Upgrade time - Xeon 5650 ^^

So... been looking patiently around for Some time for a good upgrade, Was waiting for Ivy at one point...

and found locally to my house someone selling :

Xeon 5650
Gigabyte GA-X58A-OC
and 3GB RAM Tripple Channel set

for a good price - and maybe buying in as little as 10 hours time!



I believe one of these at Stock should gain me about 31k PPD going by a small review I saw?

Now obviously I am not one to leave things at Stock, but info is a little thin on the ground about these chips and I am totally new to Xeons...

So would appreciate some tips regarding the OCability of this chip - is an E5650 version of the Xeon if that changes anything - Westmere I believe - guys says it is an engineering sample...? but I know in some countries like India they sell these chips normally as the E

Kinda excited already - 1st new gear in ages, should be a Great upgrade from my Q6600 3.51GHz

What kinda speeds should I expect and temps while folding?

How would its power consumption compare to my current system ?


Any fast tips Appreciated!

Cheers

Power consumption may actually be lower than your current setup, amusingly enough.

Beyond that, I don't know.

31k probably isn't too far off the mark since you'd be running SMP.

Only thing I'd throw in is that 31k is only slightly above what you'll get on average with a clocked 2600k, which can be done for $400-450 for cpu, mobo, and ram with all new parts. If you're paying significantly more than that for all three, you might reconsider it from a price/performance standpoint.

The lower power consumption is always welcome

The 2600k is a good point also... Much easier higher clocks and more future proof for games

The price is $295,
I think the price is not too bad with that MB - saw someone else selling a X5650 for $199 but I am in the UK, so this is where I get to choose to take This one offer or not

is out of date gear though... but a nice step up for me none the less

These chips are a Lot trickier to OC once passing 4GHz, perhaps needing much better cooling than an i7 for a long term higher OC...

If he will drop the price some more it will swing me I think I will go for it and have a play ^^


Well, am outa time so going to go ring the guy and see what happens

Offer of $265 accepted maybe a little space for more negotiations...

cya, going to over to his place now!

well I am back now with new toys to play with later

Was a really nice guy, probably will stay in touch, and we made a deal for $250

But for now they are going to have to sit there and tempt me as I have to do some outside work while there is a little Sun - has been a Really Wet summer here in the UK

+ I need to sort out a cooler for it, I have a Cooler Master Hyper 212 but do not have any of the spare mounting brackets if I would need those?
(spares are over at my folks place 250 miles away hidden in some box or other - couldn't make them search lol )

Otherwise I will have to buy a new Thermalright 120 TrueSpirit for it

I Love this feeling, cannot wait to get stuck in

$250 is a pretty smokin' deal for that setup. Congrats!

Yeah, I was pretty happy with that

Although only 3GB RAM it is pretty decent:

Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 8-8-8-24

Now I am busy trying to choose a Good cooler on a pretty tight budget and thought I had nailed it yesterday... - after Too many hours of review readings

Had narrowed it down to a choice of 3 HSFs so far (best New from ebay prices - includes delivery) :

Thermolab Trinity Ultra-Quiet - £34.98
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2600&page=1
Cooling a 150watt heatsource = 15c over ambient @ 50.6db

Zalman CNPS10X Performa - £26.71
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2498
Cooling a 150watt heatsource = 16.6c over ambient @ 58.7db

Coolermaster Hyper 612 PWM - £34.99
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2644
Cooling a 150watt heatsource = 15.1c over ambient @ 50.7db

Was put off the CM 612 due to its larger size and had settled on the Trinity...
Then this morning saw this review of it:

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cases_cooling/thermolab_trinity_review/1

on a i7 950 trying an OC of 4.2GHz at 1.25v he stopped the prim95 test early when hitting temps of 92c+
Not sure it will be a good enough cooler if I was to maybe get to 4.5GHz on my chip for everyday use...

So was now just going to go with the bigger CoolerMaster Hyper 612S (the model in the UK with 3pin connector) to hopefully have a higher thermal runaway limit

Think this sounds right...?

Well am just about to read www.overclock3d.net's review of the 612...
Lets see comes of that

yeah, I see what is going on

I guess the i7 950 at 4.2GHz - 4.4GHz and 1.25v - 1.45vcore = more than 150watts of heat to dissapate

so lesser fans collapse with thermal runaways...

This page shows this off quite well:

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cases_cooling/nzxt_havik_vs_noctua_nh-d14_review/1

How much temperature does a Xeon 5650 put out (with its extra 2 cores compared to those reviews, even is made using a smaller process) when being pushed to 4.5GHz compared to that i7 950?

Well, no more problem on the cooling front...

I just bought a Noctua NH-D14

Will update with more details later once I am set up and running!

Let us know how the PPD works out once you get it running and clocked. I didnt realize at first that thats a clockable xeon, was thinking it wasn't. Should actually be quite higher than 31K PPD on SMP once you have it hot rodded.

Usually all you see on those are BigAdv numbers since they're usually in a 2P setup, so I'm interested to see what it pulls in straight SMP.