D-1540 or E5-1620 v3 CPU - more cores or higher clockspeed?

[Amin Sabet]

I am looking at a new server. My sites are forums (XenForo) using Maria DB. Server will be Centos. Storage is a single 480GB SSD. I have 6 forums, the most active of which typically has 100 active members and 600 active guests within any 60 min. The other sites are much less active.

Should I get D-1540 (Broadwell-DE, twice as many cores) or E5-1620 CPU (Hashwell EP, higher clockspeed)?

Intel Xeon D-1540 vs E5-1620 v3

 

[Amin Sabet]

I should have mentioned that I will be using a 2-CPU LSWS license regardless.

I just figured out that the D-1540 will cost me a little more. It will also come with less bandwith, though I don't think I need that much bandwidth if I am reading my graphs correctly (big if).

These are the two packages I am considering:

Package 1:
Processor3.5GHz Quad-Core E5-1620 v3 Haswell Xeon / Haswell $0
Memory64GB DDR4 $0
Primary Hard Drive480GB / SSD (Intel DC S3500/S3510) $39
Bandwidth100TB on 1Gbps port $0
Operating SystemCentOS 6.x + KernelCare / Linux / Other $4
Cloud Storage10GB $0
Second Hard Drive1000GB / SATA III $15
Control PanelcPanel + Softaculous + Fully Managed Services / Linux Panels $56
LiteSpeed2 CPU LSWS Enterprise License $50
Server Snapshots- Full System Data Backup & Restore Point Created Every 24 Hours500GB $29
Data Migration ServicescPanel to cPanel $0

ORDER TOTAL
Billing Period
Setup Fees: $0
Price: $402/month

Package 2:
Processor2.0GHz Octo-Core D-1540 Broadwell Xeon / Broadwell $0
Memory64GB DDR4 $89
Primary Hard Drive480GB / SSD (Intel DC S3500/S3510) $39
Bandwidth10 TB / 1 Gbps $0
Operating SystemCentOS 6.x + KernelCare / Linux / Other $4
Cloud Storage10GB $0
Second Hard Drive1000GB / SATA III $15
Control PanelcPanel + Softaculous + Fully Managed Services / Linux Panels $56
LiteSpeed2 CPU LSWS Enterprise License $50
Server Snapshots- Full System Data Backup & Restore Point Created Every 24 Hours500GB $29
Data Migration ServicescPanel to cPanel $0

ORDER TOTAL
Billing Period
Setup Fees: $0
Price: $451/month

If the difference won't be noticeable, I'd like to save myself the $49/month .

 

[Sheratan]

whats your current spec? why you need to upgrade?

 

[Amin Sabet]

I am downgrading to save on cost. Current processor is E5-2640 v2.

 

[Marcus]

With a good setup you would pay 50 usd per month with the same or even better speed. You would have to understand caching mechanism etc.

RAM should be 1-3 GB for PHP and some RAM for the database (another 2-6 GB) to hold all the database in memory (including the indexes).

As for your initial question: go with the fastest single core speed. Xenforo is 95% php and 5% mysql. For php single core cpu speed is important.

For costs:
- Litespeed is not really needed with that super fast server and low traffic.
- Why do you need a control panel if you would have just one application and one email.
- why a second hdd? Do you have 1 tb of pictures?
- stop the expensive backup routine and put daily backup of your www and mysql on the second hdd instead. But yes, better on another server.
- even 10 GB RAM are overkill

 

[rdn]

Just choose the specs with Higher CPU Speed.
and much faster SSD, the bigger SSD the faster most of the time.

 

[WSWD]

Both are overkill for what you need. Personally, I'd go for the 1620 and give half the RAM back, and with that money, get another SSD in RAID1. Disk I/O is almost always going to be the bottleneck (not as much so with a SSD, of course), and running production anything without RAID is not at all a good idea.

 

[Amin Sabet]

Thanks, all. I went for Option #1.

 

[Amin Sabet]

For costs:
- Litespeed is not really needed with that super fast server and low traffic.

I finally got around to testing this, and it seems you were correct. With my current relatively fast server and relatively low traffic, LiteSpeed doesn't help at all. In fact, my testing seems to indicate slightly better performance with Apache (+mod_pagespeed) than with LiteSpeed.

I tested Mu-43.com (more active, ads showing) and ForeverFilm.org (not active, no ads).

Mu-43 photo thread 1, LSWS: WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : www.mu-...eads/33664/page-88 - 10/25/15 02:15:28
Mu-43 photo thread 1, Apache: WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : www.mu-...eads/33664/page-88 - 10/25/15 02:09:19

Mu-43 photo thread 2, LSWS: WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : www.mu-...reads/75636/page-3 - 10/25/15 02:24:24
Mu-43 photo thread 2, Apache: WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : www.mu-...reads/75636/page-3 - 10/25/15 02:32:55

Forever Film forum index, LSWS: WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : www.foreverfilm.org/forums/ - 10/25/15 02:19:23
Forever Film forum index, Apache: WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : www.foreverfilm.org/forums/ - 10/25/15 02:27:06

Forever Film photo thread, LSWS: WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : www.for...lm.org/threads/48/ - 10/25/15 02:21:18
Forever Film photo thread, Apache: WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : www.for...lm.org/threads/48/ - 10/25/15 02:29:29

Seems that in the majority of tests, Apache had a lower (better) Start Render and Speed Index.

 

[m1ne]

Apache 2.4? You should pair it with nginx for static files.

 

[Amin Sabet]

Apache 2.4? You should pair it with nginx for static files.

Would it really make a difference when LiteSpeed didn't?

 

[MattW]

Nginx would serve as a reverse proxy, so pass all dynamic requests back to apache, but serve all static requests itself. Last time I tried it, nginxcp didn't support https traffic, it only worked on port 80. They might have sorted support for that now though?

 

[Marcus]

From what I know, apache checks a lot of things before serving a simple static file.

nginx just serves it. It doesn't look for a htaccess in the same directory. And for a htaccess in the parent directory. And for a htaccess in a parent-parent directory.

And that makes nginx so fast.

 

[Amin Sabet]

I have htaccess disabled in Apache.