Skip to content
Register

Ryzen 9 5950X build vs dual E5-2680v4 for VMs

Dedicated Servers by svendeal 17 replies 2.1K views
svendeal

Member OP

Deal Sniper

4 #1

Been running Proxmox on some old E5 nodes from OVHcloud and saw a 5950X barebone pop up on Contabo for €380. SNAPPED IT UP immediately but now im second guessing. 64GB DDR4 included, 2x NVMe slots.

Dual E5-2680v4 is 28c/56t, 5950X is 16c/32t but way faster single thread. For my use case (pfsense + nextcloud + some game servers) the 5950X feels snappier but I lose PCIe lanes like CRAZY. Only 24 lanes vs 80 on the dual socket board.

What would u run for a homelab cluster?? Price per core the E5 still wins but power draw is rough.

world record: 4min Arch install
GuruDeutschlag

Member

#2
svendeal said:
Lose PCIe lanes like CRAZY. Only 24 lanes vs 80

Yes the PCIe Lane Count is the critical Factor here, svendeal. The E5-2680v4 Platform offers far superior I/O Expansion Capability with its eighty Lanes across two Processors, no? You can run multiple NVMe Expansion Cards, 10GbE Network Interface Cards, and GPU Passthrough Devices simultaneously without Bottlenecking. However the Platform Power Consumption is substantial, yes, typically onehundredfifty to twohundred Watts at Idle versus roughly sixty Watts for a wellconfigured Ryzen System. The Total Cost of Ownership Calculation must include Electricity Pricing over the three to five Year Operational Lifespan. For your stated Workload Profile the singlethreaded Performance Advantage may not justify the Lane Reduction if Storage Throughput is critical, no.

Blaze

Member

#3

JUST RUN WHAT YOU GOT AND STOP OVERTHINKING IT! THE 5950X IS A BEAST AND YOU ALREADY BOUGHT IT! IF YOU NEED MORE LANES GET A B550 BOARD WITH A BIFURCATION CARD! PROBLEM SOLVED! IVE GOT A THREADRIPPER RIG THAT DRAWS 400W AND MY WIFE DOESNT EVEN COMPLAIN! SKILL ISSUE IF YOU CANT AFFORD THE BILL! POWER IS CHEAP WHERE I LIVE!

Ricardo77

Member

White Label

#4

It should be noted that a value-added redistribution opportunity was leveraged through the partner ecosystem to secure comparable E5-2680v4 configurations at a favorable synergy point. A comprehensive Total Cost of Ownership analysis was conducted, and it was determined that the operational expenditure associated with power consumption exceeded the initial acquisition savings by a factor of 2.3x over a standard thirty-six-month lifecycle. The markup that would have been applied through traditional channels was instead redirected into efficiency optimization. It is recommended that the Ryzen platform be retained, and that the legacy dual-socket infrastructure be decommissioned in a manner that maximizes residual value recovery through the secondary market partner ecosystem.

JO

Member

#5

What board did the 5950X come with

pablowild

Member

#6

150W idle sounds high for dual E5s.

hankels

Member

52 VPS and counting

#7

What's your power rate, sven?

seedbox, NAS, tape, and three offsite
svendeal

Member OP

Deal Sniper

#8
josh13 said:
What board did the 5950X come with

Some ASUS B550-Plus variant, nothing fancy. 2x M.2 slots, one PCIe x16, couple x1 slots. That's the whole problem really -- I want to add a 10GbE card and maybe another NVMe via PCIe adapter and I'm already out of lanes.

hankels said:
What's your power rate, sven?

About $0.14/kWh here. Not California bad but not Texas cheap either. Dual E5 rig pulls around 180W at the wall measured with a Kill-A-Watt, 5950X build is sitting at 65W right now with 4 VMs running.

world record: 4min Arch install
hankels

Member

52 VPS and counting

2 #9
svendeal said:
About $0.14/kWh

Oof. I'm at $0.09 in Phoenix and I still flinch when the summer bill hits. At 180W vs 65W you're looking at roughly $200/year difference just in electricity. Over 3 years that's a whole other used server.

I've got E5-2680v3s in my garage lab and they're fine for what they are, but I'm migrating anything 24/7 to Ryzen or just renting cheap VPS. The lane thing is real though -- my dual socket board has two x16 and three x8 slots, I can throw whatever at it.

seedbox, NAS, tape, and three offsite
pablowild

Member

3 #10
hankels said:
Typically onehundredfifty to twohundred Watts at Idle

Depends heavily on the board and how many DIMMs. I've seen dual E5-2680v4 setups idle at 120W with 4x16GB and no add-in cards. But yeah, 150-200W is common if you load up the RAM and have a bunch of spinning rust.

The 5950X is the better buy at €380 with RAM included. Even if you need a cheap B550 board with bifurcation support later, you're still ahead.

Post a reply

You need an account to reply. Log in or register to join the conversation.

Post reply Preview Save draft