Are E5-1650 v2's still ok?

[Roydub]

Hey all,

This is my first FreeNAS build and I think Ive got a handle on all the general information. Reading through the forums I notice a lot of people recommending the E5-1650v3(or v4) for builds but I am wondering if the v2 is still a viable option? I can get a v2 for 120 on ebay right now where as the v3's are 400ish.

For the time being its going to be used just for Plex (4-5 streams) and a regular file server.

Thanks for any help

 

[HoneyBadger]

Perfectly fine, it might consume a tiny little bit more power because it won't have the idle power savings of the v3 core. But performance wise it's six cores at 3.5GHz - that should crush its way through those Plex streams unless you're trying to transcode 4K. Just keep hyperthreading enabled.

 

[pro lamer]

And they receive spectre and meltdown fixes :)

Sent from my mobile phone

 

[jgreco]

Be sure you're getting a compatible mainboard and memory. The 1650 and v2 are Supermicro X9SRx, and DDR3 memory. The v3 and v4 are X10SRx and DDR4.

Overall the older E5 CPU's are marginally slower than the newer ones. I have previously shown comparisons that place the Sandy cores at around 80% of the speed of more contemporary CPU's, when adjusted for factors such as MHz etc. The 1650 class is among the most aggressive UP E5 CPU's that you can get in terms of clock speed, and is usually cheap to begin with, and I would not hesitate to buy it for NAS duty unless a huge compute load was anticipated. When combined with the lower cost of memory, you can get a very aggressively sized high performance Xeon system for MUCH less than a modern solution. Downsides include somewhat increased power consumption, that there are already "miles on the odometer," and a lack of some newer features like USB3.

 

[Roydub]

Thanks all for the replies, this is exactly what I needed to know. I'm super excited to get this going! :)