Which Dual Processor mobos are OC'able?

Q

qwkhyena

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Howdy, I'm looking to build a VMware vSphere farm thanks to their vSphere Essentials Bundle (3 hosts, 2 CPUs per host, 6 Cores per CPU)

I've done searching all day and stumbled upon EVGA's Classified SR-2 mobo. And I already knew about Intel's Skulltrail mobo.

Anyone know where I can find a list of Dual CPU boards that I can overclock the snot out of? I'd rather go cheap and OC then pay $3.6k for a pair Xeon 5680s ($1.8k each!)

Thanks!
-Q

PS. I'm building a 16TB SAN as we speak for the vSphere servers so I'm not worried about how many SATA/SAS ports these boards have. I just need to fit a PCIe card in them for the quad Gb NIC card.

EDIT: Also found ASUS's Z7S WS which seems to also be OC'able.
 
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You already have the entire list right there.There are very few dual socket motherboards that overclock.
Most users who go with dual socket are looking for power and 100% stability.

If you must overclock, it will required to build more sytems with 1 cpu each, or wait for the SR-2 to be released with a MSRP of +/- $600.00
 
Thanks EA. That's what I was afraid of. Most Xeon DP systems these days value stability versus OCability for all the right reasons. I however, am just too cheap to shell out serious bucks when a little OC'ing would do the trick instead. Sadly, that SR-2 is looking better and better.
 
xeon x5650 + EVGA's Classified SR-2 mobo looks good.

xeon x5650 is about 1000$ each
 
agrophel said:
xeon x5650 + EVGA's Classified SR-2 mobo looks good.

xeon x5650 is about 1000$ each
Click to expand...

Yes, that's just what I was thinking. Then, very carefully, I could try to over clock it w/ a Danger Den or Koolance waterblock and see if I couldn't get 4GHz. Stable of course!

But that would give me the best bang per core at this point. 12 cores per server would be nuts.
 
The SR-2's were available on Amazon recently. Two of the guys in the DC sub-forum purchased one.
 
ok so... you are doing it wrong.

SR-2s are known to be some of the most finicky boards on the planet ... you do not want a vsphere on top of it... Let alone with a high overclock.

Go 4p or go home.
It will have the muscle you need at stock.
And if you Get a SM 4p g34 a guy in the community has a bios for it that can help you overclock it.

Choose stable power. Also found in affordable packages.
 
Patriot said:
ok so... you are doing it wrong.

SR-2s are known to be some of the most finicky boards on the planet ... you do not want a vsphere on top of it... Let alone with a high overclock.

Go 4p or go home.
It will have the muscle you need at stock.
And if you Get a SM 4p g34 a guy in the community has a bios for it that can help you overclock it.

Choose stable power. Also found in affordable packages.
Click to expand...

This...

Overclocking server parts is never a good idea.
 
being someone who shorted pins on the old socket 604 Xeons to enable clock settings in the BIOS on his Asus board....I can assure you it is NOT worth it.

All the heat/power issues you run into OCing a gaming system, you run into at half the gain in a dual processor system. Just buy something you can afford as soon as a new socket comes out, and then you have the longest possible upgrade path.
 
raclimj said:
This...

Overclocking server parts is never a good idea.
Click to expand...

You agree with me then disagree with me... please post something useful not just spam to get post count over 50 to view fsft....

Darq said:
being someone who shorted pins on the old socket 604 Xeons to enable clock settings in the BIOS on his Asus board....I can assure you it is NOT worth it.

All the heat/power issues you run into OCing a gaming system, you run into at half the gain in a dual processor system. Just buy something you can afford as soon as a new socket comes out, and then you have the longest possible upgrade path.
Click to expand...

oO ... I can kind of see where you are coming from...
But those chips were quite hot and 3rd party cooling solutions are not that great for them.

As someone who overclocks everything he touches to the max stable speed.
I assure you for certain scenarios it is quite worth it. For others it is not.
On my desktop I have the max core turbo forced all the time. So my 2.7ghz octo is locked at 3.1ghz. 100% stable. I have 4x amd 12core g34 chips that run 2ghz stock and I run them at 3ghz. I just redid the system to provide more cooling and power so I could safely go higher.

Depending on his budget grabbing a bunch of 2600k's (6 machines) and popping them up to a gentle 4.2ghz might be a great option. Especially since he is doing a cluster.

604 sucked all around as far as thermals... so the increase in ghz would give an exponential increase in power and heat.

Most systems you can overclock fairly far before you have to really start increasing the voltage to go further. These are refereed to as walls... to go over you have to be able to cool the chips better than stock and be willing to feed them more power.
 
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