My best guess is my SR-2 rig has 3 to 5 years of life left in it. I think it will be very problematical to install Windows beyond 8.x on it. Windows 7 is beginning the retirement process and should be End Of Life in the next 3 years or so.

If I had the funds, I'd build a rig based on a motherboard that supports dual Xeon V3 processors.

I hope that EVGA decides to introduce a motherboard in that class before my next build. I would hate to jump ship back to Asus! (hint, hint EVGA)

My $0.02
-A

Still a great board, matters what you use it for? GPU benchmarks I am starting to fall behind based on x99 boards and ddr4 memory. But am still higher than most entries to 3dmark. For computing benchmarks I am still pretty high because of dual cpu and large amount of ram. Even as old as the board is it still has a few more left in it.

The boards seem to be at a high price right now so if selling at a high price is the goal then sell it now and build another pc.

Z-97 would only be a little better, x-99 would be worth the upgrade if you have to sell off your SR-2

pic bad quality with my phone

this installation is temporary
the other cpu sits because I sold my XL120 Seidon and I have only one cooler
the case is open, I admire my Xigmatek xlf - f 1253 and f 1453
a smaller mobo !!!
like what?

5960x

I have to make my choice, and I need your help I essentially of games, modding and some videos software
i can buy my SR2 + two Xeon for 1100 Euros
to get another RIG, what's the best choice
 
EVGA SR2 / 2 Xeon X5690 / 24GB / GTX 770
or
MSI Z97 XPOWER / I7 4790K / 16 GB / GTX 970

Arguably, if you are aiming to build a dual Xeon workstation at the moment, you would do better to start with a S2011 motherboard.

Not to hijack this thread, but I am also looking at the same setup. I plan to use if for a XEN VM box, CUDA(rainbow tables), as well as some gaming. Is it still worth  getting the sr-2 and two xeon 5690s  or go for a newer board and the latest 5960x?
 
Price point: I can get the board and two 5690s for 1000, whereas the 5960 will run me 1k for the chip alone.
 

So if i plan to watercool and OC are the 5690s worth it? I just started researching this board, but it seems like a beast that will be pleanty for the next ~5 years. What do you guys think, is it still worth getting this board? I read into the PCIe bus thread on here and it seems that there should be no problems with the 2.0 bus getting saturated even if I am using newer GFX cards.
 

There is, IMO, no point in watercooling. I have a pair of X5690s at 4GHz (166x24, turbo disabled) at 1.30V (or was it 1.35V, I forget), on air with a pair of Thermalright HR-22 coolers, and 96GB of RAM. You should be able to achieve 166x24 with X5660 CPUs (21x + 3x boost). If you get X5670s you may find that with boost on 2 cores at 22+3=25x multiplier it becomes unstable. Or you could get X5680s, disable the boost and set them for 166x24. X5690s still seem to be considerably more expensive than the lesser models, and in my experience there is no gain in using them. You can probably get away with slightly more FSB than 166 on some boards, but beyond 177 bclk you will be pushing QPI out of spec (even if you set it to 4.8GT/s), and everything will start to fall apart in all sorts of weird and interesting ways. Also, much beyond 166 bclk you will need to start lowering the uncore multiplier (defaults to 20x, IIRC). Uncore tops out, in my experience, around 3.3GHz. If you want to optimize the value for money you get out of it, X5650 CPUs are probably the best option, since you should be able to achieve somewhere between 166 (easy) and 177 (probably achievable with a bit of tweaking) bclk.
 
If you want to run virtualization with PCI passthrough (e.g. a gaming VM with a GPU passed directly to it) you will have serious problems if you pass more than about 2.5GB of RAM (the exact amount will depend on where the first PCIe IOMEM block gets allocated, which will vary with the type and number of cards you have in the machine, for me it's 2688MB). This CAN be worked around (e.g. recent QEMU has an option for limiting low (32-bit, 0-4GB) memory. If you limit that to, say, 1GB, that will work around the problem.
 
For gaming loads there is no noticeable advantage to using PCie beyond v1.1 x8, let alone v2.0 x16. Google for various tests that have been carried out in the past.
 
If you are building a new system, my advice as an owner of two SR-2 machines would be to get something else, e.g. a Supermicro board with whatever features you need. Asus have an interesting recent dual socket Xeon board, but their warranty service is uneblievably terrible, so make sure you buy it from a large, reputable retailer that you can enforce any warranty claims against should it fail within the warranty period. You wont get anywhere with direct claims with Asus. And I would trust Supermicro a lot more than Asus to have a reasonable quality BIOS. Not to mention that any SR-2 you get today is not going to be new, and thus won't carry any warranty.
 
But if you decide to get an SR-2 anyway, by all means ask when you get stuck, I'll be more than happy to share what I have painstakingly learned about it, as far as avoiding it's bugs and quirks is concerned. As you can see from my signature, I use mine as a triple-seat virtualized workstation (one GPU for dom0 and one for each domU). It can definitely be done.

That case appears to only be specced up to XL-ATX. SR-2 is HPTX, which is 50% bigger. You may find it won't fit.
 
The DIMMs I use are these:
http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/memory/ct8g3ersld4160b
 
Make sure you manually set the DIMMs to 1.35V - the BIOS sets it to 1.50V by default even when the DIMM SPD says 1.35V. One of the many BIOS bugs. Even with 12x8GB DIMMs at 1666MHz I find that 1.35V for DIMMs is sufficient.

I only ever use Crucial memory as it is by far the most trouble free (and comes with lifetime warranty). If you are planning to add more RAM later, I would suggest you get the RAM you are going to stick with so you don't have to replace it when you add more.
Note that AFAIK the SR-2 will not work with FB DIMMs - you need unbuffered or registered DIMMs. Also, dual-rank and x4 are important in the spec I mentioned above, and making sure they are 1.35V DIMMs also helps to reduce the overall power load.

Hello Gordan79 and thank you
can i send you an MP for bios information please ?
thank you very much