Anyone dropping ebay Xeon® cpus in their x79 / x99's?

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mikeo

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Decided to order a E5-2697 v2 12 core chip off ebay to drop in my old x79 platform replacing a 6 core 3930k (seems like that is the highest chip released for that platform). Anyone do a similar upgrade to extend their old x79 platforms? Still planning on upgrading to the next threadripper, but for a drop in cpu upgrade while still being able to use the 64gb ram I have in there, seems like it will be pretty nice for video encoding / multimedia work.
 
It may not be quite the same thing as you're talking about, but I have a six core engineering sample Xeon in a spare X99 board that gets used as my girlfriend's daily driver.

It's good and bad. On the plus side, it was super cheap - like, $100 a couple of years ago. It's also quite stable, and supports all the nice features that X99 boards have like higher memory capacity, and the full 40 PCI-E lanes. Or is it 44? I can't remember, but it's more than a 5820K, which has 28.

On the down side, very few of the Xeons are overclockable, and they run at pretty low clock speeds. I think the one I have runs at 2.4GHz. It's fast enough for my girlfriend's use case, which is basically a shit-ton of browser tabs, but it struggles to keep up with a modern graphics card in games.

If what you need is a lot of cores, then this isn't a terrible idea, but there's no replacement for clock speed.
 
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It is Xeon, not XENON!

You won't be able to overclock the E5-2697 v2. Only the E5-16xx v1 and v2 chips are overclockable.
 
cyclone3d said:
It is Xeon, not XENON!

You won't be able to overclock the E5-2697 v2. Only the E5-16xx v1 and v2 chips are overclockable.
Click to expand...

The xeon v3 are unlocked as well. The V4 are locked up.
I have 1650V3 on my EVGA x99FTW and on an Asus Stryx x99 They are multiplier unlocked.
 
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I've always thought the Xeon upgrade path was a big perk for the HEDT crowd. Going on nearly eight years and X79 motherboards are still $250 and up.
 
Bill1024 said:
The xeon v3 are unlocked as well. The V4 are locked up.
I have 1650V3 on my EVGA x99FTW and on an Asus Stryx x99 They are multiplier unlocked.
Click to expand...

Right.. I was only talking about the x79 platform.

I also have a 2011-3 setup with a Xeon in it.
 
Yeah, years ago. I'm literally retiring mine now.

E5 1680v2 1P was the only 8-core unlocked cpu for awhile, sweet upgrade for X79 systems. Still the top option for that socket (no brainer 4.5Ghz all-core at stock voltage) as the 2P 10/12 are locked down at way lower clocks.

Anyone wanna buy a 22-core E5 2696v4 (OEM, not ES) with 100mhz faster turbo bins than the top retail-available SKU? (2699v4) Supports registered if you want 256GB on good X99 boards.

Just don't run jobs on them/on a network that needs those defect patches, because they are getting tanked hard, again.
 
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i have e5-2670 xEnoN (rip) on gigabyte x79 platform. I don't use it, buut if I do - I will. If you really want it - there are issues with it.
 
I've had a X99-E WS and 32GB of DDR4 laying around for quite some time, and I just picked up an E5-2680 v3. I'm not expecting too of it, as I'm putting together the rig primarily for GPUs. But 12 cores why not. Between the chip and case, the cost of the "build" will be low as I've got everything else needed.
 
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Went ahead and got myself a E5 2696 v3 (same as an E5 2699 v3) to hold me over until the 16 core Zen 2 and TRs. Have 128GB ECC on the way (32GB sticks) now too, and if this works out I may just go with this setup + 256GB ECC for the time being. There's still a potential 22 core v4 upgrade option, but those are still about twice expensive as these 18 core v3 on Ebay right now.

2699v3.png


Wish there was a way to force max turbo on these at all times, but using the "stock" cooler right now has me hitting 70C while encoding so I don't have much thermal headroom right anyway.
 
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I think the v3's there is a microcode bios mod you can do to unlock all core turbos.
 
No plans for me but I've always been curious about it. Looking forward to more people posting their stories her though.
 
I have been running my Gigabyte X79-UD3 (rev1.1) with 12-core Xeon E5 2655 V2 ES with for two years now, without any problems.
Running all-core 2,8GHz, 32GB DDR3@1866MHz

upload_2019-6-12_22-57-42.png
upload_2019-6-12_22-58-28.png
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I'm now running 256GB ECC RAM in my build. Paid ~$800 for it which is better than the going rate for the cheapest DDR4 kits out there, not to mention the high density (32GB per stick). It blows my mind I have a desktop with this much RAM in it now. I have it running Ubuntu right now with a 128GB RAM disk doing some heavy "file IO". It's definitely saving me a lot of SSD read/write cycles!
 
My 12 core 2697v2 is only bus speed OC's, settled on running it at 113x30 all core oc and 113x35 turbo. If you want higher single core performance an oc'd 8 core 1680v2 is a better choice as it is multi unlocked.
 

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I dropped a 6 core E5-1650 v2 in my X79 system not too long ago to add a few more cores than my 4820k had. I was able to get the Xeon to the same somewhat mild 4.4ghz overclock that I had on the 4 core CPU. I went for it mainly because it's 1) moar coars and 2) multiplier unlocked. I have taken it a couple hundred mhz faster but since I didn't want to pump up the voltages too much. I'll have to report back when I get home in a few with what voltage got me to a stable 4.4ghz.
 
Loving it! Sure its old but working fine for me and what I do at home.


Got on the x79 train late because I always wanted one and started a slush fund for an upcoming ITX build on current gen stuff. Running a 1650v2 at 4.4 no issues. Its my Sig Rig for now until we see more itx x570 boards or until Bios on b450/x470 get some more love. I parted my Ryzen 2600 build and went back to this one in the meantime. I'll keep it for as long as it holds out as a side box at least. Sure its not as fast as newer stuff but at 1440p its plenty plucky for what I play these days as well has being fun as hell to mess with.



CPUz thumb attached

Link for validation page /current specs

https://valid.x86.fr/hlu1z2
 

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Ok so today I chucked an EVGA 2060 super Ultra in...

This is on an e5 1650v2 at 4.4

Free version so 1080p test
Firestrike
18409 overall
22800 graphics

Tweaktown review of 2060 super with 8700k @ 5Ghz
19867 overall
22023 graphics

The old x79 beast can still put up some numbers even at 600mz less!
 
im running a 2670 on a generic chinese mobo with the mosfet heatsink zip-tied on. runs good enough for me (except that it doesnt like the blue ray drive). im not sure what kind of load it would take to overload it.
 
Ya; I've been using them for years and years!
Something to know is that some motherboards simply do not include support for the CPU microcode and will never work. In general, Asrock and Asus will typically work. I'm 50-50 on X99 MSI boards.

There is good info on ServeTheHome's forum https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/es-xeon-discussion.5031/
All the Haswell Xeons are quasi-overclockable. You can use the Haswell Microcode trick to force the higher multipliers to run (sometimes far higher than the regular turbo would allow). It requires changing the wiundows microcode, booting EFI to load custom microcode (or clear the microcode). Some motherboards have custom UEFI written to help the process. It's fairly well documented on Anandtech deep in this thread: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/what-controls-turbo-core-in-xeons.2496647/


At this point in time, the older gen Xeons ES's get smoked by the Skylake+ Xeons. They just lack the clock rates and IPC and the power draw is huge. Great for budget builds if you simply need more threads than Ryzen provides, or less money than new Xeons.

In the last few years I've run:
Asus Z10PE-D16 WS (Bios 3305) (40c/80t)


Dual Xeon E5-2687w v3 @ 3.415ghz (20 cores)


Xeon E5 2609 v3 ES 6 cores on an MSI x99-a board (It ran 7x gtx-1080Ti's in one of my mining rigs in 2017 lol)

Several old Dual Xeon x5670 machines
 
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I'm still rocking an i7-3930k after all these years. Rather than dropping over $500 for a new CPU+mobo, can I reasonably expect to get a bump in performance going the cheaper route of simply dropping in a Xeon CPU? The clock speeds, as others have mentioned, are immediately off-puting. I've been running my 3930k at 4.5GHz stable for quite some time. .

I just replaced my ASUS Rampage IV Formula mobo a year ago after it died, but I bought my replacement new (or refubished) from ASUS themselves. So, a simple CPU purchase would make a lot of financial sense to me.
 
For gaming I wouldn't want to go from 6 cores at 4.5 to 12 cores at 3.5 today. Increasing cache from 12 MB on 3930k to 30 MB on 2970 v2 provides some improvement. For a general purpose machine I was going to hand over to someone to get the most years out of, 2970 v2 all day.
 
DJ Lushious Your only real upgrade on x79 would be an e5-1680 v2. Two more cores, and an unlocked multiplier...

Unless you are doing work that will get you paid, I'd wait and see what AMD/TSMC and Intel drop between now and 2h 2021.
 
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