20 core-ish or more Xeon idea... help?

[djbuddha]

Hey all! Currently love my current Hack (use it for encoding video mainly right now, but it's an older Sandy Bridge build- see my signature), for my work main workflow (not encoding much at all on this machine) I'm primarily using a 2017 Macbook Pro (fully specced), I'm doing a LOT of video encoding with the other machine. The type of encoding I'm doing cannot be offloaded to a GPU (the codec / parameters for this application won't allow it unfortunately, I've looked into it.)

I'm also not super interested in the iMac Pro. In my use case, throwing more raw CPU cores at the problem will help a ton.

That being said, I'm seeing a lot of older 2012-2013 Xeon's being sold in pairs (in the 10-12 core variant) on eBay from older machines that are used / tested (I understand the risks with buying stuff like this from eBay, but I'm not talking engineering samples or anything, just older legit processors).

So after scouring the forums (and other questionable parts of the internet), my question for those who can help is, is there an older motherboard / Xeon combo that is compatible with Sierra / High Sierra that will recognize all the cores in question without power management issues?

I'd like to do a minimum of 20 cores in this build (if the clock speed is around 2.2 ghz at minimum with a decent cache size, I'm ok with that). More cores the better obviously, but I think my budget for the CPUs will max out around $700 USD (the lower the price the better obviously, I still have to purchase ECC RAM and the board itself ).

I'm thinking I'd want a motherboard with (obviously) a dual socket running the C902J chipset? Help me out as I could be completely wrong.

Thank you so much!

 

[macs_forever]

The 18 core i9-7980xe has been awesome for me. It just isn't cheap. It is well worth the money though and the builds are well documented for these X299 motherboards.

 

[djbuddha]

The 18 core i9-7980xe has been awesome for me. It just isn't cheap. It is well worth the money though and the builds are well documented for these X299 motherboards.

How cheap is 'cheap'? lol

Also, you have TB3 support on that platform correct?
(ie., does it work? How well does it work, does it support hot plugging without rebooting? E-GPU support working?)

 

[macs_forever]

It has TB3 but it is my first so I don't have anything to test. The rig was expensive (I said it IS NOT cheap). Rough numbers:

• $2000 for the CPU -- i9-7980xe
• $400 for the motherboard -- DesignareEX
• $1600 for the memory -- 128GB
• $150 for power supply -- HX1000i
• $200 for Cooling -- Corsair H100i v2
• $150 for Video -- RX 560 (Very surprised at how well it works)
• $130 for Case -- Lian-Li PC-10NB (modified)
• $100 for Fans -- Quiet Chromax fans on everything
• $1250 for SSD -- Samsung 960 Pro 2TB
• $250 for RAID -- HighPoint RR2840a
• $100 for rack -- Vantec 12x2.5x15mm drive cage
• $600 for disks -- 6 x 4TB seagate barracudas liberated from their USB enclosures.

You can take in from there and cut prices where you can. I bought the RX 560 to try out for a future build. I'm still running with it!

• Totally compatible with iMessage, Facetime, iTunes (including streaming movies
• Difficult to configure -- made MUCH easier by help from Izo1 and KGP
• No KPs, VERY stable
• Cool (sub 50C at all times)
• Quiet.

 

[djbuddha]

The thing is, your build is making me want to just save up and go nuts LOL. If TB3 works well (which I'll have to do some more research). I might plan for a July build of a comparable system. (Have some major expenses before then).

So since I made my post, I had 20 videos encoding on my quad sandy bridge and another 20 encoding on my 2017 maxed out MacBook Pro. The MacBook finished the same length of files in 1/4 of the time. That was enough to make me see the power of new generation machines / cache size advantages.

I may consider the expensive option after all.