Intel Xeon E-2400 Series First Look

- Video Correction - I mistakenly called this system the SYS-511-M. I was actually sent a 511-W, which is a workstation variant. Here are the main differences between those platforms...

SYS-511R-M
Use standard Micro ATX form factor MB
20” shout depth chassis
No NVMe support on front drive bay
Up to two expansion slots + one internal HBA slot

SYS-511R-W
Use SMC proprietary WIO form factor MB
25” depth chassis
Support up to two NVMe on front drive bay
Up to three expansion slots
Able to support double width GPU

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Last month, among the news of new Emerald Rapid Xeons and Intel's Gaudi AI accelerators, Intel announced the first update to their lineup of Xeon E CPUs in over three years. The Xeon E-2400 mark a return to the entry-level market for server hardware, but does the feature set match the price of entry?

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[CraftComputing]

- Video Corrections - I mistakenly called this system the SYS-511-M. I was actually sent a 511-W, which is a workstation variant. Here are the main differences between those platforms...

SYS-511R-M
Use standard Micro ATX form factor MB
20” shout depth chassis
No NVMe support on front drive bay
Up to two expansion slots + one internal HBA slot

SYS-511R-W
Use SMC proprietary WIO form factor MB
25” depth chassis
Support up to two NVMe on front drive bay
Up to three expansion slots
Able to support double width GPU

Also, Intel did NOT upgrade the onboard storage controller compared to consumer chips. SAS support is available on this system, but only through an add-in card, which would bypass the onboard controller. When taking notes for this video, I wrote down SAS support based on specs of the Supermicro 815 chassis backplane, not the CPU. So, that's one less feature you get compared to other platforms.

[mikequinn]

I work a company where we’ve deployed a couple dozen of the E-2300 counterparts for this server. We needed dedicated hardware for segmentation reasons (don’t ask it was the least bad option). Our application is highly reliant on single threaded performance so the high boost clock speeds were very important to us and for what we are doing 128GB is way more than we will ever need and the ECC memory is a big plus. The ability to have a pair of servers for redundancy in a very small footprint was important to us. These make a lot of sense for that application.

[RedXons]

A big reason for not including efficiency cores and performance cores in this platform is the compatibility with hypervisors, foremost VMware ESXi which doesn't support CPU architectures with two different core types. So if this platform had those in order to run ESXi properly you would need to disable the E-Cores (and even then would probably not be certified by VMware). These servers with the Xeon E lineup are often used by companies in the edge running ESXi for cases where you want to have some VMs local in a branch office like SD-WAN edges or even just for witnesses in a 3rd location.

BTW: I'm not saying it is a good platform, but we do see some demand for systems like this. And for production you can't run a minisforum box or some i7 counterpart as you need a supported platform, both by the hardware and software vendor. I've personally deployed some of those where the customer specifically wanted the lowest spec and price intel server to run ESXi and maybe 2-3 VMs on it only (for thing like the mentioned witness appliance VMs or similar which you can't really put in the cloud yet).

[thestrykernet]

These Xeons exist purely for specific system implementations that cannot use E-cores. Since 12th gen Intel's xx500+ (non-F) CPUs support ECC when used on W680 chipset motherboards which is likely why these are the first E series Xeons released since Rocket Lake.

[timpeng]

By the way, the Core series (non F and higher end i5 or better) now support ECC too as long as you use a W680 motherboard. These Xeons are real head scratchers for me…

[mattartist]

I personally use the Xeon E series for game server hosting. Having the, essentially, desktop performance in a server platform is really nice for servers such as Minecraft and the like. Running that on Golds or Platinums doesn't really perform as well as you'd think due to the low clock speed.

[craigputnam]

A big use-case for Xeon E-series CPUs is low-end and mid-range workstations where customers want ECC - I am definitely in that group. Having said that, most of the observations about the E2400's shortcomings for server use hold for workstation use as well: lack of E-cores/limited core count, so-so memory limit, limited PCIe lanes. As others have mentioned, there are enough niche uses for the E-series that it probably won't fall completely flat, but I'm as disappointed as Jeff.

I do take issue with Jeff's assertion that unbuffered ECC isn't "real" ECC. The buffer is primarily there to allow lots of modules to coexist. If you're only allowing 4 memory modules anyway, then buffering is an unnecessary expense and performance hit.

[nichenson]

The I5, I7, and I9 all support ECC with a W680 board. I have a 13900 in a Supermicro W680 for one workstation and a 13700K in the Asus W680M in another. Both have ECC support and run very well for a workstation. Given that, I do like the E2300 series for small single function servers and plan on getting a 2468 to use in a pfsense appliance. This is more than enough for something like that.

[mr.sunshine]

can't wait to buy this in 8 years!

[reviewaccount]

A few use cases I could see: Test/QA environment probably for web services, an intranet web server for an org within a business, an integration services box for sending/receiving records/files, or for remote AI workloads in Diffusion and LLMs. As mentioned it leaves no room for future growth, but I think its meant for small to mid-size businesses that want physical servers for narrow non-taxing use cases. I could see it being a simple choice for non-technical users and finance people wanting to control budgets tightly.

[JordansTechJunk]

I love Craft Computing so much, I clicked the like and subscribe buttons 9 times!

[coinkwi]

Thanks for the review. Pointing out the E-2488's throttling issue is a real concern for our use case; i've got a need for the fastest available single threaded CPU i can get in a rack mounted HA VMWare environment with ECC and the intel E-2488 looks to be the fastest out there on a core by core basis - until it throttles, of course - and when it does, it loses any benefit over our existing highly multithreaded servers, and just adds to the variabilty of hardware we'd need to support.

Damn.

[spetcnaz]

I really like this channel, but sometimes it feels like Jeff doesn't really research what the product is for and why certain things were done by the manufacturer. As mentioned before VMWare doesn't support E cores, hence they are disabled/removed. The intent of this CPU is stability, and relatively low power draw in a branch office / small office environment. That very server sitting on the desk is perfect for a restaurant back of office, corporate branch office, or a small business, that needs a solid server, with VMware compatibility, yet it doesn't need to do anything too crazy. Maybe run two or three VMs, DC, file server, and maybe a separate application server of some kind.
Demanding Core i9 level performance and features from a chip that is not meant for that is a bit perplexing.

[Dean_Smith]

Many vendors still use supermicro chassis as "appliances" with their own custom linux based, application specific build. Feels this is where this aimed at - good efficiency with no complex different cores to accommodate, just using the latest generation underlying platform. Does the motherboard have the on board USB A socket ? Have seen some appliance builds use this for boot and/or recovery rather than full SSD.

[mkrzan]

Gaming dedicated server use for these will shine. DayZ, PalWorld, Minecraft, etc. will excel with the high clock speeds as they don't use many cores.

[DLTX]

I think the biggest issue is that 7800X3D and 7900, 7950X (set at 105W or so) exists
All 3 would easily run rings around the 8 core model, not so much because there are applications that cannot be used with E core or performance consistency (esxi)

Golden cove is just horribly inefficient and falls on its face when power limited, the E cores aren't much better either. In many situations the E cores are clocked up to such a extent that they lose all the efficiency benefits of being well uh, E cores.
Also btw, the M.2 slots are 4.0 not 3.0 but minor detail

[magneticshrimp]

The CPU <-> chipset link is x8 - not x4 - according to the motherboard block diagram in the manual. So the PCIe bandwidth isnt quite that badly constrained (still not great). However In a entry level server platform I would prefer if they split up the x16 CPU lanes into x8 x8 or x8 x4 x4 like they used to do back in the E3 generations.

[pyroslev]

Well, looks like I'm order a new Coffee tumbler. And this just proves Intel basically yields the meat of the server space to AMD. They were once the kings, proof with the sheer quantities of Xeons. Now, they're something else.

[collinmcguire]

ECC is supported on my 13500 running on a w680 board why are you reporting that 13th gen isn’t ECC compatible? Simple search on the intel Ark further proves that they do support ECC

[esra_erimez]

Happy and Healthy New Year to Jeff and all the Craft Computing viewers! Who's watching in 2024?