Dell EMC intros PowerEdge servers with 2nd Gen AMD Epyc

[HEXUS]

Designed for emerging workloads in the multi-cloud world.

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[azrael-]

Exciting news. Now all we need are Ryzen-based workstations. Not talking Threadripper here, and yes, they must support ECC memory as well. C'mon Dell, pick up the gauntlet.

[DanceswithUnix]

Exciting news. Now all we need are Ryzen-based workstations. Not talking Threadripper here, and yes, they must support ECC memory as well. C'mon Dell, pick up the gauntlet.

Erm, but Threadripper is exactly what I would want in a workstation. The sort of engineering tasks I want a workstation for still include lengthy single thread phases that the low boost clocks of an Epyc cpu just aren't good enough.

[azrael-]

Erm, but Threadripper is exactly what I would want in a workstation. The sort of engineering tasks I want a workstation for still include lengthy single thread phases that the low boost clocks of an Epyc cpu just aren't good enough.

What I need/want is the equivalent of a Xeon E(3) processor-based workstation. Considering that Ryzen 3000 is currently available with up to 12 cores (and soon 16 cores) would you really need more processing power? Perhaps I just didn't make myself clear, although I did explicitly state "Ryzen-based" and not "Epyc-based".

[DanceswithUnix]

What I need/want is the equivalent of a Xeon E(3) processor-based workstation. Considering that Ryzen 3000 is currently available with up to 12 cores (and soon 16 cores) would you really need more processing power? Perhaps I just didn't make myself clear, although I did explicitly state "Ryzen-based" and not "Epyc-based".

OK, that's a nice PC but not really the extra mile that I would class as workstation grade. But yes, with just 8 cores this is significantly faster than Xeon workstations I have used in the past thanks to that big L3 cache.

It is actually what I intended to do when I built this PC, but at the time ECC ram sticks had become oddly hard & expensive to find. You can get them for sane prices now, so next time I need to build a PC I'm getting a pair of ECC dimms and these ones can go in the new build. That's a home build though, for the likes of Dell to go that route would require official mobo ECC support which no-one seems to do.

[Xlucine]

>4 cores is enough to need a special high-performance computing licence on some software (ie ansys), if you don't have a specific need for >50 GB/s RAM then there's a lot you can do with consumer sockets these days

[azrael-]

OK, that's a nice PC but not really the extra mile that I would class as workstation grade. But yes, with just 8 cores this is significantly faster than Xeon workstations I have used in the past thanks to that big L3 cache.

Well, Dell, Fujitsu and HP, to name but a few, *do* refer to this type of PC as a workstation, albeit an "entry-level" one. That's fine by me, since not every workstation task requires multi-socket CPUs. FWIW, in my book it's pretty much a workstation as soon as it supports ECC memory.

It is actually what I intended to do when I built this PC, but at the time ECC ram sticks had become oddly hard & expensive to find. You can get them for sane prices now, so next time I need to build a PC I'm getting a pair of ECC dimms and these ones can go in the new build. That's a home build though, for the likes of Dell to go that route would require official mobo ECC support which no-one seems to do.

Your build seems very much like what I intend to go for (soon-ish). That is, a Ryzen 3700X and either an X470 or an X570 motherboard. It's actually the motherboard I cannot really decide on. I'm looking at either the ASUS PRIME X470-PRO (the one you have) or the ASRock X470 TaiChi or the ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE, all of which claim ECC memory support (the latter one even has it as a major selling point).

At least I've already the RAM covered. Bought four of these (Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CTD) back in mid July for GBP 80 apiece. Don't get fooled by the rated speed (as I initially was). It's DDR4 2666 (the CTD postfix makes all the difference). At that price each module is actually around 33% than the 16 GB ECC RAM I'm using in my current build (from 2012/3) and the price has even dropped a few quid since I bought them (could've saved a tenner or so).

Since you're using one of the combos I have in mind, may I ask if you're happy with what you went with or if you'd choose differently given the opportunity.

[DanceswithUnix]

Since you're using one of the combos I have in mind, may I ask if you're happy with what you went with or if you'd choose differently given the opportunity.

I've been very happy with the system, no complaints at all.

Fan profile seems pretty quiet even with the box cooler after a quick tweak in the BIOS to tell it that quiet is my preference. It is a work machine so I don't overclock, but the performance for compiling code has been quite startling. I can hammer all cores for the few minutes it takes to do a few full builds with all cores staying well above the rated base frequency. The original 2600X cpu that I bought with the motherboard had faults that under Linux were nicely logged in the syslog file which makes me confident that ECC ram support would be good as well.

Linux support has been fine out of the box. The Intel network chip even supports ptp timekeeping which I may soon need for my work so that's dead handy.

My choice was between this and an Asrock with the 10Gbit ethernet port, but figured the cost difference was about the cost of a 1GbE card so I went with the cheaper option.

[azrael-]

That's great to hear.

The ASUS PRIME X470-PRO is also now available around these parts as "Ryzen 3000 Ready" (unlike the ASRock X470 TaiChi, at least officially) so there's one less headache.

[DanceswithUnix]

Forgot to say, one of the reasons I got it was the decent sized BIOS chip so it supports the whole AM4 range. I rather like that flexibility.