Building MySQL overclocked i7 for work

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mystykmax

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
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Hi guys. I finally got lucky at work. They are letting me build an overclocked MySQL server. It's not a mission-critical system so no worries there. If it's prime stable for 24 hours, it will definitely be good enough. I'm trying to pick out the CPU, Motherboard, RAM, PSU, case and water-cooling right now (yes, they said I could water-cool). The disk subsystem will come later.

Here's what I have so far:
CPU: i7 920
Motherboard: Gigabyte EX58-UD5
RAM: G.Skill DDR3 1600 6GB x 2 = 12GB total (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231247)
PSU: PC Power & Cooling 750W (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341011)

I'm thinking I'll just get the Koolance EXOS 2.5 kit with the 350AC heatsink and some 13mm tubing.

Then I need a case that will hold probably up to 8 hard drives and 1 DVD drive...Any ideas?

I'd like to hit at least 4.0Ghz on the CPU but I know nothing is guaranteed. Should I get the i7 940 or 965 instead or do we see roughly the same average overclock on those that we do on the 920?

Anyway, I'd like to hear your thoughts on any part of this build so far if you are kind enough to take the time to look at it.

DISCLAIMER: The business case for this is a done deal already. I will be the only one using the machine, and if it's down for parts, that's perfectly acceptable. During that time I can use the other MySQL servers (7 of them, all multi-core) we have.
 
Overclocking and watercooling on a business's computer... either you talked them into it because you don't know what you're doing, or they don't know what they're doing by letting you build it. In all seriousness.. no, just no. And it even makes the situation more funny that you'd come to a forum to ask questions like you don't even know what processor or water cooling setup to go with.

Build them a fast stock clocked perfectly stable system with good quality air cooling. Actually, since you had to even come here and ask in the first place, I'd tell them to put someone else in charge of the build.
 
w1retap said:
Overclocking and watercooling on a business's computer... either you talked them into it because you don't know what you're doing, or they don't know what they're doing by letting you build it. In all seriousness.. no, just no. And it even makes the situation more funny that you'd come to a forum to ask questions like you don't even know what processor or water cooling setup to go with.

Build them a fast stock clocked perfectly stable system with good quality air cooling. Actually, since you had to even come here and ask in the first place, I'd tell them to put someone else in charge of the build.
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No. It's not mission critical. I know the business case for this system and so do they. If the machine is down for a week or two because of parts, that is perfectly acceptable. The business case for this is a done deal. And you don't need to be a know-it-all about where I work and what I do. You made that judgment without even asking about the business case.
 
w1retap said:
Sounds like they don't value their time or money.
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You haven't even asked any questions, you just make rash judgments. I've been overclocking since 2001; long enough to know the dangers. Those dangers are perfectly acceptable for our business case. Also, since it's their money, they know the dangers (believe me, I told them) and they still want to do it, what is it to you? I had to talk them down from phase-change cooling.

The reason why I asked here is that I haven't overclocked an i7 yet but it seems most everyone can get it to 3.6 or so on air. For what I am doing, MySQL is CPU limited, so if I can get 3.6+ with water it will be a perfect fit. It's not really that much money anyway, considering these parts are far less than $2000.
 
mystykmax said:
You haven't even asked any questions, you just make rash judgments. I've been overclocking since 2001; long enough to know the dangers. Those dangers are perfectly acceptable for our business case. Also, since it's their money, they know the dangers (believe me, I told them) and they still want to do it, what is it to you? I had to talk them down from phase-change cooling.

The reason why I asked here is that I haven't overclocked an i7 yet but it seems most everyone can get it to 3.6 or so on air. For what I am doing, MySQL is CPU limited, so if I can get 3.6+ with water it will be a perfect fit. It's not really that much money anyway, considering these parts are far less than $2000.
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Well then, feel free to tell us more. Don't hide the details and make us guess. I was giving advice based from a business engineering perspective on use of resources, time, and money. 99.x% of companies out there will want something cost effective, as close to 100% stable as they can get, and that requires the least amount of monitoring and maintenance they can get.
 
w1retap said:
Well then, feel free to tell us more. Don't hide the details and make us guess. I was giving advice based from a business engineering perspective on use of resources, time, and money. 99.x% of companies out there will want something cost effective, as close to 100% stable as they can get, and that requires the least amount of monitoring and maintenance they can get.
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I have been completely clear. I will be the only one using the machine. For what I am doing we've proven that MySQL is CPU speed limited. I use speed loosely here because I know that clock for clock newer CPU's get more done and we don't want to invest in Core2 architecture anyway. If I can get the machine prime95 stable for 24 hours that is good enough. If the machine is down for parts because we burned out a CPU or found bad RAM, that's ok too. If the cooling system loses a pump and we have it down while that's being ordered and put back in place, that's perfectly fine. It won't even affect my work if the overclocking is too far at one point and we have to back down a bit. Even if this caused complete file system and/or database corruption on this machine, that's ok too, although I wouldn't want that every night! :) I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but at this point in the conversation, can you just let me sink or swim at my job? I'm that comfortable with this overclocking thing. Basically you can look at this as a sort of R&D. The business case is a done deal. I don't want to discuss that part anymore, but I really would like some ideas on the hardware in the overclocking aspect.
 
- EVGA x58: frequent bios releases that address issues concerning overclockability, plus it's been proven to be one of the better/popular overclocking boards (I'm using one at the moment as well.. I can vouch for it being extremely good-- check out the EVGA forums for more details as well, they have overclocking guides for it)
- Intel i7 965: as good as you're going to get at the moment.. and it offers easier overclocking with the unlocked multiplier. Since you're on a business level budget and you say $2000 is nothing, go with the best..
- Corsair Dominator DDR3-1866: very good high performance memory with a lot of leeway for overclocking

For the water cooling, you'll only need a 240 size radiator to maintain good temps. Myself, I prefer Black Ice's offerings. The Xtreme series or GTX Xtreme do a good job at dissipating the heat. For the pump, the Laing D5 style are reliable and offer good flow, as well as being quiet. For the CPU block.. EK, Aqua Computer, D-tek, Swiftech, and Koolance have good blocks.
 
w1retap said:
Well then, feel free to tell us more. Don't hide the details and make us guess. I was giving advice based from a business engineering perspective on use of resources, time, and money. 99.x% of companies out there will want something cost effective, as close to 100% stable as they can get, and that requires the least amount of monitoring and maintenance they can get.
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The problem is you were answering a question I wasn't asking before finding out if your answer was pertinent by asking my a simple question or two. You just jumped all over me. It seems you thought me stupid before even asking my a question. That takes some ego.

Plus I think you've probably ruined the intent of this thread now too.
 
mystykmax said:
The problem is you were answering a question I wasn't asking before finding out if your answer was pertinent by asking my a simple question or two. You just jumped all over me. It seems you thought me stupid before even asking my a question. That takes some ego.

Plus I think you've probably ruined the intent of this thread now too.
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No.. I gave you an answer, even though I have nothing to base it off of... you still haven't described the circumstances it's going to be used in, what it's for (besides just saying SQL), what the total budget needs to be, just how stable it needs to be, who is going to be using it and maintaining it (skilled individual, or some office jockey?), etc, etc..
 
w1retap said:
No.. I gave you an answer, even though I have nothing to base it off of... you still haven't described the circumstances it's going to be used in, what it's for (besides just saying SQL), what the total budget needs to be, just how stable it needs to be, who is going to be using it and maintaining it (skilled individual, or some office jockey?), etc, etc..
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the circumstances it's going to be used in:
mysql server loading large databases...check...

what it's for (besides just saying SQL)...It will be a MySQL server. Period....loading db's, running against those db's, dropping db's, loading db's, etc...

what the total budget needs to be...
I don't have a number from anyone above me...I was asking about the parts I had chosen, so you can probably get a starting idea there...for instance...I chose 1600 memory at 110 for 6 GB and you suggested 300 for 6GB...that's probably not logical, but oh well...

just how stable it needs to be...
If I can get the machine prime95 stable for 24 hours that is good enough. If the machine is down for parts because we burned out a CPU or found bad RAM, that's ok too. If the cooling system loses a pump and we have it down while that's being ordered and put back in place, that's perfectly fine. It won't even affect my work if the overclocking is too far at one point and we have to back down a bit. Even if this caused complete file system and/or database corruption on this machine, that's ok too, although I wouldn't want that every night!

who is going to be using it...
repeatedly I said I was the only one that was going to be using it!!!

maintaining it...
ok, I didn't mention this one...me. There is an IS guy who will be handling the OS and data imaging on a separate machine. He said, "not a big deal at all" when I talked to him about having OS and data images pulled from this machine.

I feel like you're just harassing me about this. Try and be helpful and relax. You seem really uptight.
 
mystykmax said:
the circumstances it's going to be used in:
mysql server loading large databases...check...

what it's for (besides just saying SQL)...It will be a MySQL server. Period....loading db's, running against those db's, dropping db's, loading db's, etc...

what the total budget needs to be...
I don't have a number from anyone above me...I was asking about the parts I had chosen, so you can probably get a starting idea there...for instance...I chose 1600 memory at 110 for 6 GB and you suggested 300 for 6GB...that's probably not logical, but oh well...

just how stable it needs to be...
If I can get the machine prime95 stable for 24 hours that is good enough. If the machine is down for parts because we burned out a CPU or found bad RAM, that's ok too. If the cooling system loses a pump and we have it down while that's being ordered and put back in place, that's perfectly fine. It won't even affect my work if the overclocking is too far at one point and we have to back down a bit. Even if this caused complete file system and/or database corruption on this machine, that's ok too, although I wouldn't want that every night!

who is going to be using it...
repeatedly I said I was the only one that was going to be using it!!!

maintaining it...
ok, I didn't mention this one...me. There is an IS guy who will be handling the OS and data imaging on a separate machine. He said, "not a big deal at all" when I talked to him about having OS and data images pulled from this machine.

I feel like you're just harassing me about this. Try and be helpful and relax. You seem really uptight.
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No. I was trying to help, but you weren't giving much useful info.. it's still not very useful.

- So this machine is a development box... not a server? At least that's the way you're describing it.

- A 24hr Prime95 test doesn't mean it's stable, or going to remain stable during various cpu/mem intensive applications, especially heavy database work.

- I listed you memory that was more solid for higher overclocks.. you said cost wasn't an issue. You listed DDR3-1600 which is good for about a 4GHz overclock naively.. I listed you memory that would get you beyond that.

- If you're wanting good database performance with the ability to load/unload databases to the machine, you'll also want disks that can keep up, because that will most likely be your slowest point of the build. Get a good quality RAID card and use fast disks.
 
Let us not debate the rationality of the customer but instead attempt to meet their needs.

I too am not in love with this idea but hey, it is all good fun.

I would be looking hard at disk I/0 and maybe thinking about raid 5 in a raid 1 configuration with intels matrix storage manager or if the horn of plenty is really tooting, a hardware raid card.

Or more interest to me is the size and growth of the database and the amount of transactions it will have to keep up with.



So everyone play nice or I will have to tell mommy.
 
PAo_ReVoLT said:
why not xeon?
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I think core i7 is faster, isn't it? Also, we don't need server-grade parts for this project. We won't necessarily avoid them just because they are server parts, but we don't need the hardened aspect. We've got Xeon 3.16's in some servers now, but we want higher clocks on this machine.
 
mystykmax said:
I think core i7 is faster, isn't it? Also, we don't need server-grade parts for this project. We won't necessarily avoid them just because they are server parts, but we don't need the hardened aspect. We've got Xeon 3.16's in some servers now, but we want higher clocks on this machine.
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well xeon has the 6 core CPU now and you can have dual cpu that will give you 12 core machine
 
I'm guessing he really does have a budget though, but won't tell us for one reason or another. I mean, he complained when i listed $300 memory..
 
Why not get the best of both worlds and wait for the Core i7 based Xeons (E55** series). Same processors in the new Mac Pro's. Apparently they haven't hit the retail market yet.

Two of those at stock clocks should be more then enough.
 
PAo_ReVoLT said:
well xeon has the 6 core CPU now and you can have dual cpu that will give you 12 core machine
Click to expand...

It's not really a multi-thread issue as it is a clock-speed issue, believe it or not. This is using either MySQL 5.0 or 5.1.
 
w1retap said:
I'm guessing he really does have a budget though, but won't tell us for one reason or another. I mean, he complained when i listed $300 memory..
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Well if I can get 4.0Ghz for $220, do I need to spend $600 for a couple more Mhz? Tell me what I can on the CPU clock if I go with the ram you suggested...I'm looking for ballpark.


ALL: remember, the disk subsystem is not holding me back right now. We are using RAID 10, 8-disk system on a 3ware hardware controller and not even touching the bandwidth on that system with 2.2Ghz Opterons and 3.16Ghz quad-core Xeons. We're going to figure out what we want for disks for this particular system after the parts I've mentioned above.
 
The thing is.. no overclock is guaranteed. With the 965, you'll have a much better chance at a higher overlock, at least from what I've seen with people using a 965 or 940 versus the 920. My 920 reaches a little over 4GHz on water though.. I haven't tried to push it more yet.
 
w1retap said:
No. I was trying to help, but you weren't giving much useful info.. it's still not very useful.

- So this machine is a development box... not a server? At least that's the way you're describing it.

- A 24hr Prime95 test doesn't mean it's stable, or going to remain stable during various cpu/mem intensive applications, especially heavy database work.

- I listed you memory that was more solid for higher overclocks.. you said cost wasn't an issue. You listed DDR3-1600 which is good for about a 4GHz overclock naively.. I listed you memory that would get you beyond that.

- If you're wanting good database performance with the ability to load/unload databases to the machine, you'll also want disks that can keep up, because that will most likely be your slowest point of the build. Get a good quality RAID card and use fast disks.
Click to expand...

Well, it's a MySQL box that only I will be using...slice that how you like, it is what it is. Prime is actually a very good indicator of stability for stuff above the disk system. Prime is far more intensive on cpu/mem than MySQL.

"very good high performance memory with a lot of leeway for overclocking"....tell me how much leeway this will leverage on my cpu clock. cpu clock is king for what I'm doing. [edit: figured it out.]
 
w1retap said:
The thing is.. no overclock is guaranteed. With the 965, you'll have a much better chance at a higher overlock, at least from what I've seen with people using a 965 or 940 versus the 920. My 920 reaches a little over 4GHz on water though.. I haven't tried to push it more yet.
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I agree and stated in my first thread that no overclock is guaranteed. The "powers that be" know this too.

So basically 20x the 1866 memory would give me 4.66Ghz if the cpu is fit enough. I had to look up the math on this part.
 
well if you need only 1 core then i7 965 is way to go. you can turn off HT and enable only 1 core that will give you far more overclock result
 
PAo_ReVoLT said:
well if you need only 1 core then i7 965 is way to go. you can turn off HT and enable only 1 core that will give you far more overclock result
Click to expand...

well I think probably disabling all cores but one may not be the solution...maybe disabling HT though...good thinking. Does the 940 just go one higher on the cpu multi than the 920?
 
Overclocking a server for a business in the manner you are talking about doing is absurd. Anyone above you in that business that thinks otherwise has been misinformed and/or misguided. I sure hope you are not the one that misguided them.
 
Throc said:
Overclocking a server for a business in the manner you are talking about doing is absurd. Anyone above you in that business that thinks otherwise has been misinformed and/or misguided. I sure hope you are not the one that misguided them.
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Please read my posts that already answer this. Remember, for what I'm doing, it doesn't matter. We're not trying for 5.5Ghz on LN2 or something and this is not customer-facing. Also, this is not misguided.
 
I've already read all your posts and I think they lend themselves to my previous point. (BTW, you shouldn't assume I haven't read them. I wouldn't have felt the need to comment if your previous posts weren't absurd.)

I'm just saying from my experience working with hundreds of clients, I've never run into one that would be fine with a database server going down for any period of time. And to think any client I've ever worked with would be so inclined to overclock a system at all, not to mention an overclock so fast that you would need watercooling, and sacrifice reliability over performance is a laugh. That is unless of course their "computer guy" convinced them otherwise and misguided them.

I really don't see a lot of people on this forum buying your idea.

I've made my point, go on with your thread now. I won't hold you up anymore.
 
Throc said:
I've already read all your posts and I think they lend themselves to my previous point. (BTW, you shouldn't assume I haven't read them. I wouldn't have felt the need to comment if your previous posts weren't absurd.)

I'm just saying from my experience working with hundreds of clients, I've never run into one that would be fine with a database server going down for any period of time. And to think any client I've ever worked with would be so inclined to overclock a system at all, not to mention an overclock so fast that you would need watercooling, and sacrifice reliability over performance is a laugh. That is unless of course their "computer guy" convinced them otherwise and misguided them.
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Again, the db machine will only be used by me and is not customer facing. I will be the only one using it...no web hits, no remote logins, none of that. You said you read my posts but you make comments that prove you didn't digest it properly or something. Why are we talking about clients overclocking a system. That makes even less sense.

Dangit, I will be the only one passing any data at all to this machine. It's not going to be a system we'd sell in the future or anything like that. This is a machine strictly for me at work.
 
just for the record, no one will pass data to this machine but me and possibly the IS guy if a drive needs re-imaging. We don't sell hardware to anyone so the customer will never see this in production...ever. period. That's why there's not really a huge concern with a failure. Think of it as limited R&D for now.
 
I missed the part where the OP asked for any of your opinions on his use or practice.
 
haha this is ridiculous

Why overclock a MySQL server when apparently only ONE person will be using it? The i7 CPUs are already stupid-fast, and if you're going to get a 965 in the first place, well god damn. I have a 920 overclocked to 3.2GHz and I am 100% happy with that.

I did have it at 3.8 but it became a space heater at that point.

There is very little reason to overclock a database server if only one person is using it... Period.

Goes much more so for a production environment.

I understand you won't listen to anything anyone has said but seriously. There has to be something to the fact that pretty much everyone is in disapproval of the idea...

Like the guy said above me I have never seen anyone consider any down time for a server acceptable. Whenever our servers go down at work (even if they are not client-facing) they should have been back up 10 minutes before they went down.
 
mrmylanman said:
haha this is ridiculous

Why overclock a MySQL server when apparently only ONE person will be using it? The i7 CPUs are already stupid-fast, and if you're going to get a 965 in the first place, well god damn. I have a 920 overclocked to 3.2GHz and I am 100% happy with that.

I did have it at 3.8 but it became a space heater at that point.

There is very little reason to overclock a database server if only one person is using it... Period.

Goes much more so for a production environment.

I understand you won't listen to anything anyone has said but seriously. There has to be something to the fact that pretty much everyone is in disapproval of the idea...

Like the guy said above me I have never seen anyone consider any down time for a server acceptable. Whenever our servers go down at work (even if they are not client-facing) they should have been back up 10 minutes before they went down.
Click to expand...

So to answer you in order...
1. It's not ridiculous.
2. The reason is because, like I said many times already, these imports are huge (200GB sometimes when expanded) and the MySQL import is CPU bound. A pretty freakin good reason to increase CPU speed.
3. You are wrong for my case. Try doing large imports with MySQL. I'm not talking megabytes, I'm talking gigabytes.
4. Again, I have said, this is NOT a production environment!!! Single person use for special tasks. No one else in the company will be depending on this server in any day-to-day capacity at all. No one else will even use it but me.
5. No. It's because almost no one has really synthesized what I've laid out here.
6. Now you have. If the server breaks for some reason, it is acceptable in my business case.

Almost no one has really read and synthesized what I'm doing here. I'm pretty frustrated. People even post that they've read my posts and then proceed to utter questions that are clearly answered in my posts.

I'm serious you guys. Try loading a 50GB database in MySQL and see where you are bound. I used iostat, iptraf, and top to test on an 8-disk RAID 10 on a hardware controller on an 8-core opteron and the binding point was the CPU. The disks were only writing between 11 and 21MB per second regardless of if the dump file was local (seperate drive array) or on another machine on nfs AND regardless if someone else was using that instance of MySQL or not (tested on two seperate machines, one with other users and one without). When copying the dump files directly, the speed was around 55MB/sec even on a machine with others using it at the same time, so I don't think it's the disk speed at all. After all my testing I gave my files to the most anal-retentive testing guy I know who has architected databases at Sun Microsystems for years and without telling him my findings, he tested for several days and said it is CPU bound and he's the one who finally said maybe we should try a one-off machine and overclock it. This is the same guy who makes CVS checkins to correct where someone accidentally put in two \n's instead of one. Then I had one of our IS guys run tests. Same conclusion. It's not just me.

I still can't figure out what case you guys think makes it matter if this machine goes down for a week. People keep saying this, but no one will be using it except me. No one will be hitting it except me. It will not be customer facing, employee facing nor ever using in production besides trouble-shooting for my purposes. It will even be in my office and not the server rooms.
 
People are probably just jealous because they work at an office where the boss yells at them for looking at Facebook, pay them no mind.
 
Rizen said:
People are probably just jealous because they work at an office where the boss yells at them for looking at Facebook, pay them no mind.
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Good point. I just wish I could get some seriously good feedback on the hardware. I did get good feedback on a case which was nice.
 
criccio said:
Why not get the best of both worlds and wait for the Core i7 based Xeons (E55** series). Same processors in the new Mac Pro's. Apparently they haven't hit the retail market yet.

Two of those at stock clocks should be more then enough.
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The problem is that it's not a massive multi-threading issue. I've used top to determine that no more than 2 cores really get used by MySQL for an import of a dump file. The guy I'm working with on this said we don't want to buy dual-core, we want to get stuff that is on the newer side. Plus if the xeon i7 isn't out yet, that won't help much.
 
I think your hardware will be fine...though not too keen on the Koolance EXOS. But that's just me.

I'm more concerned about the OCing. Like many have said, 24hr prime stable won't mean it's completely stable. If you were to say...run 24 hr prime, 500 passes of LinX, while doing your database stuff and it doesn't crash...I'd probably say it's good to go. I've seen instances where I can run 24hr prime but I fail linX pretty quick, vice versa, or I fail prime at 25 hrs etc etc
 
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