- Joined
- Jul 14, 2003
Ryzen fever had me thinking, how can i do that but cheaper? So when i saw online that the E5-16xx Xeons were unlocked, i started on a hunt. What began as a conversion for an HP Z620 motherboard budget project turned into this. How cheaply (but still include mostly new parts) could i build an X79 rig? X79 is notoriously overpriced for good boards, especially on the used market. Same for socket 1366 boards. Scarcity must have driven the prices up or something. However, the CPUs themselves are CHEAP. A Sandy Bridge 6 core with a base clock of 3.2ghz and a turbo of 3.8ghz? I could get on board with that. But wait, it can overclock too? Well hot damn, i need to find me an affordable motherboard.
Then reddit.com/r/hardwareswap came to the rescue. I was willing to spend up to $150 on a motherboard, which wasn't really enough so i may not have gotten anywhere at that budget. However, i was offered an EVGA x79 SLI motherboard that had 5 bent pins in the socket that supposedly made one of the DIMMs not work. I can deal with 3/4 working DIMMs. Offered him $100, and it was a deal. Last i checked, this exact board goes for $230 on ebay.
Received the board and made a trip to a jewelry repair shop and despite some odd looks, i convinced the guy there to take a stab at fixing the pins. He did his best, didn't even want to charge me.
The CPU itself, $93 on ebay. Awesome price. Once i received it, threw it in the board with my tester PSU and put a stick of RAM in each DIMM and verified with BIOS that all DIMMS were detecting that stick of RAM. Repair was successful!
So the eventual buildout began and once complete, the overclocking began. Got as high as 4.6ghz but settled at 4.5ghz on all cores and man, this CPU is a beast. Im still torn whether or not to switch from my main rig to this rig for my primary machine (would increase the ram and switch the GPU over of course). Main use is gaming + light rendering work (editing videos in premier). Primary rig specs are in my sig.
Specs of the Xeon build:
-$93 Xeon E5-1650 [eBay]
-$100 EVGA x79 SLI Mobo that had bent socket pins repaired [reddit /r/hardwareswap]
-$55 Corsair Vengeance 8gb DDR3 1600 [jet.com using 15% off promo]
-$84 Arctic Liquid Freezer 240 AIO [Amazon]
-$80 GPU [used] (original goal before re-using an existing one]
-$55 Seasonic M12 620w full modular PSU [jet.com with 15% off promo]
-$50 Raidmax Delta I case [newegg, $15 mail in rebate sent in too]
Grand Total: $502!
Check out my video on this build!
Pt.2 video with final overclocking results, temps, benchmarks, etc. coming soon. Really happy with/proud of this build. In the end, with the OC, initial benches have this performing on par with a stock R5-1600x. What do y'all think?
Then reddit.com/r/hardwareswap came to the rescue. I was willing to spend up to $150 on a motherboard, which wasn't really enough so i may not have gotten anywhere at that budget. However, i was offered an EVGA x79 SLI motherboard that had 5 bent pins in the socket that supposedly made one of the DIMMs not work. I can deal with 3/4 working DIMMs. Offered him $100, and it was a deal. Last i checked, this exact board goes for $230 on ebay.
Received the board and made a trip to a jewelry repair shop and despite some odd looks, i convinced the guy there to take a stab at fixing the pins. He did his best, didn't even want to charge me.
The CPU itself, $93 on ebay. Awesome price. Once i received it, threw it in the board with my tester PSU and put a stick of RAM in each DIMM and verified with BIOS that all DIMMS were detecting that stick of RAM. Repair was successful!
So the eventual buildout began and once complete, the overclocking began. Got as high as 4.6ghz but settled at 4.5ghz on all cores and man, this CPU is a beast. Im still torn whether or not to switch from my main rig to this rig for my primary machine (would increase the ram and switch the GPU over of course). Main use is gaming + light rendering work (editing videos in premier). Primary rig specs are in my sig.
Specs of the Xeon build:
-$93 Xeon E5-1650 [eBay]
-$100 EVGA x79 SLI Mobo that had bent socket pins repaired [reddit /r/hardwareswap]
-$55 Corsair Vengeance 8gb DDR3 1600 [jet.com using 15% off promo]
-$84 Arctic Liquid Freezer 240 AIO [Amazon]
-$80 GPU [used] (original goal before re-using an existing one]
-$55 Seasonic M12 620w full modular PSU [jet.com with 15% off promo]
-$50 Raidmax Delta I case [newegg, $15 mail in rebate sent in too]
Grand Total: $502!
Check out my video on this build!
Pt.2 video with final overclocking results, temps, benchmarks, etc. coming soon. Really happy with/proud of this build. In the end, with the OC, initial benches have this performing on par with a stock R5-1600x. What do y'all think?
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