Anyone else waiting for LGA1151 motherboards?

[koifish59]

Compared to s1150 Hasewell, these new Intel Skylake platforms are faster clock for clock, support 64gb ECC (up from 32gb), DDR4 memory, and possibly slightly more energy efficient.

Anyone holding out until the server motherboards are released until they build (another?) FreeNAS box? Desktop CPU and motherobard came out a few months ago. Any idea how long until server motherboards hit the shelves?

 

[jgreco]

The memory's the only compelling thing, really.

 

[cyberjock]

I am waiting for Skylake. :)

 

[jgreco]

Maybe I'm the only one who isn't super-impressed with the evolution of CPU's since Sandy.

 

[Jailer]

Baby steps would best describe it. Then again when you have no real competition........

 

[jgreco]

Baby steps indeed. The E3-1230 Sandy benchmarked around 11,000-11,500 on Geekbench. The E3-1231V3 is around 13,000-13,500. Only a 17% improvement over a 4 year period. Bleh.

 

[TXAG26]

I've been waiting almost 4 years for a reasonably priced basic server cpu/chipset from Intel that supports 64GB of ram. Finally just broke down and picked up a 2011 v3 board. At least for me, virtualization and consolidating workloads is really driving the need for ram. Power saving over the past couple of years since Sandybridge has been nice, but honestly, a 4-6 core Sandybridge from 3 years ago would still provide more CPU power than needed by most folks.

 

[jgreco]

Yeah, the price bump to go up to 2011 on a UP board isn't really a total showstopper, the X10SRL is maybe a hundred bucks more than the X10SLM.

The X10SL stuff seems kinda crap compared to the X9SC. With the X9SCM you had four PCIe slots, two x8 and two x4-in-x8-form slots. All the X10SL stuff is two or three slot, and not full width. Of course that's a CPU limitation but I don't really see much use for x8-in-x16. Would prefer a bunch of x4-in-x8 instead.

That increase from three slots to seven makes the X10SRL look really worth it, plus the added memory slots and capability. Putting something like an E3-1650 on that board (~$550) is definitely a premium cost to get six cores. The E3-1231v3 is an 8M cache 3.4GHz quad core part that Geekbenches at maybe 13500, but the E5-1650v3 is a 15M cache 3.5GHz part that comes in around 20000. Double the cost for 1.5x the speed.

But in the end it isn't totally out of line.

 

[Johev]

I was actually wondering if the X10SL7-F was still worth getting now that Skylake are coming out?

 

[TXAG26]

I was actually wondering if the X10SL7-F was still worth getting now that Skylake are coming out?

I would hold off, if possible. Sky lake should support 64GB DDR4 and I think it has a bump in PCIe lanes, which is very welcomed.

 

[Johev]

Exactly what I'm doing :). Not that I need the added RAM, frankly even the Dell T20 I currently have is not breaking a sweat, however I wanted something with more than 4 SATA ports. However given the new generation of CPUs and MBs are coming out and the added DDR4 RAM with up to 64GB with the E3's Skylake and maybe on-board 10GBit lan controllers, I'm taking my time.

The point I ask this here is that even if the new generation is significantly better than the current one, it will take some time for the FreeNAS team to build up the support for the new components. Maybe it's still worth going with the current socket (1150) for a short/medium term projects.

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, beyond waiting for Skylake Xeon E3 (v5), currently-announced motherboards aren't very server-oriented. I'm still advocating the "if you're looking to buy a server, don't bother waiting" approach.

If the 32GB are going to be a limit soon enough to matter, Xeon E5 v3 is probably a more compelling alternative. Or maybe Xeon-D. 16GB DDR4 UDIMMs are probably going to be on the expensive side for a while, anyway.

Edit: Crucial doesn't even seem to have 16GB ECC UDIMMs yet, which is odd. Non-ECC is competitively priced, though.
Edit 2: Nope, actually they do seem to have 16GB ECC UDIMMs, which they seem to have taken to calling EUDIMMs. Price is competitive, so that's one less barrier.

 

[HoneyBadger]

which they seem to have taken to calling EUDIMMs

Crap, I guess we'll have to wait for NADIMMs to get them on this side of the pond.