What to do with an old Intel I7 CPU?

E

erehwon6811

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 5, 2004
Messages
493
I recently picked up a pair of older motherboards from a garage sale. Only one had a CPU. It's an Intel Core i7 CPU 920 running at 2.67GHz. It's a socket 1366 processor. How much use could I get from this? I was thinking of using it as a server and encoding movies with it.

The second board is an Asus P6T6 WS Revolution and it is socket 1366 motherboard. I've seen this board sell well on ebay. I'm thinking about picking up a cheap xeon cpu to throw in to test the board. The socket 1366 I7 processors were more than I wanted to spend for a test cpu. By the way, would a xeon require ecc ram or could it work with regular ram?
 
Why don't you just put the 920 in the second board to test it?
 
LigTasm said:
Why don't you just put the 920 in the second board to test it?
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I guess I could do that. A part of me was being lazy and not wanting to deal with pulling the motherboard. The I7 came installed with this massive Prolimatech Megahalems cooler. I'd have to pull the motherboard to get the backplate off.
 
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erehwon6811 said:
A part of me was being lazy and not wanting to deal with reapplying thermal paste.
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Seeing as how you just acquired a 2009/2010 setup with a cooler of the same vintage, may I strongly recommend you reapply the thermal paste anyway. No telling how old & crunchy it is.

Also, the 920 and Gulftown Xeons are still very viable Boinc/Folding crunchers if you're into distributed computing at all. (And Xeons do run on regular ram)
 
erehwon6811 said:
I guess I could do that. A part of me was being lazy and not wanting to deal with pulling the motherboard. The I7 came installed with this massive Prolimatech Megahalems cooler. I'd have to pull the motherboard to get the backplate off.
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Oh ok it was a full rig, I was thinking you just got the boards and CPU. The 6 core xeons can be had for cheap, definitely make a decent rig if a little power hungry.
 
Please don't laugh at me, but I'm still running an I7 920 in my primary rig. I also have one running a home server, and I do a decent amount of video encoding with it. Because of my preferred settings, it does go pretty slowly. I'm talking 12 hrs for something like turning a bluray to an mkv. However, your settings and use cases could end up taking much less time. IDK.

I'm looking at upgrading to an 8700K later this year and hope to see some big jumps in encoding and gaming, but if you want to run a home server and do some encoding, I think you'll be content with it.
 
LigTasm said:
Oh ok it was a full rig, I was thinking you just got the boards and CPU. The 6 core xeons can be had for cheap, definitely make a decent rig if a little power hungry.
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It wasn't a full rig. Both boards were loose in a box, one board with cpu and heatsink attached and the other board only. It was a gamble for $10, but one worked. I have the one set up in the only case of mine that would fit that cooler. I wasn't really wanting to pull the motherboard to test the other one.

I noticed the xeons were pretty cheap. I was looking at just getting one of those to test the second board and throw it on ebay if it works. If it's working, that board could sell for $150. I need to check what the other board is selling for.
 
The 920 goes for as little as $20 now adays. But the motherboard is worth some money. I'd personally throw a used Xeon on it.
 
I'll see about getting a cheap xeon for the asus and ebay it. I think I'll sell the I7 on ebay as well. I don't really need it as a server. With what those boards are selling for, that will add nicely to my new PC fund.
 
If the mobos support it, stick a 5650/5660/5670 Xeon 6 core on there, and OC that motha to at least 4ghz. They hold up well with today's newer offerings, and from what I have seen, do not really pose a bottleneck to the latest gpus.
 
How much could I get for my system in sig?

X5650
Gigabyte X58 motherboard
12gb triple channel memory
 
txsizzler said:
If the mobos support it, stick a 5650/5660/5670 Xeon 6 core on there, and OC that motha to at least 4ghz. They hold up well with today's newer offerings, and from what I have seen, do not really pose a bottleneck to the latest gpus.
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That could be a project for me. I haven't OC any of my processors. I'm just tempted to sell the boards, since it looks like I could get $200 to $300 for both. That would add nicely to the $1500 I have saved up ebaying stuff for a new PC.
 
I have a 920 based systems and even a couple Asus P6T6 WS Revolution's with Intel 950 CPU's in them. They are viable systems especially if you throw an SSD in them. And you dont need to use ECC with a Xeon.
 
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