Intel Xeon E Six-Core Review: E-2186G, E-2176G, E-2146G, and E-2136 Tested
by Ian Cutress on November 5, 2018 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon
- Enterprise CPUs
- Xeon E
Test Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |||||
| Intel Xeon | E-2186G E-2176G E-2146G E-2136 |
Supermicro X11SCA-W |
v1 | TRUE Copper | Corsair Ballistix 4x4GB DDR4-2666 |
| E3-1280 v5 E3-1275 v5 E3-1270 v5 |
GIGABYTE X170-Extreme ECC |
F21e | Silverstone AR10-115XS* |
G.Skill RipjawsV 2x16GB DDR4-2133 |
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| Intel | i9-9900K i9-9700K i9-9600K |
ASRock Z390 Gaming i7 |
P1.70 | TRUE Copper | Crucial Ballistix 4x4GB DDR4-2666 |
| Intel | i7-8086K i7-8700K i5-8600K i5-8400 |
ASRock Z390 Gaming i7 |
P1.70 | TRUE Copper | Crucial Ballistix 4x4 GB DDR4-2666 |
| AMD | Ryzen 7 2700X Ryzen 5 2600X |
ASRock X370 Gaming K4 |
P4.80 | Wraith Max* | G.Skill SniperX 2x8GB DDR4-2933 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
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| PSU | Corsair AX860i Corsair AX1200i |
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| SSD | Crucial MX200 1TB | ||||
| OS | Windows 10 x64 RS3 1709 Spectre and Meltdown Patched |
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| *VRM Supplimented with SST-FHP141-VF 173 CFM fans | |||||
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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48 Comments
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unsleepable - Thursday, November 8, 2018 - link
Any word on the lower-power members of the family? I imagine Intel will still release equivalents to previous generation processors like the Xeon E3-1260L v5, or counterparts to the i7 T CPUs like the Core i7-8700T, right?Chaitan - Saturday, November 10, 2018 - link
There is an interesting statement for these CPUs on ark: "Support for up to 128GB system memory capacity will be available in 2019 through a published BIOS Update. Please contact your hardware provider for availability and support."Does it mean that these will be the first mainstream CPUs with officially provided microcode for Intel memory controller to support 128GB?
Laptops with 128GB RAM support were announced several months ago by Dell, Lenovo and MSI (the latter with desktop CPUs and C246 chipset), but so far CPUs and BIOS for these laptops require custom OEM-specific CPU microcode for memory controller to really support such capacity.
Madao - Saturday, November 10, 2018 - link
I got lucky; got a 2176G on my doorstep from Provantage like Oct 20 for $330. X11SCA-W was in stock on newegg at the same time. I wanted the cheaper ASUS board but it was in stock nowhere.Really pisses me off that AMD and mobo makers dropped the ball on ECC. It should be standard in all computers and even phones. It only needs a few extra ram traces ffs --;
rannyjohns - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
I love your blog. And I always find something new here that I either hadn’t seen before or somehow managed to pass over. Thank you for this post! I am recently hoping to reach out and build my network in order to have more of a true collaboration going on, try more solution withasgehrj - Friday, December 14, 2018 - link
I'm not sure I agree that the only reason to get the top model is bragging rights.Agreed, turbo speed is very close to the lower end models, but:
It can sustain a 15% faster base clock than the lower end models, which is meaningful in e.g. render time. (It would almost equal an imaginary 7 core 2136)
"So buy a cpu with more cores" I hear you say...
True in most cases, but I'm building a 3D workstation, where the CAD application likes high single core clock speed , which is hard to find in the models with even more cores. The same machine also does the rendering, so in this case I'm pretty sure the 2186G (or the ..76G) is the better choice.