Hi guys!
 
The reason (aka convincing myself to do that!)
I always been thinking in doing a dual Xeon build, but the price of such build has been very prohibitive for me.
Several weeks ago, a friend of mine was buying hardware to build a system for his brother so I take the oportunity to sell my trusty x79 system that I was using (i7-3930k, Gigbyte x79-UD5, GTX980 and a Corsair H100) at a good price for him.
I was planing to sell my system later this year to bite AMD ZEN or going Intel, so I needed a system to make me going until then. 
 
When I was using my 3930k, I saw little performance gains overclocking the CPU in modern games (I think that modern games are more GPU bound that CPU bound). On the other side, I never seen my GPU being bottlenecked (GTX980) by the CPU, so thinking in the new APIs arround (DX12 and Vulcan) and all the magic they will aparently do using more and more CPU cores, I convinced myself to do a dual build.
 
All we know that Intel has been a bit lazy in terms of performance with each new generation of CPUs, and because I was happy with my old 3930k and the market is flooded with cheapo eight core Sandy Bridge Xeons because Facebook getting rid of them (thanks facebook!), the "new" system will be based on trusty Sandy tech again. Another reason to do that is to using some of the components of my last build.
 
The parts (new and old!)
The new parts are the following:
CPUs: 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2680 C2 stepping
COOLER: 2 x Antec H600 Pro AIO
MOBO: Asus Z9PE-D8 WS
GPU: Gigabyte GTX1080 G1 Gaming
CASE: Anidees AI-Crystal
The old parts (from the last build):
RAM: 64GB GSkill Ripjaws 1600Mhz (8x8GB)
STORAGE:
      - Samsung SSD 250GB EVO 850 (System, Windows10 Pro)
      - Samsung SSD 250GB EVO 850 (System, Kubuntu 16.04.1 LTS)   
      - Mushkin Chronos Deluxe SSD 60GB (Kubuntu 16.04.1 LTS Swap Drive)
      - LSI SAS 9207-8I PCIEx8 HBA
                    - 4 x Samsung SSD 250GB EVO 850 RAID 0 (Windows10 Games)
      - Samsung Spinpoint 1TB HDD (Backup files)
AUDIO:
      - ASUS Xonar DX pcie 7.1 soundcard
COOLNESS: 
       - Some LED strips.
 
I started the build yesterday, so when I have time I will post some pics of the work. Thanks for watching!
 
 

Cool GTX
Sound interesting
 
Will look forward to the pics and benchmarks
 
Don't you need registered RAM for the Xeon CPUs ?

No. This mobo can run registered and unregistered DIMMs, so I'm using the DDR3 modules of my 3930k build!

PICS (Part 1/2) - Building...

Here we have some of the parts that I used in the build.

The AI-Crystal case is very well made for its price, having 3 panels made from tempered glass. 

Here are the SSDs on the back of the motherboard tray. The red wires are from the SSDs that will be driven by the LSI SAS 9207-8I PCIEx8 HBA.
The only downfall of the case is that the space between the glass window and the case itself is very slim. The Mushkin Chronos SSD is parctically in contact with the window, so cable managment is a pain on this side of the case.
 

Looking good

If someone want to take a look for Xeon builds and their price as option for Haswell-EX or Broadwell-EX could check here...
 
http://www.techspot.com/r...fordable-dual-xeon-pc/
http://www.techspot.com/review/1218-affordable-40-thread-xeon-monster-pc/
 
Such rigs are not for 2-3 years period. Customer build workstations for at least 5-6.
And because of that are always interesting for many people. It would be nice if Xeon's V3/V4 12-14-18 cores could work on at least 3.5GHz.

Well, I read some more about the boost clocks, and it seems that "boost clocks" must be comanded from de OS. 
In Windows 10 it can be do forcing the P0 state in the "Processor Power Policy" via registry key. I will check this when I arrive home from work. Any more ideas?  

This build looks really great!

rjohnson11
This build looks really great!

 
Thanks for watching!
 

Cool GTX

megalolman
Well, touching some power plan config and editing the register I now have both CPUs boosting as they must!
 
Now I have another problem, it seems that GPUz detects the pci-e bus as 2.0. I tryed to set up 3.0 using the registry mod of the following link  without any positive result.
http://forums.evga.com/Ho...ndows-10-m2372915.aspx
 
I will check the mobo bios tomorrow.

Got to squeeze that last 3-4% out ?  PCIe 2.0 will work nicely
 
You load tested the PCIe in GPUz, right ?

I don't think the GTX1080 will saturate PCIe 2.0 x16, but if I can have 3.0, why not? 
Now that I have the CPUs turbo boosting, the PCIe is a minor problem, but I want to solve it anyways.
 
When I have the 3930k, these CPUs officially supported only PCIe 2.0 because certification problems of 3.0 on Intel's side. The have ways to force 3.0. These Xeons officially supports 3.0 (they are C2 stepping), as the motherboard do.
http://ark.intel.com/products/64583/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2680-20M-Cache-2_70-GHz-8_00-GTs-Intel-QPI
So the problem is more "personal" than a real problem for me, but I must made it if I can! 
 
As you said, I tested the bus using GPUZ and the build in render test. I set the GPU in max performance prefered in Nvidia Control Panel and only 2.0 mode is working.
 
Any more ideas?
Thanks for all!

HIGH RES PICS - Finished product.
 
I finded my camera (the first pics I was using a tablet).
 
 
 



 
I can't stop staring at her 
 

Now some default benckmarks:
TimeSpy benchmark:

High CPU score than the GPU one!  
CineBench Score: