The PowerEdge T630 is a fine occasional 4K gaming rig

Foreword

 I was a little reluctant to write this piece.

First because I was lucky to snatch an RTX 3080 Ti in the few weeks when the price dropped enough and I know many gamers haven't been able to get an RTX in the recent years. 

Second, because what I will describe is by no means the 'greatest' gaming rig. It's just a 'fine' gaming rig for my own purpose and I'm not even trying to convince anybody that this is the best setup you could get.

It's probably not even cost-effective but I like it the way it is.

The Frankenstation dilemma

Due to my daily activities and because I like great towers, I find myself without a dedicated gaming rig. I never brought myself to build a dedicated box for gaming because I don't spend enough time gaming to justify having a gaming PC. Because of this, I've always used a PowerEdge with a good GPU as my system: Most of the time, it's running RHEL but a few hours per month, Ill boot Windows 10 and play a game or two.

Fast forward to 2021 and Eagle Dynamics release a new map called 'Mariannas' and my GTX 1660 Ti cannot keep up at 4k. I don't play much but sometimes I like a good flight in a fighter jet. So, Get a dedicated PC with an RTX or try to get an RTX and see if it works in the current rig (A Dell PowerEdge T630).

Several months go by and I manage to buy a great 12G EVGA XC3 3080 Ti with a small discount (still above MSRP). I placed that GPU in my T630 and here's the summary.

How fast is it?

Well, it's good enough.

According to TimeSpy and other benchmarks, I'm somewhere between the Premium gaming PC (2020) and the high-end gaming PC (2020):

Link here: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/64095539

So, even though I dropped a premium GPU into my machine, I'm not getting Premium performance.. but for my use case it is good enough and made a huge difference in DCS World performance.

This is probably caused by my CPUs - The Xeon E5-2699A V4 can only Turbo to 3.6Ghz - and my RAM (2400MHz LRDIMM DDR4 probably isn't the fastest by far).

So the point is: I'm getting decent gaming performance in 2021 out ofmy system - those cpus were released in 2016 - and I didn't have to build a dedicated box. It's my part-time gaming rig.

What follows are a few tips on that type of setup.

Dual-Booting Windows 10 and RHEL

Nothing to report here, it just works on RHEL. I get a nice GRUB2 menu entry that says 'Windows 10' and I choose that when I need to. Windows 10 handles booting on a PowerEdge with lots of cores, memory and a PERC just fine it seems (I'm on Windows 10 20H2 at the moment).

Picking the right system

Most 14th gen Dell PowerEdges do not like Geforce GPU's and will bump the fans upward if you attempt to use one (The only exception I've found is the T140). I like my silence so no thanks, my gaming system had to stay on the T630 (my only 13th gen left).

The CPUs

The system you have will dictate the type of CPUs which will be in your machine. For 13th gens, it is Xeon V3's and V4's. I previously had a pair of E5-2682 V4's @ 2.5Ghz and switched to a pair of E5-2699A V4's @ 2.4Ghz.

The rationale for the switch is:

- With the 2699A's, I get 88 threads instead of 64 with the 2682's. Great for VMs!

- The 2682 V4's will be able to Turbo to 3.0GHz -but- the 2699A V4's will be able to Turbo a single core to 3.6GHz. For a mostly single-threaded game like DCS World, it also made more sense to get the 2699A's.

Check the specs on ark.intel.com in depth. The nominal cpu frequency isn't always what matters. Time Spy seems to confirm that (note that 3,595MHz frequency):

Memory

Not much of a choice here, the fastest the E5-2699A V4's could drive my RAM was 2400MHz so I got that. No need to pay a premium for 2933Mhz DDR4 when your cpus will downclock it to 2400MHz.

GPU Card Placement (Glad I had 9 PCIe slots)

My GTX 1660 Ti was in the topmost x16 slot of the T630 and worked fine there:

 When I attempted to use the RTX 3080 Ti in the same position, I could hear the fans bumping into the notches on the top of the case. Both cards are similar (both are EVGA XC3 Ultra Gaming) but the 3080 is wider:

I decided to move the 3080 Ti to the lower PCIe x16 slot in the top of the case to give more clearance. This covered a x8 slot and the other x16 slot, which meant I had to relocate the NVMe PCIe card I had been using in the adjacent slot:

I attempted to use the 3080 Ti in the lowest PCIe x16 slot in the machine but the results weren't too great (GPU temps were up and Memory temps the same):

So bottom slot of the top half, it was and this was good enough:

A note on picking the right GPU

There are many types of GPUs available, some with cool LED/RGB lights and all the bells and whistles. Again, you will need to review and evaluate models based on your use case. Mine is quite simple : 98% of the time my T630 will be running RHEL and playing hypervisor and I won't need the GPU.

So I routinely pick the XC3 models from EVGA because the fans don't spin at all if you're only doing 2D or light 3D work. This means the fans won't wear out when the system is only running VMs. Again, these aren't the fastest cards but it will be good enough for me.

Have a good flight and remember to have some fun