Upgrading: X58 or C226

W

WangChung

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 19, 2013
Messages
181
Was finally able to test out my ARC-1883i on a decent board rather than the (admittedly) bargain basement AMD board I have been using for years, and works great. I used my desktop's Rampage III Gene and put the card into PCIe slot 1, which I didn't do before, and worked perfectly.
I've finally decided to just step my game up and upgrade my home server full hog. I'm looking at either a Rampage III Extreme or a ASRock C226 WS+ board. The R3E offers me the cheap Xeon 6 core and 48GB ECC RAM, but it is outdated with the mediocre Marvell SATA controller. The C226 is newer, but only 32GB RAM and 4 cores.
Additionally, the C226 route would give me onboard video which is fine, but the R3E I would have to buy another video card.
Lastly, the R3E has a bit of a following on bios-mods, so I can at least get OROM upgrades pretty easily enough. If I get the ASRock or almost any other workstation board I'd be on my own and have to rely on the vendor for BIOS updates.

I'm really thinking the extra memory, 2 cores/4 threads and ROM upgrades are worth the higher priced X58 board option. Expensive as hell on eBay and whatnot. Is there something drastic with the C226 board I'm missing that is more worth it?
Thoughts?
 
Hey don't laugh at me..but what is the Benefits of having a home server? Keep all your movies on it or somthing:D
 
primetime said:
Hey don't laugh at me..but what is the Benefits of having a home server? Keep all your movies on it or somthing:D
Click to expand...

Yes, in my case at least. It's a bit of a hoarding condition. It's about the only thing that could require the effort put forth of having many terabytes of data and the redundancy to protect the time invested.
 
If you want to get the cheap 6-core XEONs why not just go with an actual server, or are you planning on overclocking?

Maybe something like this that has 12 HDD bays.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-2U-Server-X8DTN-Barebones-Add-Your-CPU-Memory-HDD-/291408047628?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43d945ee0c

Here is one that comes with 24GB RAM and 2x 3.06Ghx hex core CPUs.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-2U-Server-X8DTN-2x-Xeon-X5675-3-06ghz-Hexcore-24gb-Add-Your-HDD-/231514167620?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35e751d944
 
Last edited:
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
My home server serves up plex, processes my Handbrake sessions, backs up my other computers, etc.

Pic for click
XoDA99i.jpg
 
No it's fine, but your OP confused me a bit (upgrading, full hog etc., then X58).

From what Asus' website says, the R3E doesn't offer ECC support, so I would stay away. Also, 48GB on that card would mean using 8GB sticks, and finding those might be tricky, especially with the right voltage.

To be clear, you're buying this used, right ? Personally I would go with server hardware in that case, plenty of companies are retiring socket 1366 hardware right now, my own just gave me a Dell R710 for example.

On the other hand buying new, energy efficient hardware might make more sense.
 
Aesma said:
No it's fine, but your OP confused me a bit (upgrading, full hog etc., then X58).

From what Asus' website says, the R3E doesn't offer ECC support, so I would stay away. Also, 48GB on that card would mean using 8GB sticks, and finding those might be tricky, especially with the right voltage.

To be clear, you're buying this used, right ? Personally I would go with server hardware in that case, plenty of companies are retiring socket 1366 hardware right now, my own just gave me a Dell R710 for example.

On the other hand buying new, energy efficient hardware might make more sense.
Click to expand...

Read my sig - same board, two less slots. ;)
By "full hog" I meant buying hardware that wasn't a $50 mobo and the cheapest RAM possible to make a technically functioning computer, which is what I did originally. Basically what I have in the box now won't actually run the ARC-1883i but either the X58 or C226 will with the pros and cons listed above. I do appreciate your input though. :)
 
was gonna say you can get used intel or supermicro boards sometime for $100 or less, a proper server board which some have built in LSI raid controllers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top