

[@DaveKeil]

Awesome. Glad you did this. I've got a machine like that and the relative benchmarks were instructive

[@ChristianStout]

I love this kind of stuff. More old 'n busted server builds, please.

[@busybaron754]

I have one of those dual x79 huananzhi mother boards from Ali express for only $97 dollars delivered when using a few coupons which are readily available Then I got hold of 2x 2690 xeons for free from a throw away server 16 cores and 32 threads for peanuts

[@GamersNexus]

Wow! Good setup.

[@spacy9571]

@@GamersNexus how is my setup(value wise) E5 2689(2690 basically) 50$ Huanan x79 75$ 4x4 1866 32$ Cx 650 50$ Rx580 121$

[@alexskywalker888]

@@spacy9571 Probably would have been better off getting a refurbished Optiplex with an i7 and standard ATX PSU for $200. Can find them with a 3770 all day long on eBay.

[@spacy9571]

@@alexskywalker888 lol what my cpu matches i7 3770 in single core and eats it in multi score

[@MarshallSambell]

@@spacy9571 how does that PC game?

[@shadowr2d2]

Yes I love this idea. Finding old Tech Hardware. To than give it new life. Plus we learn new stuff along the way. So yes please make more videos like this..

[@Snowmirage6453]

I recently finished a full build with an EVGA SR-2! Glad you saved this thing as well :)

[@RayBen555]

Running X58 Classified 1st Gen with 980x and GTX1070 at 1440p... It works. Almost 10 years on and still steaming strong. Gaming and Render work.

[@Pasi123]

I have an Asus P6X58D-E and Xeon X5670 (6c/12t) @ 4.4GHz in my main PC. I'm planning to buy a GTX 1070 or 1070 Ti for it. Currently I have a piece of garbage GTX 960 2GB

[@RayBen555]

​@@Pasi123 Nice combo. Ye the 1070 or 1070Ti is as far as you can go with a X58 setup before running into serious bottlenecking.

[@PeterBrockie]

Love the 2697v2, I put two into a Supermicro server board recently for under a grand and they kick ass for running VMs under ESXi - FreeNAS, Pfsense, Windows 10 for Plex, and a few cores leftover for DietPi (Pi-Hole). It's somewhat rare in the Xeon world (at least for back then) in that it has lots of cores AND decent clock speed while running them.

[@peepzorz]

Wow, I'm literally planning on finishing up a dual socket E5-2697 v2 box today. I used a HP Z620 workstation which has a weird riser board option that the 2nd chip goes on. Put the first 2697 in there a few days ago and was just waiting on some more thermal paste for the 2nd CPU, which came in today. Good to know I'm not entirely insane for considering this sort of build. Wish me luck!

[@joer8854]

This is actually very useful to someone like me because I'm going to be looking to build a few servers from some old server parts for my home. It may not be exciting to some but it's much needed for people like me.

[@PokèMyBalls]

*This is why I love I.T, you never have to be alone in solving your problem with the community behind you*

[@jerwinsamuel]

You deserve more subscribers. This channel is just heaven for a PC build nerd. great video :)

[@mr.indecision]

Missed you guys these last few days. Good to see you again

[@adomasz.3958]

This is so my thing! I loved it! Doing same thing all the time just with waaaay cheaper parts!

[@LowSpecActionSquad]

You have entered my territory! Welcome to dual CPU growing pains! I wish I had known you needed help, I do this sort of building literally ALL the time and I probably could have given you some helpful pointers.

[@ScottFitton]

Between this and the Craft Computing video, it's nice to see some X79 content out there. Nothing like messing around with more interesting hardware, and this certainly hits that sweet spot.

[@StingyGeek]

Ripper content. Thankyou. Worthwhile to understand what these old CPU's are good for.

[@Tiki832]

Definitely enjoyed this video and the particular type of content. Interestingly timed in that Jayz just pushed out a current xenon benchmarking video showing it hitting 5400-5500 cenebench and at the same time word broke out about the 3950x hitting a new record with cenebench scores around 5500. It's certainly a good time to be doing this kind of content especially when it also crosses over into looking at less consumer targeted hardware.

[@IoNoobMaster]

Awesome piece, please do more of this restoration stuff.

[@Num1shark]

Still running a SR-2 motherboard (bought all the way back in 2011). 👍

[@geort45]

Unlike the SRX, SR2 did overclock

[@Andrew260RS]

I remember this board. I was going to buy it. I love it so much. I wanted to get 2x Xeons and the old memory Corsair Dominator GT. The memory where you could put water blocks on the top. Imagine 2x ek waterblocks and 4x memory waterblocks. I did so much research on this and sadly didn’t go ahead with the build. This is a blast from the past!!

[@tarfeef_4268]

Yes, definitely find this interesting!!! Would love to see more on it

[@k3salieri]

Hell yeah! Love dual socket systems!! Perhaps Kingpin or Derbauer can help figure out unlocking the Xeons? Be amazing to see these things pushed under LN2.

[@RetroTinkerer]

Very interesting to see this old super high end platform in today context! Thanks!

[@GAKtion64]

It looks like a really cool desktop but feels like a house of cards. Good content and Godspeed!

[@Lord_Flashheart_Woof]

That's ½ hour I'll never get back. I love it!

[@nikmilosevic1696]

This video definitely scratched a niche itch I had, awesome!

[@alanp621]

Just picked up a 2697 v2, a sabertooth mobo, and 32 gigs of ram for 150 bucks total and BAM this comes out. I'm stoked!

[@TylertheGeek28]

Great video Steve, I like seeing older hardware.. I built a x99 10 core Xeon rig last year for rendering/streaming and never put it to use lol

[@EposVox]

Ayyy nice, I did a dual X5560 build a few years back and it was quite handy for a little while. The SR2 and SRX boards were dream boards of mine back in the day and made a similar series on it. Did you ever watch the channel "Maxishine" back in 2009-2011? He was an Australian trucker who did a bunch of over-the-top gaming PC builds, including both of those boards, and had some of the most epic PC building content long before LTT/etc. got big. Miss that kind of scene.

[@reggiechestnut]

how much was it and would it be okay for audio only production

[@Appri]

I'm actually working on a x5690 SR-2 build right now :)

[@mofomanx10]

Love Maxishine - He was the only guy real going nuts on SLI and Crossfire

[@MazeFrame]

The troubleshooting you went through is what I refer to as "Dud hunting" Epic story and build though. Well worth it.

[@Ray13star]

"Golf Clap for workstation load" great job again GN!

[@HowDidThisHappenNow]

that workstation V.S. Rassberry Pi cluster of equal worth

[@101m4n]

Actually evaluated a pi cluster in terms of price performance vs used server hardware. Had a budget of about £700 ($900 ish I guess?). The pi's were way more energy efficient, but actually slower per dollar. Ended up building a cluster out of old lga1366 storage servers instead. Managed to get 5 servers each with 12 cores 24 threads and 24gb of ram. Having pcie slots is also nice.

[@gustavgustaffson9553]

101m4n that’s a heck of a value for 900 dollars tho

[@101m4n]

@@gustavgustaffson9553 Well, aside from the power bill. It idles at 300 watts and draws close to 1300 at full bore. Heats the room up something awful. It's also a major kludge. Like, threaded rod and plywood levels of kludge.

[@igorpecovnik]

@@101m4n ... Raspberry Pi is way less energy efficient than competitive products twitter.com/armbian/status/1021691429469515776

[@paulvenn4447]

The SR-2 and SR-X were such amazing boards.

[@carl3710]

Epyc: I'm about to end this board's whole career.

[@GamersNexus]

It'd be sort of sad if it didn't, seeing as this released in 2013.

[@jakey4931]

@@GamersNexus it's still newer than mine (2007)

[@thegteam5091]

Not really this board is legendary I would love to buy one

[@DenGuleBalje]

@@thegteam5091 Mostly just for the fun of tinkering, not really for an actual workstation. I would love to have either an SR-2 or an SR-X. Beast motherboards.

[@EnlightenedSavage]

Not for the price

[@herrskymarshall]

I know you guys probably think weird or OP computer builds is pretty saturated on KZbin but really like you guys doing builds because your knowledge and point of views are completely different than most other channels doing builds.

[@matt4ck749]

Love seeing X79 content. I'm running an i7 3930k at 4.7Ghz in an Asus Rampage iv Gene motherboard. I picked up an EVGA X79 Classified originally but it's a bit voltage hungry (from my understanding it was aimed more at XOC).

[@d00dEEE]

Yeah, I like this stuff a lot. I'm building an X58 i7-950 from parts I found in the back room at work a couple months ago. Just got a Zalman "turbo" cooler for it, so it's at least going to look cool. Not sure what the case is (Antec or Rosewill), but it has more holes than metal, so should be really good for airflow when I get the rust off and repaint it.

[@grahamdougherty226]

Love the restoration work keep the vids coming.

[@billybutcher420]

Love the content, learning and discovering some interesting things, thanks.

[@dangoldbach6570]

To your question "Do you guys like this content" I dig it, there's something compelling about finding gold in the dumpster! Obviously you focus on gaming performance with a name like gamers Nexus but I'd like to see you guys build a video editing rig up for cheap, something that would be good at crushing davinci resolve for example

[@ghomerhust]

restoration content=frankenstein builds, which i find very entertaining. ive recently been recreating my vintage and very vintage gaming builds (vanilla WoW dual core amd build and original p3 slot 1 866 build with insane old asus mobo) so grabbing old hardware and seeing just what you can squeeze out of it is just my thing. i love that sort of stuff.

[@TheRealFobican]

Seeing the layout of the motherboard with two CPUs at once, I would say an ideal conecpt for building a case around it is to mount the motherboard flat with the backside pointing downwards in the center of the frame. As for the cooling, put two big passive CPU coolers only to have a Noctua fan modified to have a huge diameter blowing fresh air throught the entire board to keep it chilled.

[@marcosoliveira8731]

I am planning building one two socket xeon also. Glad found this video.

[@vackillers]

this was frigging amazing!!! yes please do more :D wow what a story

[@theaian7321]

Oh lord! I remember my sr-2 rig!! So wish i could post pictures, had an external 3x 360 rad rig and 2x 6 core xeon with 64gb ddr3 🤣 Feels ages ago!

[@artyknotswastaken]

Compiling results in render time huh. you learn something new every day

[@shocka007]

I recommend a pair of fluffy dice hanging in the case and gofaster fire stripes on the sides, bound to improve performance outta this world. I enjoyed it

[@christophweber5688]

These nostalgia projects are awesome.

[@CCISolitude]

Love it, the only time I've personally had a dual socket system was back in the heady days of Intel PIII (Katmai i think) circa 1999'ish. Being really just a gamer these days, doesn't seem any point for it at home.

[@CopperPopperComputers]

When you mash Steve + NOSTALGIC HARDWARE = trolling modern cpus and other related hardware. Love it

[@Tomasu82]

I did something similar several years ago. Built a Dual Socket G34 Opteron system. 2 16 core bulldozer based CPUs and 128GB ram.

[@raddysurrname7944]

that sounds ridiculous lol. Can't imagine how that system would perform.

[@megapro125]

@@raddysurrname7944 turning it on probably ends in a fire and a power outage for his entire city.

[@plonk420]

@@megapro125 thumbed that up even as an AMD fan (owned them from Slot A 750 up to Phenom II ... with a gap until Ryzen)

[@Asdayasman]

I feel like good representative benchmarks for programming tasks would be things like running the test suite on large projects like django and react.

[@turks1966]

Cool when you do these kind of builds very interesting. As an idea, let's see what you can build with hardware that's out-date(ten years old) that can be overclocked, might be fun to see, if you can get it to work. :)

[@jackjohnson3868]

I appreciate the vid. I'll be building a rig in the next few months and was curious about a dual xeon set up.

[@jean3030]

Obscenely interesting I would do this stuff forever.

[@lazerusmfh]

I Ran An EVGA SR2 When i finally switched to a AMD Ryzen system. Loved the old EVGA Classified boards, they were wicked. Crazy thing is i sold the board for the EXACT same price i paid, about $630 dollars back in 2015 when i bought it.

[@Bareego]

Just ordered a similar setup but with 2*E5-2676 Xeons on a dual X99 board. The board is massive... took me a while to find a case that can house my 305x300mm board

[@tollph3314]

Some older Xeons like for socket 1366: x56XX from 2010 can be bought extremely cheap(30$) and most importantly are unlocked . And they perform really great

[@Trick-Framed]

Love that you covered this!

[@AshtonCoolman]

I can't wait to see the Ryzen 3000 CPUs put through this benchmark suite. I'm extra excited for their release now.

[@mduckernz]

Seriously, this waiting is absolute torture. June needs to end! Now!

[@SpeedWeed97]

I would LOVE a sr 2 ln2 oc video

[@twmbarlwmstar]

Keep doing this type of stuff, nice change from the Ryzen spin.

[@geonerd]

I went the Opteron route with my 24c dual project. 12 core 6100 series chips are about ten bucks each! Supermicro Mobo for $125, $15 power supply, etc. :)

[@Tom5TomEntertainment]

I very much enjoy things like this since newer server hardware is a little out of my price range.

[@CoalitionGaming]

Old Xeons? I'm here! Where's the YES man? Just finished a recent build using an E5-2667v2 (fantastic frequencies for an ivy bridge 8 core from 2013) and my main build uses an E5-1650v2 (aka i7-4930k) OC'd to 4.5ghz. Xeons ftw!

[@johnbuscher]

Isn't the V2 Ivy Bridge? Not Haswell/Devil's Canyon?

[@CoalitionGaming]

@@johnbuscher that's correct. 4930k is ivy bridge.

[@epic_clint]

I love the e5-16xx Xeons. Current game setup is a x99 with a e5-1630v4. Waiting to take delivery of a 2700x to see how it compares though...

[@jb678901]

Have three XEON rigs in the home. Mine is based on ASUS P9X79Pro (local purchase $20) and an E5-1650V2 (local purchase $60, OC to 4.44 Ghz on air) plus 32GB non-EEC 1600 DDR3 RAM (OC to 1866MHz). Eldest child is using HuanaZhi X79 Deluxe (w/C602 chipset) plus E5-4627V2 (8C/8T, all core 3.5Ghz) and 32GB R-EEC 1600 DDR3 (OC 1866MHz). Youngest has a DELL Precision T5600 with Dual E5-2667 (all core 3.1GHz) and 32GB R-EEC 1600 DDR3. The HuananZhi are really not OC friendly, so the locked E5-4627V2 is perfect...keeping cool and the VRM's less stressed. Although, I still use an 80mm RGB fan on the VRM heatsink for safe measure with this motherboard. Mine is for home office use and WoT play in 1080P from time to time. Kids...it's Fortnite, of course. All of these rigs handle 1080P fine. Mine, with a GTX980, eldest with the RX570 8GB and the youngest...a GTX970OC. That rig already had an 825W DELL modular power supply. Managed to get them all built/upgraded with a budget of $1200 (had some fantastic local deals plus the Dell was a legitimate company decommissioning that I received for free). That included two new CoolerMaster Masterbox Pro RGB cases that came with 3RGB+1 fan each. Two new power supplies (650 Bronze), a couple of SSD's, one NVME M.2 for the HuananZhi primary/boot drive, and a few single use Win10Pro licenses.

[@LaOguldon]

Was scary seeing that XR-X board, I still have mine, all the time talking to EVGA trying to get it to work, you could tell they never wanted to talk about it and the underlying problems they had with it.

[@smeebs]

Hard to explain how awesome I think this vid is. Super great job, guys. I think it boils down to how fun/enthusiast the Linus-style concept is crossed with the always fantastic GN-style structure, execution, and rigorous testing. Plus, I think the fun you had on this project pours through in the energy of your presentation.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

雙路 in Traditional Chinese or 双路 in Simplified Chinese is Dual Channel, I think it's possible because it only supports Dual Channel RAM.

[@Renderman-Official]

Great Content! Would love to see more. I'm still running my Asus P9X79-E WS and a Xeon E5-1680v2 (8 cores at 4.5ghz) and it runs great! I dont feel any need to upgrade.

[@natr0n]

Watching this on my dual xeon system. Fun times.

[@DenGuleBalje]

My dream motherboard. That or the SR-2. They're still EXTREMELY expensive so it really doesn't make any sense compared to just getting something like a 2970WX but there's something about dual CPU systems that is extremely appealing

[@OldCircuitGaming]

Currently running an E5 1650 on a "Classic" EVGA X79 Classified. Its pretty much on par with the Ryzen 1600 clock for clock. i managed to push it to 4.8Ghz but now run it comfortably at 4.0Ghz with ram at 2666Mhz

[@ALulzyApprentice]

My brain began to melt around 12:30. Dayum Man!

[@ShaneSimpson1]

I was just about to build one of these now I know the old xeons are skyrocketing in price with all the tech channels covering them

[@rudysal1429]

Dang that sucks because I also am looking into building a server

[@ShaneSimpson1]

@@rudysal1429 yeah prices on the old Sandy bridge and ivy bridge xeons have gone up around 30-50$ and so has the mobos

[@Sheltada]

this was interesting. I would be cool to see even more retro, thought interesting hardware, like some of the stuff buildzoid goes over on his channel. Maybe build 'the ultimate 2009 overclocking/gaming setup"

[@LordMustangGT93]

great video! just like to start out there. I'd like to add, that I've been looking into dual 2011 mobo's, x79/x99. The 12c v3 are the same priced used as a v2, so in turn, it would of been the same price to get the new stuff. That being said as well, you could then upgrade them later to the 2799v3 18 core or the 22c later on. Thats were Im at right now. Asus Z10PE-D16/ or the 8, are not badly price in the 300 dollar range.

[@EricErnst]

I love tuning up old oddball stuff. Cheapish and fun. Besides, who can afford to do that when all of the high end stuff is new?

[@johngermain5146]

I built a like system with two E52670 v2 xeon processor @$171 for both. I used an AsRock RACK motherboard and used two NOCTUA 3u coolers. It works like a champ and is awesome to look at.

[@carvitup]

So cool to see this posting now considering it is very similar to my exact build that I made in November of 2018 when I saw newegg run a sale on the ASROCKRACK EP2C602-4L/D16 for $200 during black friday. Asrockrack EP2C602-4L/D16 ($200) Intel Xeon E5-2697v2 x2 ($274.5 x 2) 128GB DDR3 1600Mhz (8x16GB) ECC Registered ($240) Phanteks Enthoo Pro TG PH-ES614PTG_BK ($109) Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO x2 Refurbished ($17 x 2) ADATA SU800 1TB 3D NAND SSD x2 ($119 x 2) Shucked WD 10TB White Label x 6 ($179 x 6) WD Red Label 4TB x 4 (already had) EVGA Supernova 1200 P2 80+ Platinum (Had to upgrade to fix power issues $239) I'm running UnRAID on it and loving every minute of using it.

[@StaK_1980]

I was always fascinated with dual socket boards (abit 's bp6 , anyone?) . I'd love to have a board like that! Sadly though, I don't think I could utilise it's potential to the fullest. More content like this please!

[@JasonStevens]

I have that board. I used a pair of f E5-2620 v2 Xeons to see if it worked. I got them for $20 USD each as they are 2Ghz parts. With that working, I upgraded to a pair of E5-2667 v2's and have been working fine ever since. The dual proc boards seem to be memory sensitive. I loaded mine out 100% identical with the ECC ram. The memory controller is on the CPU, it's logical that for multiple processors it'd require ECC RAM, as that is what all the servers of the era required. Shame you had so many issues, it's a great / cheap board, especially after the last price drops.

[@ericwood3709]

Reminds me of the circa 2010-2012 Mac Pro. Those sport dual Xeons and DDR3, and would presumably perform pretty comparably to this thing.

[@smbu]

The 2013 Mac Pro (trashcan) uses the same ivy bridge-based E5 V2 Xeons, albeit with only one of them as there is only one CPU socket. The top upgrade option for it is the exact same 12 core E5-2697 V2 Xeon.

[@z0mb1e564]

Interesting vid, I've been thinking about buying an old Xeon server off ebay for encoding, running a Plex server, and maybe some gaming servers too. I'd love to see this workstation compared to the new Ryzen 3k series once you get your hands on those.

[@johnnythegeek]

Newegg still sells the AsRock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16 brand new for $200 on sale. I have one using 2x2690 xeons. It's an EEB size board and the cheapest compatible case I got was the Phanteks Enthoo Pro for $100.

[@LosDuervo]

After about 7-8 years of almost 24x7 uptime (just reboots due to updates,) I finally got rid of my EVGA SR-2 motherboard about 8 months ago. I ran a VMware home lab on that thing, and it earned its way and then some during that time.

[@bereanacademygamingclub4482]

For our VR and streaming, we use a system with two Xeon E5 2667 CPUs in a Gigabyte GA 7PESH1 Rev. 1.0. That board is way friendlier to work with. No OC capability besides taking memory to forced 1866 Mhz. It also works with normal DDR3. We've got 8 sticks of 4GB crucial balistix in there. Despite our use case being gaming targeted, the CPU's are plenty fast enough with a base of 2.9 and a boost of 3.5. Faster clocks would be better, but they're still an upgrade over our old X5680's we had before, simply because of the newer architecture, despite the identical core/thread count and lower base frequency.