Xeon D-1540 as a gaming and processing platform?

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Quartz-1

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My brother needs a mini PC - ITX due to Wife Acceptance Factor - with very many cores and LOTS of memory. He does reservoir modelling. Very multi-threaded, very computationally intensive, very RAM intensive, not all at the same time. I was originally looking at the Intel Xeon E5 v3 CPUs, but can't find an ITX motherboard for them, but I've found the Xeon D-1540 which appears to be at the bottom end of his requirements (it's to replace a huge dual-processor tower). So I have a couple of questions:

At 2 GHz / 2.6 GHz it seems a little on the slow side for his single-threaded work stuff, but is it? If yes, can it be overclocked?

This is for home use so there will be recreational use - gaming. Especially if my nephew is allowed a login! So how does it fare there, say if paired with a short GTX 970 or short R9 290X?
 
It's a very poor choice. That CPU is only included in embedded server motherboard. You won't even get audio on them. You will not be able to overclock it at all and it won't be so hot for gaming either.

You can't have lots of cores and memory in a small form factor. It's pretty much one or the other. ITX will generally limit you to 16gb and mATX 32gb. If you need more than that, ATX boards go to 512gb. Board that go beyond these limits will have low power embedded CPUs.

So, I would suggest replacing the wife as what you want doesn't exist.
 
Sound can be managed through the HDMI connection or a USB sound device.
 
If this is a work PC why is "wife acceptance" a factor? Tell him to tell her "if you really need me to get a smaller work PC that can't do what I need it to do then first we're going to go find a smaller house to put it in"
 
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Xeon d is an interesting idea. I'd guess it's fine for his work but good luck finding a short 290x or 970 gtx. You'll probably be looking at a 750 ti for the graphics if you need a short card.
 
Other option: get a Mac Pro. Preferably a used or refurb one with a base CPU, which you can then upgrade for cheap.
 
Chris_Lonardo said:
Here, this will run a Xeon E5 v3 and is mini-ITX, but has only 2 DIMM slots- http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99E-ITXac/
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That ITX board is awful, putting aside only using 2 of the 4 RAM channels and 16 of the possibly 40 PCIe channels, it uses the narrow 2011-3 socket instead of the normal square one that every other consumer board comes with. You have to put a special heatsink on it, which according to other forums/sites with discussions on that board will most likely block one of the DIMMs leaving you with 1 (instead of 4 to 8).
 
-Dragon- said:
That ITX board is awful, putting aside only using 2 of the 4 RAM channels and 16 of the possibly 40 PCIe channels, it uses the narrow 2011-3 socket instead of the normal square one that every other consumer board comes with. You have to put a special heatsink on it, which according to other forums/sites with discussions on that board will most likely block one of the DIMMs leaving you with 1 (instead of 4 to 8).
Click to expand...
2 channel vs 4 doesn't make as big of a difference as you might imagine. I also have no idea what you think the rest of the PCIe lanes would be used for? It's an ITX board after all. It also comes with a heatsink. In the end, it is the most powerful ITX system you can get, so you're just complaining because well, you can.
 
OP, how about mATX? You get much more power computationally for not much change in PC volume.
 
-Dragon- said:
If this is a work PC why is "wife acceptance" a factor? Tell him to tell her "if you really need me to get a smaller work PC that can't do what I need it to do then first we're going to go find a smaller house to put it in"
Click to expand...

His house is already small and he shares the desk with her.

Chris_Lonardo said:
Here, this will run a Xeon E5 v3 and is mini-ITX, but has only 2 DIMM slots- http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99E-ITXac/
Click to expand...

Hmmm.... cores or RAM. It's going to be a tough choice. For the heatsink I was thinking of using an AIO fluid cooler. Still, it's something to go on. Thanks.
 
If he's in the price range where a Xeon E5 workstation is a consideration, as much as I'm not a Mac guy, given his space constraints the Mac Pro actually can make a reasonable value proposition- http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Mac-P...146?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27fd49ca72

As for the narrow ILM socket on that ASRock board, yeah, liquid cooling would definitely be the way to go. I've done that before with a dual E5 board rather than suffer two noisy HSF combos.

Will his workload use CUDA? I can't say that I know much of anything about reservoir modeling, but there's a tremendous amount of GPU-accelerated professional software out there, which may make the choice of CPU less of a constraint.
 
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Do not consider the Xeon D platform for gaming, they are essentially Atom cores with increased access to I/O.

Your best bet without going OEM for mITX is the ASRock MB.
 
Quartz-1 said:
Gaming is very much a secondary consideration, but it's there.
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I get that but outside of basic gaming these cores won't give and kind of considerable performance and will hold back probably any discrete video card you buy for it.
 
Trimlock said:
Do not consider the Xeon D platform for gaming, they are essentially Atom cores with increased access to I/O.

Your best bet without going OEM for mITX is the ASRock MB.
Click to expand...

It's broadwell not baytrail.
Pre-Production-Intel-Xeon-D-1540-7-zip-comparison-600x368.jpg

http://www.servethehome.com/intel-xeon-d-1540-performance-comparison/
 
Trimlock said:
Do not consider the Xeon D platform for gaming, they are essentially Atom cores with increased access to I/O.

Your best bet without going OEM for mITX is the ASRock MB.
Click to expand...



I remember reading that xeon d uses broadwell cores. You are gonna have to back this up.
 
Chris_Lonardo said:
Other option: get a Mac Pro. Preferably a used or refurb one with a base CPU, which you can then upgrade for cheap.
Click to expand...

I am assuming you are referring to the LGA1366 2P Mac Pros?

Compared to Dell/HP/Lenovo workstation prices, said fruity PCs aren't bad for the money, surprisingly. Still would rather roll my own machine running Windows and more up-to-date hardware, though.
 
Seriously, what kind of wife is that? See if you can upgrade that first. :)
 
ccityinstaller said:
No, he is the one that is right..They use the same core as the 22nm Airmont based Atoms use.
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No, no they do not. I hate posting info from other sites, but here's some more accurate information from Anandtech.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9070/intel-xeon-d-launched-14nm-broadwell-soc-for-enterprise

I suspect they'd be pretty competent gaming CPUs, but it seems a waste. There's a lot of infrastructure built into the CPU that just doesn't have any impact on gaming performance.
 
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