Home Lab Xeon

The current home lab setup consists of an Intel Core i3-2100 with 16GB of DDR3, a USB drive for ESXi (on 6.5 right now) and a 3TB WD for the VMs. While the Intel i3 performs perfectly for my needs, I came across a Xeon E3-1220 (SR00F, Ivy Bridge), which should be even better!

For the specs, we have the following differences:

Model	Intel Xeon E3-1220	Intel Core i3-2100
Released:	Q2-2011	Q1-2011
Manufacturing process:	32nm	32nm
Price originally:	189-203 US dollars (more in euroland)	120 USD
Core count:	4 Cores	2 cores
Hyperthreading	No	Yes
Base Freq:	3.10 GHz	3.1 GHz
Turbo Freq:	3.40 GHz	No
TDP:	80 W	65W
Max Memory:	32 GB ECC DDR3	32 GB Non-ECC DDR3
L1 Cache:	128 + 128 KB	64 + 64 KB
L2 Cache:	1 MB	512 KB
L3 Cache:	8 MB	3 MB

So we can see that the Xeon part is 4 core processor, without hyperthreading, so real cores as opposed to the i3’s threads. It’s more power hungry, which is to be expected, but can also Turbo at a higher frequency than the i3. Also, the Xeon has more cache, which is also to be expected with a server grade component.

A notable thing is that the Xeon, being a server part, does not include the GPU components, so I’ll have to add a GPU at least for the installation. I run the server headless anyway, but I want to see it POST at least. I think I’ll have to add a PCI card for this it has no PCI slots so, as I only have one PCIe slot (well there are some x1 slots but I have no such cards), and that’s used by the NIC. The motherboard is an Asrock H61M-DGS R2.0 which has one x16 slot and one x1 slot. Maybe I’ll do it all headless and hope it posts? Or take out the NIC for the installation?

Some yahoo also tried running an x16 card in an x1 slot here. Might try that but since I have to melt off one end of the x1 slot, probably not.

There are apparently some x1 graphics cards, but I don’t have one as I mentioned. An option could be the Zotac GeForce GT 710, which can be had for 60 euros as of this post.

Preparations

I went to the pharmacy to get some pure isopropyl alcohol. It wasn’t on the shelf, so I had to ask for it. I told the lady I need some isopropyl alcohol, as pure as possible. She looked at me funny and said they had some in stock. I told her I’m using it to clean electronics, so she wouldn’t suspect I’m some sort of cringey soon-to-be-blind  (not sure if you get blind from this stuff, but it can’t be good for you) wannabe alcoholic, to which she replied that she doesn’t know what i’ll do with it, or how it will work for that. She got the bottle, which is described as “100 ml Isopropyl Alcohol”. There is a mention of cleaning vinyl disks and tape recorder heads on the back, so I was vindicated. There’s no indication of purity on the bottle, but the manufacturer lists above 99.8% purity here. Doesn’t exactly match the bottle, but it’s close.

Why did I get isopropyl alcohol? Well, because people on the internet said it’s good for cleaning off residual thermal paste from processors and CPU coolers. With common sense 2.0, I can also deduce that anything with a high alcoholic content will evaporate, and not leave behind anything conductive to mess things up. Oh and it cost 6,30€ at the local pharmacy. It’s not listed on the website (or it says it’s no longer a part of their selection).

Let’s see how it performs. I’m using cotton swabs, but I suppose I could use a paper towel. If it leaves behind cotton pieces, I’ll switch to something else.

The Xeon originally had a passive CPU block and a bunch of loud, small case fans, but I will use the same cooler as for the i3.

Take out the i3 and the cooler. Clean the cooler off with the isopropyl:

Put in the E3, new thermal paste. I used some trusty Arctic Silver 5.

Re-attach the cooler and we’re off to the races. I’ll note here that I hate the push through and turn type attachments of the stock Intel cooler. Oh well, it’ll work.

 

Powering on

Powering the thing on was the exciting part. Will there be blue smoke? Will it boot headless? Will it get stuck in some POST screen and require me to press a button to move on? Maybe even go into the BIOS to save settings for the new CPU?

Strangely enough, after a while, I started getting ping replies from ESXi meaning the box had booted.

There’s really nothing left to do. ESXi 6.5 recognizes the new CPU and VMs started booting shortly after.