Xeon platinum 8180

[montaillou]

So, there's a boatload of Xeon platinum 8180's being sold on ebay. They're from China, (pirated?) and they only work on a handful of MB's. I've found an MB on Newegg that I believe will work.

Anyone ever buy a chip like this before? Besides MB compatibility issues, what other problems down the road could show up?

They go for ~$800 on ebay, and the real cpu typically sells for ~$10k new.

My chief reason for buying it would be for distributed computing, though I would also use the computer for other general stuff (ie: games, word processing, e-mail, etc). I have a VR thing coming next year (hopefully - Pimax) and I need to build a new system anyways. Money is not my first consideration. It seems like every time I ask a computer question here (well, elsewhere on the board) someone always tells me I'm wasting money and that I could be perfectly happy with something cheaper...

For background, my current system uses a Xeon e5 2690.

 

[don256us]

Getting a cooler may be an issue. Do you know if your OS will work on a 28 core 56 thread CPU?

I've been seeing lots of CPUs on the market myself and my thought has been that the Chinese are getting out of the coin mining business. You can probably bet that they're well used

 

[montaillou]

Actually, I believe these 8180's are brand new. I suspect they're being made w/out license. They're being sold at about 8% of the cost of a new 8180 which makes them enticing to me so much so that I'll probably buy 2 and stick them on the same MB.

This is not the 8180M, but an earlier version with some limitations probably, but for my purpose they should be fine (I hope).

I looked at some fan based coolers, but I'll probably go with water with a chiller.

As for an OS, Windows 7 x64 is supposed to recognize up to 256 cores, though it'll only recognize 2 processors - so hopefully..., and I am running a xeon chip now (8 cores) with win 7 Pro x64. If for some reason it doesn't, I do own an old legal Windows server software which I'm sure I could upgrade.

The MB supports up to 2TB of ram, but I don't want to spend that kind of money (unless I find a similar source for RAM), I'll probably go 128gb DDR4 y'know, why not?

It might be a learning experience getting this up and running, as it's for purely personal use I don't mind.

If I didn't go this route, I'd probably have spent $1k anyways on an i9 so, this is only adding maybe $500 to the cost and could turn out to be more exciting!

 

[Mr.Scott]

They go for ~$800 on ebay, and the real cpu typically sells for ~$10k new.

Too good to be true, especially from China.
Beware of scam.

 

[montaillou]

Too good to be true, especially from China.
Beware of scam.

They're being sold by more than one seller and with very good seller ratings. I've purchased items from China before, all life is a risk, though I will buy 1 chip at a time if I do decide to go this route. While I would not like to throw away the money, it is within something I can risk.

 

[Mr.Scott]

$10k for $800 and China.
That's all I need to see.

I hope it goes well for you.

 

[montaillou]

$10k for $800 and China.
That's all I need to see.

I hope it goes well for you.

And your response to my original question about compatibility?

I bought my originally $2k xeon chip for about 15 cents on the dollar and it's been working fine for years.

 

[montaillou]

Update:

I decided to go with dual xeon gold 6148's. As a used chip, they fit well inside my projected budget (~$1500, total, for the cpu). While just below the top i9 in performance, each 6148 has 20 cores and combined should do well for me.

 

[montaillou]

Slowly coming together. The MB is Asus SAGE. It's configured to accept up to 4 graphics cards, and I may one day have 2 but I don't think I'll go beyond that.

I do have 96gb of ram installed. and there will be another fan on that heat sink, I'm just taking a break. That's a 140mm fan on the heat sink. I decided to go with this MB primarily so I could put these types of coolers on it. Some other MB's I looked at had the chips too close together limiting the fan size.

I got a Thermaltake Core x9 case which is just a monster, but I've always like more room over less. The MB mounts horizontally - in the past I've had issues with my GPU falling out of vertically mounted MB's. I put the plastic cup in the photo just to show a little perspective.