And so it begins...... the project to upgrade my "Blackbird" workstation. It's current configuration of Intel Z77 chipset powered by an i7-3770 of the "Ivy Bridge" generaton has just about run it's course as a front-line workstation.
My decision is to move away from the "enthusiast" route toward the true workstation hardware. Which means choosing a processor from the Xeon line instead of the consumer oriented "Core" line. These CPUs pretty much can't be overclocked, which is something I don't engage in anyway. Of course, there are other features as well, after weighing the pluses and minus, I decided a high core count and low cost was the way to go leading me to a Xeon E5-2630L which is a low powered (55w) chip with 8 cores on board! I decided that even at a slow 1.8Ghz clock speed would be fine for 16 hyper-threaded cores. For what I do, and it's $85 cost, this would be a great LGA-2011-3 starting point.
Of course, there's always a "fly in the ointment" in one way or another. Right now, it's the cost of DDR4 memory. So, I'm going to start with 16Gb. I know...... woe is me!!! Well, it is a downgrade for me since I'm running with 32Gb right now. I'll get 16Gb more at some point in the next year which will get me halfway to the 64Gb capacity. I can live with that. Other bugs?
Well..... there is this little thing..... I bought a board that was inexpensive because it has some bent pins. So, yeah.... I have got a tedious little task in front of me to get them all straightened. It isn't a trivial task, but I've done it before.
A fun weekend to look forward to, but after that....... Blackbird Mk II flies again!
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