Thank you so much for putting these videos together. I picked up a pair of these CPU's from your eBay store and the install went without any issues. I've noticed better performance over the 5500 series units that these replaced. It's just so pleasant that you put this info out there for free, and then offer the upgrades you're showing at such fair prices. You've got a customer for life in me sir. I appreciate it.
Well, I don't think there's a motherboard for the R710 that can work with SandyBridge or IvyBridge CPUs. But the R710 generation only works with the Xeon 5500 and 5600 series CPUs.
I use alcohol because i have no money and when cpu is pasted to the heatsink i use a phon for the thermal-plastic things and in just 2 minutes i have removed heatsink
You could also get best price-performance cpus with a pair of x5650 6core 2.6ghz turbo 3.06ghz with 12 mb cache I use them in a dl360 g6 for rendering and they are absolutely good cpus
yes, that's a good middle ground CPU. however, for Westmere-EP, I think its better to go energy efficient, or upgrade to IvyBridge-EP if you need more compute.
I’d suggest if it’s not enabled, you go into the iDrac config and enable the system inventory on boot option. At least for the first boot after upgrade so the inventory is correct. Same for adding RAM. In truth I don’t think it makes any practical difference to operation, but it’ll be wrong on the iDrac or in OSMA and that’ll bug you ;)
So, i got a ton of older servers for super cheap. I have 2 t710s an r710 an r6something, a bunch of 1950 and 1750s. Im looking to maybe sell some of the 1950s and 1750s. Id like to upgrade the t710s and r710. I'll be using the t710s as nas. The r710 I'd like to maybe use as a gaming server. Any suggestions?
yeah, I would sell off the 1950 or 1750 if you can... they are extremely old now so might be hard to get rid of. not sure what kind of gaming server you plan to run? but I would consider the CPU requirements of the game server relative to what CPU options you have for the R710. note the faster CPUs for this generation tend to consume a lot of power, so it's not advisable to get a X5690 CPU under load running 24/7; unless your electricity is really cheap.
Well, I promised my daughter I'd set up a minecraft server for her. I think a 1950 could handle that? But for me I was hoping to be able to set up a call of duty server or something similar. Maybe csgo? I'm pretty new to servers and having a blast messing with them either way lol.
@@MadJix for a small Minecraft server, I would consider a RPi4. Much better power efficiency, silent, and you can pay for it by the money you get for selling those servers. I don't know much about those other games...
That’s a very helpful video. I totally share your opinion, that not every system needs to run with the top cpu in the compatibility list of the mainboard/socket. Thank you for sharing your method of applying thermal paste. I‘ll try that! I got one question: when upgrading from 1 installed cpu to 2 installed cpus (yes, I‘ve purchased two identical ones and now I‘m sad, that I have already ordered them, because I could‘ve also purchased them in your store to support you..next time for sure!), is there anything I have to do, when starting that for the first time with the new second cpu?
L5630 is great for saving on your electric bill! For FreeNAS, as long as you have enough RAM for your storage, and you're not putting a high load on the server, it should be fine. For PLEX it might not be enough depending on what you're doing; you might be limited on what you can transcode and how many streams you can handle.
if you don't want to add more CPU power, for PLEX you might benefit from offloading the transcoding to a GPU. See Part 4 of this series for adding GPU.
@@ArtofServer I'll be the only one using this server but I'll check on my Ryzen 7 how much resources it takes. Transcoding from 4K HEVC mkv to whatever 4K the Apple TV can handle.
I'm new at this and am looking for a server to purchase! I'm thinking about using vmware 6.7 or 7.0 and wanted to know for the raid card will I need to have that flashed to IT mode so that it will be detected with drives?
No, if you're not sure what IT mode or HBA is, then you probably don't need it. It's mostly used for software storage technologies that need direct control of the storage devices. For example, software RAID, ZFS, unraid, storage spaces, etc. If that's not what you're using, you probably just need a standard RAID controller, not a IT mode HBA controller.
I have a Dell R710 with 64gb of ram 4x16gb sticks but they are 1066mhz I am thinking of changing to 64gb of 1333mhz but what is best 8x8gb or 4x16gb ram sticks ? My CPU’s are 5670 but I’ve never seen them turbo up.
Do you think this specific server (the R710) is good or at least decent as a render farm? I'm planning on purchasing 4 of them for $210 USD each plus a 1U switch and a cabinet. The specific specs on the server im looking at are 64gb of RAM and Dual 6-core Xeons. The rendering im planning on doing is heavily dependent on CPU and RAM and NO GFX card is needed for GPU acceleration.
No, for CPU intensive workloads, you won't get good value for your money with Westmere-EP CPUs, considering also the power costs. Like I mentioned in this video, Westmere-EP is not a great value anymore for high compute intensive work, but it remains great value for workloads that don't require high compute power. I would consider instead something from the Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge Xeons for best bang for your buck computing (CPU intensive work) and RAM (DDR3 is half the cost of DDR4 right now). If RAM requirements are low, then look at Haswell, as their CPU prices are dropping, but RAM is going to be expensive still.
@@ArtofServer Thanks for replying! So basically anything that's LGA-2011 socket and up? And last question, should I focus more on high clock speed or lean towards overall core count when determining which CPU to buy?
@@SemperMortem Well, LGA2011-0 for E5-2600 (v1) or E5-2600v2 series Xeons. LGA2011-3 is for E5-2600v3 (Haswell) and E5-2600v4 (Broadwell) and they are not compatible so be careful. I think Broadwell is still very expensive, and you will not get as much for your dollar. So, I would look at v2 (Ivy Bridge) and *maybe* v3 (Haswell), just keeping in mind total system cost as v3 requires DDR4 in most cases and DDR4 is more expensive. As for clockspeed vs cores, that really depends on your application and I don't know that. If your application and workload is really great for parallel processing and using multiple cores (threads/processes), then I might say focus on more cores. But some applications are not great at parallel processing, and some data work loads can't be split up very well that way, or the overhead of reassembling the results is high, etc. Also, in some cases, the workload is good for parallel processing *up to* a certain point, after which you get diminishing returns. So, you need to be familiar with your rendering application and data set to decide what will work best.
@@ArtofServer A lot of intel servers are been replace by a few top cloud providers, look on eBay or Amazon, by next year, but be mindful of the reason they are been abandon (security holes). look for dell PowerEdge 620/630 or the 4-nude_2U-servers.
I don't know the R715 (AMD) version of this server... so can't say much about that. I think R710 makes for a great starter server for virtualization. Fair price depends on your local market supply and demand, and also what configuration you are looking for. In general, these R710 are very affordable right now.
That's a tough question to answer generally. The IvyBridge-EP platforms have so many different CPU choices for different use cases. What kind of application(s) do you plan to run? Do you need clock speed? more cores? are you looking for energy efficiency?
@@ArtofServer I little bit of everything I guess :D I am planning to have a Linux server running Plex, Nextcloud, home automation software, NVR and maybe host some simple web pages. The E5-2670 looks like a good balance and it's very cheap, but people at homelab usually recommend going for a v2 instead since they are more power-efficient.
Yeah, v2 IvyBridge does run with less power consumption and you get a few more cores per socket, but they do cost more compared to SandyBridge. If you need "balance" then any of the CPUs that end in "0" should be good choices: E5-2660, E5-2670, E5-2680, E5-2690 and just pick v2 or v1 based on your own assessment of power savings vs cost.
@@ArtofServer for me in the uk it's the cheapest from the x56XX range roughly around £20 where as the x5675 is £35. although the loss of 2 cores the bump in sknglethreaded performance and higher clock speed is nice to have tbh
Thanks for that info. yes, and that's why I say they are still rather expensive, when the next generation E5-2670 can be had for the same price, or a little more will buy a E5-2680.
@@ArtofServer Fair, but upgrading to something that can take a LGA2011 may be significantly more than $100 for some of us. I should note since this has an R710 in it, if you do not have a Gen2 board, your R710 cannot take 130W TDP chips like the X5680
@@For--nop What would be the highest cpu model for a gen1 r710? I currently have a pair of Xeon E5649's, and would like to know my upgrade limit. Thanks!
Thank you so much for putting these videos together. I picked up a pair of these CPU's from your eBay store and the install went without any issues. I've noticed better performance over the 5500 series units that these replaced. It's just so pleasant that you put this info out there for free, and then offer the upgrades you're showing at such fair prices. You've got a customer for life in me sir. I appreciate it.
Glad to hear it! Thank you for supporting my store! :-)
R720 owner here and this is very helpful
Glad this helped you out! :-)
Are you say to use Sandy Bridge processors you have to change the MB to match?
Well, I don't think there's a motherboard for the R710 that can work with SandyBridge or IvyBridge CPUs. But the R710 generation only works with the Xeon 5500 and 5600 series CPUs.
Paraffin oil is super good for removing dried up thermal paste. It dissolves it much better than alcohol based solvents.
interesting!
I use alcohol because i have no money and when cpu is pasted to the heatsink i use a phon for the thermal-plastic things and in just 2 minutes i have removed heatsink
i got mine with a pair of x5660's. great cpu's.
Congrats!
I have a pair of 5675 I have to fit. I got them for £56 🇬🇧. Excellent timing of the video! Cheers
when he was applying the thermal compound it reminded me of Kyle's video reviewing the verge build. lol
instablaster.
This R710, allthougt it's old, looks pretty cool.
Contratulations!
You could also get best price-performance cpus with a pair of x5650 6core 2.6ghz turbo 3.06ghz with 12 mb cache
I use them in a dl360 g6 for rendering and they are absolutely good cpus
You can find for like 15-25$ each
yes, that's a good middle ground CPU. however, for Westmere-EP, I think its better to go energy efficient, or upgrade to IvyBridge-EP if you need more compute.
Thanks for your time and effort.
Thanks for watching!
@3:24 - Does this unit support 8, 10 or 12 core cpu?
Max 12 cores / 24 threads using both sockets.
When powering up for the first time after processor change, do you need to go into the BIOS or confirm it anywhere? Or just carry on as normal? Cheers
Usually just carry on as normal.
I’d suggest if it’s not enabled, you go into the iDrac config and enable the system inventory on boot option. At least for the first boot after upgrade so the inventory is correct. Same for adding RAM.
In truth I don’t think it makes any practical difference to operation, but it’ll be wrong on the iDrac or in OSMA and that’ll bug you ;)
Alastair Mackinlay. Thanks, yes it would have bugged me! Cheers
does the R710 support 3ghz CPUs of the same LGA socket ??
The supported CPUs for the R710 depends on the generation of the R710 (I or II). See my video here: ua-cam.com/video/XnclAlY4d1U/v-deo.html
So, i got a ton of older servers for super cheap. I have 2 t710s an r710 an r6something, a bunch of 1950 and 1750s. Im looking to maybe sell some of the 1950s and 1750s. Id like to upgrade the t710s and r710. I'll be using the t710s as nas. The r710 I'd like to maybe use as a gaming server. Any suggestions?
yeah, I would sell off the 1950 or 1750 if you can... they are extremely old now so might be hard to get rid of.
not sure what kind of gaming server you plan to run? but I would consider the CPU requirements of the game server relative to what CPU options you have for the R710. note the faster CPUs for this generation tend to consume a lot of power, so it's not advisable to get a X5690 CPU under load running 24/7; unless your electricity is really cheap.
Well, I promised my daughter I'd set up a minecraft server for her. I think a 1950 could handle that? But for me I was hoping to be able to set up a call of duty server or something similar. Maybe csgo? I'm pretty new to servers and having a blast messing with them either way lol.
@@MadJix for a small Minecraft server, I would consider a RPi4. Much better power efficiency, silent, and you can pay for it by the money you get for selling those servers.
I don't know much about those other games...
That’s a very helpful video. I totally share your opinion, that not every system needs to run with the top cpu in the compatibility list of the mainboard/socket.
Thank you for sharing your method of applying thermal paste. I‘ll try that!
I got one question: when upgrading from 1 installed cpu to 2 installed cpus (yes, I‘ve purchased two identical ones and now I‘m sad, that I have already ordered them, because I could‘ve also purchased them in your store to support you..next time for sure!), is there anything I have to do, when starting that for the first time with the new second cpu?
No, usually you just add 2nd CPU and boot up and it should just work.
Thanks for watching! :-)
I bought a R710 with a single L5630 CPU. Is that sufficient for a FreeNAS/PleX-server? It has a 40W TDP which is great.
L5630 is great for saving on your electric bill! For FreeNAS, as long as you have enough RAM for your storage, and you're not putting a high load on the server, it should be fine. For PLEX it might not be enough depending on what you're doing; you might be limited on what you can transcode and how many streams you can handle.
if you don't want to add more CPU power, for PLEX you might benefit from offloading the transcoding to a GPU. See Part 4 of this series for adding GPU.
@@ArtofServer I'll be the only one using this server but I'll check on my Ryzen 7 how much resources it takes. Transcoding from 4K HEVC mkv to whatever 4K the Apple TV can handle.
I run FreeNAS + PLEX on a much older Poweredge 2950 :)
I'm new at this and am looking for a server to purchase! I'm thinking about using vmware 6.7 or 7.0 and wanted to know for the raid card will I need to have that flashed to IT mode so that it will be detected with drives?
No, if you're not sure what IT mode or HBA is, then you probably don't need it. It's mostly used for software storage technologies that need direct control of the storage devices. For example, software RAID, ZFS, unraid, storage spaces, etc. If that's not what you're using, you probably just need a standard RAID controller, not a IT mode HBA controller.
I have a Dell R710 with 64gb of ram 4x16gb sticks but they are 1066mhz I am thinking of changing to 64gb of 1333mhz but what is best 8x8gb or 4x16gb ram sticks ? My CPU’s are 5670 but I’ve never seen them turbo up.
Membist error disabled my a3/A6 ram slot. Any fix?
I don't know what "membist" is?
Do you think this specific server (the R710) is good or at least decent as a render farm? I'm planning on purchasing 4 of them for $210 USD each plus a 1U switch and a cabinet. The specific specs on the server im looking at are 64gb of RAM and Dual 6-core Xeons. The rendering im planning on doing is heavily dependent on CPU and RAM and NO GFX card is needed for GPU acceleration.
No, for CPU intensive workloads, you won't get good value for your money with Westmere-EP CPUs, considering also the power costs. Like I mentioned in this video, Westmere-EP is not a great value anymore for high compute intensive work, but it remains great value for workloads that don't require high compute power. I would consider instead something from the Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge Xeons for best bang for your buck computing (CPU intensive work) and RAM (DDR3 is half the cost of DDR4 right now). If RAM requirements are low, then look at Haswell, as their CPU prices are dropping, but RAM is going to be expensive still.
@@ArtofServer Thanks for replying! So basically anything that's LGA-2011 socket and up? And last question, should I focus more on high clock speed or lean towards overall core count when determining which CPU to buy?
@@SemperMortem Well, LGA2011-0 for E5-2600 (v1) or E5-2600v2 series Xeons. LGA2011-3 is for E5-2600v3 (Haswell) and E5-2600v4 (Broadwell) and they are not compatible so be careful. I think Broadwell is still very expensive, and you will not get as much for your dollar. So, I would look at v2 (Ivy Bridge) and *maybe* v3 (Haswell), just keeping in mind total system cost as v3 requires DDR4 in most cases and DDR4 is more expensive.
As for clockspeed vs cores, that really depends on your application and I don't know that. If your application and workload is really great for parallel processing and using multiple cores (threads/processes), then I might say focus on more cores. But some applications are not great at parallel processing, and some data work loads can't be split up very well that way, or the overhead of reassembling the results is high, etc. Also, in some cases, the workload is good for parallel processing *up to* a certain point, after which you get diminishing returns. So, you need to be familiar with your rendering application and data set to decide what will work best.
@@ArtofServer A lot of intel servers are been replace by a few top cloud providers, look on eBay or Amazon, by next year, but be mindful of the reason they are been abandon (security holes). look for dell PowerEdge 620/630 or the 4-nude_2U-servers.
Would you go for r715 or 710? What would be a fair price for a used unit in 2020?
I don't know the R715 (AMD) version of this server... so can't say much about that. I think R710 makes for a great starter server for virtualization. Fair price depends on your local market supply and demand, and also what configuration you are looking for. In general, these R710 are very affordable right now.
are Xeon L5600 series compatible with the esxi 7.0 ?
No they arent, even the Xeon E5 v1 and Xeon E7 v1 are not compatible...
Nice! Which CPU would you recommend for a R720?
That's a tough question to answer generally. The IvyBridge-EP platforms have so many different CPU choices for different use cases. What kind of application(s) do you plan to run? Do you need clock speed? more cores? are you looking for energy efficiency?
@@ArtofServer I little bit of everything I guess :D I am planning to have a Linux server running Plex, Nextcloud, home automation software, NVR and maybe host some simple web pages. The E5-2670 looks like a good balance and it's very cheap, but people at homelab usually recommend going for a v2 instead since they are more power-efficient.
Yeah, v2 IvyBridge does run with less power consumption and you get a few more cores per socket, but they do cost more compared to SandyBridge. If you need "balance" then any of the CPUs that end in "0" should be good choices: E5-2660, E5-2670, E5-2680, E5-2690 and just pick v2 or v1 based on your own assessment of power savings vs cost.
Art of Server Thank you!
x5687 is still pretty good for bang for buck
maybe on a performance per cost of CPU metric, but on a performance per watt metric, there are many more affordable options now.
@@ArtofServer for me in the uk it's the cheapest from the x56XX range roughly around £20 where as the x5675 is £35. although the loss of 2 cores the bump in sknglethreaded performance and higher clock speed is nice to have tbh
a pair of x5680's is going for about $100 USD at this time, just FYI
Thanks for that info. yes, and that's why I say they are still rather expensive, when the next generation E5-2670 can be had for the same price, or a little more will buy a E5-2680.
@@ArtofServer Fair, but upgrading to something that can take a LGA2011 may be significantly more than $100 for some of us. I should note since this has an R710 in it, if you do not have a Gen2 board, your R710 cannot take 130W TDP chips like the X5680
@@For--nop What would be the highest cpu model for a gen1 r710? I currently have a pair of Xeon E5649's, and would like to know my upgrade limit. Thanks!
@@wildrummaster it's tdp limited so I believe an x5670 or x5675 is the limit
@@For--nop Chris, thank you.