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Today we are looking at the Asus Z9 PE-D8 Workstation motherboard. This dual LGA 2011 socket board is based around Intel's C602 chipset with support for quad channel 8 DIMM memory, effectively targeting the high end audience.
We pair the Z9 PE-D8 up with two flagship Intel 8 Core Xeon E5 2687W processors, two Corsair H80 liquid coolers, a Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition graphics card, Seasonic Platinum 1000W power supply and 64GB of Kingston Predator 2,133mhz memory. Is this the ultimate Workstation?
This system will hammer your credit card into submission. Xeon E5 prices are generally set between the £800 and £1,500 mark and this system today will easily cost around the £5,000 mark.
If gaming is your only requirement then it goes without saying that this is completely overkill.
Initially we wanted to use the EVGA Classified SR-X motherboard, but I experienced quite a few issues and decided to bin the review, while I still had some hair left. We really don't recommend anyone purchase this motherboard as the bios seems totally unfinished and unstable.
Asus kindly supplied their Z9 PE-D8 Workstation board, which is £105 cheaper, faster, smaller and infinitely more reliable. The Xeon E5 processors can't be overclocked therefore stability and performance at default speeds are the primary focus for this review.
Today we have built a very high end system with 32 threads and we put it through its paces when editing images, working with high definition video and rendering 3D scenes. Additionally, can it be used as a gaming machine when you have some downtime? It is good enough for playing games at 5760×1080 across three monitors? We answer all these questions today.
Special thanks to Intel, Kingston, Corsair, Lian Li, Sapphire, Seasonic and ASUS for supplying this high end hardware for our review today.
And there was me thinking my 3570k at 5ghz was awesome 🙂
shame on me !
Go on, give it away, please?
Would be nice to see some opteron reviews too. Cover the amd side of things.
thats a very nice system, but it does show that software is way behind the hardware. exactly the same sorry situation in the world of gaming.
We need a new Crysis and new application support for many cores.
The coders are lazy, although it makes little sense to develop a lot of time to multiple core support when most people have dual/quad core.
Most games ive looked at only use one core however, its a poor showing.
You should have known that on Xeons overclocking is BLOCKED – and this includes not only CPU clocks, but memory as well… 1600 is the highest you’re allowed to go – until Ivy-E next year which is expected to provide 1866. Annoying, isn’t it?
Well I stand (or sit) corrected on that one. I thought they could load the XMP profiles, but clearly not. thanks.
im currently have a similar setup, but on a cosmos 2, and both h80is dont fit on top they touch the top board passive coolers, too bulky ,so i need an advice how to setup this coolers, i saw on your nuild the h80s running wiht only 1 fan? how is the performance of those in that way?
The run great. bear in mind the 2687W’s aren’t producing too much heat when they are running at default clock speeds and voltages. Temperatures were well under 70c under extended load. As long as you have decent air flow, one fan is not a concern. Its only if you were to overclock and push voltages the two fans would be very useful. With Xeon’s being locked, it isn’t a concern.
If you are mounting the coolers at the rear, or top, set the single fan in exhaust configuration.
so ill try to put it on top with the fans outside pushing air inside, that will be ok?
Will the single fan not fit inside the case? I would set them up as exhaust unless you are mounting the radiators at the front of the case.
the problem is that the asus mobo has 2 passive coolers on top of the board and the radiator with the fan inside dont fit couse of them, so, thats why im planning to put them as intake, and only 1 fan each 🙁
I wouldn’t mount them in an intake position at the top of the case, even if they are outside the case. Hot air naturally flows upwards. you would really cause a problem for the airflow of the case if you set them as intake flowing up to down.
Should all still be ok, as long as you have good cool air intake from the front/side of the case.
looks like the cosmos 2 is well ventilated, 2 front, 1 back, 3 to the psu… im going to try the fron cage solution
I’m running this board with Predator 2133MHz using a VCCSA of 1.2V got it stable 11-12-11-30-2T 1.6V so consider that one negative may be solved.