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Comment by breul99 | Hacker News Reader

I still don't really see the pro to Ryzen in this case. It would be cheaper/better to get a couple used sandy bridge era (or newer in some cases) xeons off ebay with a dual socket motherboard in the multithreaded case, or get an i7-7700 for single threaded performance while still having a reasonable amount of cores+threads to play with.

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For me it brings a lot of benefits: easier to find parts, consumer-level parts pricing, and lower TDP.

I'm running a dual Xeon as you mentioned, through buying ex-fleet parts at less than half price of new ones. Several issues I experienced:

- Lack of motherboard options. I had to purchase new motherboard at a high price since the ones that support dual Xeons are either in an incompatible form factor or simply out-of-stock. I settled with Asus Z9PE-D8 WS with an SSI-EEB form factor.

- Outdated BIOS. I had to order a new, pre-flashed, BIOS chip since the BIOS that came with the motherboard refused to boot with the CPU and memory combo.

- Hard to find suitable ECC RAM. The motherboard only supports limited RAM (speed + latency) configs, and finding those is becoming harder. Availability looks seasonal at times.

- Needs capable power supply. One thing that people often look past is the need of a proper PSU. I had to upgrade to one which support two CPU power connectors.

Proper cases can be hard to come up with (new they are rather expensive), e.g. I can't do anything with a 85 cm deep pizza box in my rack (because that pizza box is like 15 cm longer than the whole thing), so I needed a bit more special case, which has space for a standard 2S board but is short as well. Only Supermicro had one of those.

Yeah, this is another problem that I had. Plenty of full-tower cases these days support EATX, but SSI-EEB not so much (at least, the ones that can support it out-of-the-box).

In the end, I went with one of the Phanteks Enthoo [1] cases. Decent quality without breaking the bank :)

Notes:

[1] - http://www.phanteks.com/enthoo-pro.html

I used an 825MTQ, which is the 2nd shortest server in my rack now :)

I'm running a similar setup to yours (IIRC I have the same mobo even), but I'm quite happy with it. I got new Xeons (1630 e5 @ 3.7 ghz), RAM compatibility was not something I found an issue (we're talking +/- 5 months ago here), power supply - I got a 1000W PS anyway to power several GPU's, I guess at that level they come with several connectors standard and I just didn't run into it as an issue. To be honest though I went for Xeon to get ECC, so if these new AMD's support that, then maybe next time...

What is SIMD support like for Ryzen? Does it do avx2 or something similar?

It's true that server components are generally loud. If you have the room, I recommend my setup - which is to have a (home build) rack in the basement, and run long DisplayPort cables (and USB extension cables) to the desk. Or build a closet around a rack in an office, which can be soundproofed. This does push it to the next level in terms of work involved, obviously (and cost as well if you don't have tools or time to DIY most of it).

It does AVX2 at half speed, AVX1 at full speed, but in return it runs at full clock rates with AVX, so it's not as bad as it sounds.

Most programming related workloads I can think of hardly benefit from avx2. Also, the additional power draw while using avx on intel is considerable, despite the clock rate drop; so perf/watt may not be as much behind as one might initially think.

This downside is likely to become slightly more serious as time goes on and more software uses avx2; but it's certainly not crippling.

Go to /r/homelab and watch for a good 6 months. A lot of guys start off with old server hardware. Then, after 3 to 6 months, the noise and heat get to them, and they are begging for something more efficient.

... converse opinion, running a dev shop you want off the shelf "plug it in and go" options for developer machines. If we see significant advantages in general workflow (compiling, VM's, unit testing etc) with Ryzen at a compelling price point you can be sure we'll spec all new workstations with Ryzens once the OEM's get a solid "out of the box" solution.

We recently built an 8 core machine for a project for "how far could we push some multi-threaded" workload. The "out of the box" workstation's with 8 cores, at least in NZ, were staggeringly expensive. We managed to knock about 1/3rd to 1/2 off the price by a build our own solution but that's not workable for general purpose machines.

Early indicators for certain types of workflow, Ryzen is a blazingly fast platform at a very attractive price point.

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