Hi,
It's come to that time of year where I think about upgrading my crunching hardware and I've priced up a system based around an i7- 4790K as being the most cost effective over a 3 year period.

However, having perused the boards over the years, people have been talking about using Xeon Engineering samples as the basis of a crunching machine. I know that there is a difference between consumer grade hardware and the server hardware required for this but I don't know what is what.

If I go down this road, the computer will not be used for gaming, nor will it be overclocked. Aside from crunching, I'll be downloading, watching movies and doing the usual officework and browsing.

It's going to be major investment cash wise, but if the returns are much better than the 4790K, then I may put my money where my mouth is.

Here is what I am thinking...

I am currently looking at a E5-2680v3 ES chip.
What do I need to think about?

Motherboard - LGA2011v3 socket? Will any motherboard do or do I need to go for a certain type? I had a quick look at motherboard CPU compatibility and it looked good.
Memory - Needs to be DDR4 ECC right? As this is a 12c/24T processor, how much is best? Bearing in mind that I don't run anything too intensive on my computer.
Software - Windows 7/8 is fine isn't it? Thinking of maybe doing a linux dual boot for the times that I am away from the computer..

PSU, case, GPU and everything else should be the same as a normal build right?

I've also heard about dual socket motherboards and even quad socket ones. This may interest me too. However, do you need to have the same chip in each socket? Or can I use different LGA-v3 chips. Say the 2680v3 and and a 2687W-v3?