I’m looking at a CPU upgrade for the HL15. It comes with a Supermicro X11SPH motherboard which means LGA3647, as you likely already know.
Any suggestions on a CPU for this board? i found a xeon gold 6154 with 18c/36t @3ghz/turbo3.7ghz for $220 on ebay. That’s my front runner so far. I found the included CPU, a Xeon Bronze 3204, to be a little slower than I’d like for VM work.
Any others worth a look?
I upgraded to a Xeon Silver 4210. I didn’t really look at the golds unfortunately, but I think the 10 core 20 threads should be enough? Double check the max size RAM sticks you can use with that gold processor, I feel like first gen ones couldn’t do 16GB DIMMS but I think I only saw that in passing on one forum post.
For me at least, it’s less about the number of cores/threads above a certain number (let’s say 10) and things like cache and clock speed start to matter more.
There’s a tasty auction for a Silver 4210 for $125 right now. Worth a look.
i remove the heatsink. The CPU is stucked under it. How to remove it so I can put a newer/befier CPU? I want to NOT break the black plastic tray that is under it!
For $25 more, the 4214 seems to be a nice bump in performance.
That indeed for about $150 seems to be a nice sweet spot.
I got talking to a buddy earlier and now I’m considering an Epyc rome mobo, with 256gb ram and a gajillion pcie lanes for 10x the price instead. #homelablife
hi @pducharme ,
That is normal. Look on the black plastic cover for the word “breaker”. You can insert a plastic pry tool and work it around to remove the tray.
thanks. I managed to removed it. The Bronze CPU factory installed is damaged (but was working). the side had a big dent. that is before I touch it at all. Doesn’t seem right…
Hi @pducharme, please reach out to info@45homelab.com so we can investigate this CPU damage.
Hi Hutch, I’ll reach out today.
Thread hijack much?! Have some decorum!
Anywho, the Epyc based builds seem to be about $1-1.5k depending on which eBay auction you look at and they seem pretty incredible for the price.
Epyc has pcie lanes for days and there are 5x 16x pcie 4.0 slots for starters on these boards. The super micro h12 platform is what I’m looking at.
Then again, I may still just replace the cpu in the full build config for $150 and save the epyc upgrade for the new year.
+1 to the silver 4214. Got myself one and I’m gonna test it out.
It seems like the best price/perf at the lowest wattage they offer these (85w).
For those of you who upgraded from the 3204 to the 4214, are you using the same heatsink from the 3204? And if so, what are your CPU temps like?
My CPU is idling at 48deg C with all 6 case fans set to “quiet” (40% / 700 rpm), which seems a tad high to me. The 3204 was idling around 38deg C in a similar configuration. This is the first time I’ve used a thermal pad (Thermal Grizzly’s kyrosheet) in lieu of thermal paste, so maybe this is a contributing factor.
I’m running a 4214 with the stock cooler but I have the OG Dynatron fans. My idle temps are 42F. Ambient in the basement around my rack is ~70F.
Your CPU temp is below ambient with the stock fans?
Hahaha… oops! I’m mixing scales. It’s 42C at idle and 70F ambient which is 21.1C.
Thanks for the feedback. The ambient temperature where my rack is located is about 27 deg C / 80 deg F. And I replaced the stock fans with slower, quieter Noctua’s , so I guess my idle temps are in the ballpark.
I am using a script that controls the fan speeds based on the CPU and HDD temps and I hardly hear the fans ramping up too loudly under moderate load where CPU temp reaches around 60 deg C, so I am comfortable with the setup. (Max temp for the 4214 is 77 deg C which leaves alot of margin)