1366, X58, and Xeon. What combo would be best?

[Helgaiden]

So a friend of mine offered to sell me his i7-950 for $40 when he upgrades in a few months. My little brother has been riding on outdated components for a long time and his current setup is past trying to keep relevant. First revision of the hand me downs he got was an Athlon xp 2500+ barton with 1gb RAM and radeon 9500 pro, that turned into an Athlon 64 x2 5200+ with 2gb RAM and a GTX 460, then finally a Core2Quad Q6600 with 6gb RAM and a GTX 560. If we play Battlefield 4, he can do alright but Division and Siege are a little more out of reach (as well as any modern title for the most part). So when i heard my friend was upgrading, bells were going off in my head again especially since my brother's birthday is soon. I'm saving for a wedding and other major things so i cant blow it out for him, however i can still try. A failed attempt at sticking a Xeon X5470 in his system brought me back into the Xeon ideas again when my friend's LGA 1366 i7 was mentioned. He claims his motherboard has problems so that mobo is out. Turns out, there aren't really good 1366 mobos available out there for any semblance of "affordable."

So onwards to ebay i went. This little guy has piqued my interest.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201587306172?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
HP Z400 Workstation ATX Motherboard for $50! I believe it is an x58 chipset as well. And it looks like triple channel memory.

So, the idea of putting a xeon in entered my mind once again. My little brother would primarily be gaming on this machine. So i set off to gather information from ebay about different Xeons for the socket. I got this little list (the processors above the x5687 are 6-core)



and for comparison, the i7-3770k in my main rig scores 9569 for that benchmark (all numbers from cpubenchmark.net).

So then my question is, would those Xeons work with that motherboard? And if so, which would you guys suggest would be best to go with it?
Affordability considered, it looks like the bottom end would start with the x5677 but then the higher end would be maybe the w3680 with the x5670 in the middle? Would the 6 cores be overkill here and go for the higher clocked quad core like the x5687 at 3.6ghz? (the fastest of the 6 cores on the list is 3.47ghz).

any feedback appreciated! Thanks all.

 

[Scout]

At this point in the game I wouldn't bother with 1366, good motherboards are getting scarce and $$$ unless you get an oem board that has no features/OC. The value in 1366 is in the Overclockable Xeons X5650 is 65$ Overclocks very well and has 6 cores. But save your money the 1366 gear is pretty much played out at this point. No native USb3 or sata3 really hurts.

 

[xrror]

Yea, I'd say the 1366 xeons are only worth it if you already have a working 1366 rig to upgrade it with. I am curious though, what does your buddy plan to do with his old mobo? If he's going to throw it out ... maybe you might want see if he'll just give it to you to play with. It's not like it's going to do him any good w/o a proc, is it?

I've had some issues with my 1366 rigs where I had to remount the mobo in the case to get all the memory channels to work - which I'm chalking up to the board warping under the socket. Maybe it'll be something that simple with his old mobo? If you can get his old mobo and that cpu working for $40 THEN yea it's time to start a build

Even if his old mobo is really dead/he won't let you have it, and assuming you already have everything else (case, PSU, video card, drives, RAM [you don't *have* to use triple channel]) $40 for the 950 and $50 for that HP motherboard woundn't be too terrible to get a system going. But you'd still need a heatsink and possibly check if your old PSU is up for the task (probably, but you never know). But you're getting into at least $110 at that point, where you're starting to get into pricing vs. a more modern update.

Lastly, with that HP board - if you were considering getting that to later put in a xeon - be very sure the xeons are supported, OEM boards often were VERY specific on what was supported. I don't know about HP, but Dell at least were real ******** sometimes where a given chip should work, but wasn't "allowed" - (the system would post, just to show you a message that a cpu was unknown and halt. like.... how are you showing me this message then Dell? argh).

 

[Helgaiden]

Yeah maybe im getting ahead of myself. The motherboard that has the issue supposedly drops USB devices occasionally. Some reboots take care of that from what I'm aware. I suppose a USB add-in card can circumvent this. My friend has told me that it's been behaving lately though so there's that too. Maybe I'll just take both and figure it out and deal with it or try to get around the problem.

 

[kaitlin4599]

i have an hp z400 with a xeon w3565 and a gtx 750ti i can play everything from doom 3 ro battlefield 4 on ultra settings even resident evil 5 gets me on average 80-FPS never drops below 60fps ever also keep in mind the hp mobo uses a proprietary psu so off the shelf psu's wont work

 

[Helgaiden]

i have an hp z400 with a xeon w3565 and a gtx 750ti i can play everything from doom 3 ro battlefield 4 on ultra settings even resident evil 5 gets me on average 80-FPS never drops below 60fps ever also keep in mind the hp mobo uses a proprietary psu so off the shelf psu's wont work

Yes so far the build i did is doing great for my little brother, check out the build thread i did. i also got around the PSU issue.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/...on-Workstation-to-Gaming-Desktop-build-thread

 

[Woomack]

I would grab 6 core xeon if you have good board but if you don't have good board then it's waste of money and it's better to get 1150/1155 mobo/cpu even though it will cost some more.
1366 CPUs are generating a lot of heat and are offering limited overclocking. They are still performing good but hard to say that most applications are really demanding.
Just think there is a good reason why 1366 CPUs are so cheap nowadays.
For last 2 years I was using 1366 only for competitive benchmarking ( OC rankings/competitions ) but it wouldn't find place in my daily rig anymore.

 

[esdeexx]

I would grab 6 core xeon if you have good board but if you don't have good board then it's waste of money and it's better to get 1150/1155 mobo/cpu even though it will cost some more.
1366 CPUs are generating a lot of heat and are offering limited overclocking. They are still performing good but hard to say that most applications are really demanding.
Just think there is a good reason why 1366 CPUs are so cheap nowadays.
For last 2 years I was using 1366 only for competitive benchmarking ( OC rankings/competitions ) but it wouldn't find place in my daily rig anymore.

Sorry for bumping this old thread, but would you say something like Gigabyte X58 UD5 is decent board for overclocking Xeon? Currently I run i7 920 and decided to either upgrade to a new tech (8600K) or try to get some decent Xeon processor and try to overclock it. Not sure how much of a difference that would make or how does it compare to new cpus in gaming. It is just quite a bit of difference, spending 500-600 for my new system or just 50 for a new cpu.

 

[kaitlin4599]

Sorry for bumping this old thread, but would you say something like Gigabyte X58 UD5 is decent board for overclocking Xeon? Currently I run i7 920 and decided to either upgrade to a new tech (8600K) or try to get some decent Xeon processor and try to overclock it. Not sure how much of a difference that would make or how does it compare to new cpus in gaming. It is just quite a bit of difference, spending 500-600 for my new system or just 50 for a new cpu.

i run a xeon w3690 in my hp z400 which is the same as an i7 990x so far no issues gaming wise on high settings 1080p

 

[OEMer]

Oml I have the same mobo and im still using it!

Get a Intel Xeon X5650 (you cant oc sadly on that mobo)

 

[Helgaiden]

Oml I have the same mobo and im still using it!

Get a Intel Xeon X5650 (you cant oc sadly on that mobo)

Well had gone with an x5687 back then since it was the fastest quad core with a 3.6ghz base clock. But you can mildly OC with throttlestop or Intel XTU if you use an unlocked cpu like the w3680, so those would probably be better bets than an x5650, especially since a non OC'd x5650 has a low base clock.

 

[MedicatedOMO]

At this late date im running one X58 @ 4.2 all the time (Asus P6X58D-E) with a X5670 and GTX 770 4 gig, An
Asus Z8NA-D6 with dual X5675's (1483 Cinebench BTW) and a GTX 1070, 2 HP Z400's with X5687's and GTX 770 2 gig and GTX 960 2 gig ( my son bought it from me he liked it so much) Z400 with a X5680 & Asus GTX 680 DCU. All of these computers game like hell. All are around 65 to well over 100 fps depending on the game. Any negativity to these 1366's is obviously a lack of actual experience. All of these run AIO coolers and Rip Jaws memory but for the HP's and their stock 1333 ddr3. Which runs flawlessly in everything i've benched with. Yes DX 12 benches are kinda slow but reality is still DX11 for most games. Which all run very smoothly. ANYONE wanting to spend 1/3 the money and end up within 10 to 20% as fast as their new hardware friends should still go for it just for the experience. YouTube is lit up with new X58 builds and the parts prices are going back up. So think about it. Complete gamer for the price of a 1070 used and very smooth 6 core 12 thread performance from chips that ran over a grand new. If anything i've bought from eBay ever fails i'll post back, but the years are piling up...and USB add on cards cost almost nothing and do everything from USB3 to SATA 6gbs. There is no reason to not, the cost vs performance sells it. One Z400 was $91.00 and the other was $29.00 combined shipping for both was under $80.00 and had every part needed but the hard drive. Which were dirt cheap on ebay for storage and on sale @ Newegg. No Xeon X58 experience? Enjoy some.

 

[EarthDog]

Thanks for sharing! Many can agree with that sentiment. Others simply want or need to get the most fps they can (which x58 simply cannot provide - it can be well over 20% fps loss depending on many factors). If you arent a high hz gamer or dont mind lopping off a bit at the top, its a solid platform.