I've been turning my old X79 system (Asus X79 Deluxe, Intel i7-4930k) into a file sharing & Plex server. It's replacing a ~dual core Intel 5th gen that was quite sluggish so the 4930k is a nice boost. I'm also moving to teamed 10GbE so the X79 platform provides some nice I/O breathing room.
I plan to dismantle, clean and re-apply TIM to the CPU, and got to thinking whether there might be a cost effective upgrade for this socket since I was opening up the system anyway--either more horsepower, or equivalent horsepower with lower power draw, or less horsepower with a dramatically lower power draw. What I've seen:
1) E5-2687W v2 - more compute but 2 additional cores likely wasted on this application and power demand goes even higher. Also, just too expensive on the aftermarket.
2) E5-2695 v2 - Lots of cores and huge L3 cache, slightly lower TDP but again it's expensive and I can't convince myself this is well suited to a storage / transcoding platform, even with the big L3 cache. Seems like too much $ to throw at such an old platform.
3) E5-2643 v2 - This is a little more interesting... about the same clock/cores as the 4930k but double the L3. Same TDP and it's not too expensive.
4) E5-2630L v2 - 3.4GHz drops to 2.4GHz but TDP is cut in half... this would be a cool running machine. The processor is dirt cheap too. Almost worth getting just to try it out.
5) If I'm worried about power, can I undervolt/underclock the 4930k to see what the experience is like, and not deal with some new hardware?
For the most part I think I should stick with the 4930K and just plan to get a couple more years of life out of it but open to feedback and ideas.
I plan to dismantle, clean and re-apply TIM to the CPU, and got to thinking whether there might be a cost effective upgrade for this socket since I was opening up the system anyway--either more horsepower, or equivalent horsepower with lower power draw, or less horsepower with a dramatically lower power draw. What I've seen:
1) E5-2687W v2 - more compute but 2 additional cores likely wasted on this application and power demand goes even higher. Also, just too expensive on the aftermarket.
2) E5-2695 v2 - Lots of cores and huge L3 cache, slightly lower TDP but again it's expensive and I can't convince myself this is well suited to a storage / transcoding platform, even with the big L3 cache. Seems like too much $ to throw at such an old platform.
3) E5-2643 v2 - This is a little more interesting... about the same clock/cores as the 4930k but double the L3. Same TDP and it's not too expensive.
4) E5-2630L v2 - 3.4GHz drops to 2.4GHz but TDP is cut in half... this would be a cool running machine. The processor is dirt cheap too. Almost worth getting just to try it out.
5) If I'm worried about power, can I undervolt/underclock the 4930k to see what the experience is like, and not deal with some new hardware?
For the most part I think I should stick with the 4930K and just plan to get a couple more years of life out of it but open to feedback and ideas.