Good news, everyone! Xeon E3 v5 is here!

[Ericloewe]

Ugh why has there been such a pinch in the RAM department on each successive CPU iteration as of late?

When Sandy Bridge (1st gen E5) came out, building servers with 256 or 512GB and even up to a TB in a dual cpu system was both possible and affordable all things considered.

I don't even think you can do 512GB on a dual CPU system today. Maybe hardware vendors are afraid of the VM consolidation ratios possible with today's CPUs and reluctant to build high-memory/low-socket-count machines and so intel is relucant to support features on chip that will not be used...

Xeon E5 memory support hasn't changed much. 512GB of RAM is easily doable with a single Xeon E5-2xxx and 8 64GB LRDIMMs. If you find a board that takes 12 DIMMs, you can even do 768GB. That means 1TB is easy on a dual-CPU system, 1.5TB are also realistic. Crazy expensive, but realistic.

On the low end, Xeon-D has a big advantage over Xeon E3 - RDIMM support. With two channels (two DIMMs per channel max), that means a maximum of 128GB of RAM.

 

[jgreco]

Dual Xeon E5 boards that can do 1.5TB aren't that hard to find (X9DR7-TF+, etc), mostly there isn't a huge amount of demand for them. It is mainly a problem of getting the memory, and the inconvenience of losing three arms and three legs (I suggest using someone else's).

On the low end, Xeon-D has a big advantage over Xeon E3 - RDIMM support. With two channels (two DIMMs per channel max), that means a maximum of 128GB of RAM.

I have to agree with that. Intel has been very carefully keeping the memory thing as one of the primary differentiators between E3 and E5. I recall a little shock at seeing the RDIMM support on the Xeon-D's, though I suppose Intel's happy to give that to anyone paying premium pricing for a CPU.

 

[JosB]

This seems to be a board that might interest you (no onboard sound):
X11SSH-F

 

[HoneyBadger]

This seems to be a board that might interest you (no onboard sound):
X11SSH-F

• 64GB RAM supported
• Dual DOM support with power
• M.2 NGFF onboard for NVMe SSD

Oh my. Add an LSI HBA onboard and that's just about perfection for a UP mATX board.

 

[Ericloewe]

This seems to be a board that might interest you (no onboard sound):
X11SSH-F

Now we're talking!

• 64GB RAM supported
• Dual DOM support with power
• M.2 NGFF onboard for NVMe SSD

Oh my. Add an LSI HBA onboard and that's just about perfection for a UP mATX board.

And all 8 PCH SATA ports exposed (that's right, C236 brings a whole 33% more SATA ports).

 

[sremick]

Probably no hope for a MiniITX board that'll support these and more than 16GB RAM.

 

[Ericloewe]

Probably no hope for a MiniITX board that'll support these and more than 16GB RAM.

Xeon E3 v5 miniITX boards will probably have two DIMM slots, which means 32GB with 16GB DDR4 UDIMMs - which do not cost a fortune!

 

[Ericloewe]

Probably no hope for a MiniITX board that'll support these and more than 16GB RAM.

Come to think of it, the move away from the integrated voltage regulators Haswell had makes me wonder if we'll see designs as compact as we saw with Haswell (ASRock's voodoo-shrunk X10SL7-F comes to mind).

 

[Ericloewe]

So I've been checking Supermicro's new X11 lineup. I'll do a proper guide later today, but here's the cheat sheet:

Like with X10, there are three "major" models: X11SSL-F, X11SSM-F and X11SSH-F.

• X11SSM-F uses the C236 PCH, as there is no C234 like the C224 used in the X10SLM+-F (or -F)
• There are no +- or - variants. All boards are comparable to the X10 + series (X10SLL+-F, X10SLM+-F and X10SLH-F), with dual Intel i210s as the baseline network connectivity solution.
• Pricing seems to be low, mid and high 200ish bucks for the X11SSL-F, X11SSM-F and X11SSH-F, respectively, in line with X10 pricing.
• X11SSL-F only gets 6 SATA ports, due to PCH limitations.

X11SSH-F has a bunch of "variants" (X11SSH-(C)TF seem to be completely different boards sharing the same name):

• X11SSH-TF: Replaces the i210s with the brand-new, 10GbE (and 2.5GbE and 5GbE over Cat. 5E, but that stuff hasn't been standardized yet) X550.
• X11SSH-CTF: An X11SSH-TF where the conspicuous empty location is filled with an LSI SAS 3008.
  
• X11SSH-LN4F: Adds two i210s for a total of four

Two boards share the X11SSL-F name, but are actually a different design:

• X11SSL-CF: This guy is the successor to the X10SL7-F. C232 PCH + LSI SAS 3008.
• X11SSL-nF: Take the X11SSL-CF and remove the SAS 3008. What do you do with those 8 unused PCI-e 3.0 lanes? Route them to U.2 ports, of course! That allows two crazy fast SSDs directly tied to the CPU.

In the meantime, ASRock also has a few new boards. I'll research those and post the relevant information.

And, more off-topic, there are also new Xeon-D solutions, with even more incoming. So fun times right now.:D