Hi everybody!
I want to move my selfhosted services from a VPS to a PC in my house.
I have an E5-2620 and a it-6700K, which one would you pick and why?
The E5 already has 2 PCI-X each with 4 NIC (that I need to use with OpnSense to share my Internet connection with my neighbor) that I would need to throw away and buy as PCIe for the i7.
Thanks!
I had a 2620 v2 and got me a 2690 v2 off ebay for 20 $, 10c/20t. Best in slot, imho and dirt cheap. That’s what I would recommend. I delidded the 2620 and made it a key fob
E5 because it supportsECC memory.
I’m assuming the xeon comes with ECC ram?
I’d decide based on how loud it’s gonna make my homelab, if I get to use ECC ram and the type of workload being applied.
Since you’re just looking to make a router the xeon would be my tentative choice.
I’m assuming the xeon comes with ECC ram?
Yes, it does.
Since you’re just looking to make a router the xeon would be my tentative choice.
No no, it willwork ALSO as router, but it will have about 15/20 Dockers containers.
It’s not that loud, but it will be placed in a dedicated small room under the roof.I’m assuming you’re talking about version 1 of the 2620.
Although the xeon is the weaker processor, if you’re planning on having those containers active together the larger thread count will potentially be more beneficial than the faster i7.
But this is one of those things where you’d need to test against both and see. Since there’s a bunch at play.
I’m assuming you’re talking about version 1 of the 2620.
Nope, V2.
Although the xeon is the weaker processor, if you’re planning on having those containers active together the larger thread count will potentially be more beneficial than the faster i7.
This is what I thought, before @poVoq@slrpnk.net pointed me to the quicksync of the i7 (I will have a Jellyfin container).
Oh thanks I must have missed that in the title.
The xeon does have more cache too. So if the GPU acceleration is the make or break it option. You could toss a card in there.
What kind of a card do you think that could do the job? There will be 2 maximum 3 people watching Jellyfin.
I haven’t tried setting up jellyfin myself. However, if you’re able to use pcie passthrough on your container, you could probably use any spare card you might have? (assuming it fits and your psu can handle it)
I’ll do some testing during the Christmas holiday. Thanks!
So what was the question? It sounds like you already decided.
The biggest difference between these 2 chips is how they scale. The i7-6700k is faster but it has less cores. The E5-2620 has more cores but the clock speed and memory are much slower.
So what was the question? It sounds like you already decided.
Why? No, I haven’t decided.
The i7-6700k is faster but it has less cores. The E5-2620 has more cores but the clock speed and memory are much slower.
So for a lot of containers that each do few things, it would be better to have more cores, correct?
Really depends on the specific workload.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the 6700k is significantly more power efficient, especially when it isn’t consistently under high load.
Also if you do any sort of media processing the 6700k has a gpu and quicksync built in that can speed these things up significantly.
Also if you do any sort of media processing the 6700k has a gpu and quicksync built in that can speed these things up significantly.
This is a good point that probably will make the decision lean towards the i7, thanks!
Are you sure about the power usage part? They both have a TDP of about 60W.
As usual it depends (and TDPs are highly misleading). First of all the 6700k is a 14nm chip, Vs. 32nm for the E5-2620. And the 6700k is a Skylake generation chip, compared to Sandy Bridge for the Xeon, which brings significantly better power-states. But on the other hand the 6700k is much higher clocked and has turbo-boost, with the latter being notoriously power hungry (can be disabled in the bios though).
In my educated guess the 6700k will use significantly less power if it mostly idles or does only burst tasks, which is actually what most self-hosters have as as task-loads. But if you serve websites to thousands of users which results in a consistently high CPU load, the Xeon is probably overall the better chip, including power-consumption under load.
Edit: I realized now that it is a E5-2620v2, which is Ivy Bridge and 22nm. So the difference is probably less, but overall the same considerations apply.
Without knowing what you’ll use it for, neither.
Both don’t sound ideal though w.r.t. power consumption.
