Intel Xeon L5639 Hexa(6) Core LGA1366 Price:US $79.80 Used Ebay Seller

"I told you so."
Yet another cpu dead because someone didn't listen to me about QPI voltage needing to be 1.35v or less on these cpus.

Seriously, not a freaking joke. If you're running > 1.35v QPI/UCLK your cpu WILL die. Those random pauses were caused by memory state errors due to your IMC being killed by the voltage.
 
Stands to reason, but ease up on the attitude, tiger. I'm chalking mine up to an experiment.
 
Nate7311 said:
Stands to reason, but ease up on the attitude, tiger. I'm chalking mine up to an experiment.
Click to expand...

Considering I've been warning you guys about this *for several months* and spent several hours actually explaining it all, it's pretty damn frustrating to see people losing their CPUs to this.

But hey, if you have to lose ~$100 to learn a lesson, that's on you. I tried.

Edit:
Do not exceed the following voltages if you care about your cpu:
vCore - 1.45v
PLL - 1.9v
QPI/vTT/UCLK - 1.35v
vDDR - 1.65v

Going above any of these can cause rapid, sudden death.
 
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Nate7311 said:
I did have a few random BSOD reboots during gaming. Honestly, as fast as it rebooted, I never checked into it and always assumed my video card, guess I know different now. The 2600k (stock speed for now) Asus P8P67Pro that I replaced it with from the F/S forum feels just as snappy but is definitely smoother. The old proc would ocassionally have random pauses for a sec or 2 and then fly though all the stacked up commands. I was able to transfer the windows install right over and boot right up, so I don't believe that the pauses were anything but O/C related.

My final settings were as follows:
Mult: auto
BCLK: 200
Speedstep On
All CStates on
Ended up @ 3.6Ghz base clock and 4Ghz Turbo.

CPU voltage: 1.37
PLL voltage: 2.15
QPI voltage: 1.4
I was using a CM Hyper212 and my idle temps were 98F and in-game stressed were high 145F-149F. Being a network consultant, My main usage was typical office program stuff with frequent gaming. Having it to do over again, I think I'd have backed it down to 190 BCLK and tune to voltage down as well.
Click to expand...
WOWZA:eek:
2.15v PLL that's uh, up there.
Zoson said:
Considering I've been warning you guys about this *for several months* and spent several hours actually explaining it all, it's pretty damn frustrating to see people losing their CPUs to this.

But hey, if you have to lose ~$100 to learn a lesson, that's on you. I tried.

Edit:
Do not exceed the following voltages if you care about your cpu:
vCore - 1.45v
PLL - 1.9v
QPI/vTT/UCLK - 1.35v
vDDR - 1.65v

Going above any of these can cause rapid, sudden death.
Click to expand...
Key word being can. That doc you linked in the other thread did show the vcore threshold was 1.55v. But as you also stated there that's certainly not a good idea without sufficient cooling.
By and large the above numbers are very prudent for long term cpu lifespan
ssnyder28 said:
I'm surprised your cpu lasted that long at that voltage.
Click to expand...
He's got quite the custom watercooling set up
 
Hi everyone, I made an account on HardForum just to say thanks!

After reading this thread page to page, along with reviews on OCN (where I predominately frequent), I decided to help a friend bring his X58 system back to life with a Intel Xeon L5639 (back in 01/2014). Since then, I have been so impressed with the setup, that I not only built a Xeon X5650 + Sabertooth X58 system for myself, but convinced an additional three friends to do similar X5650 builds with their existing X58 motherboards. Two of them had EVGA X58 SLI (e758) boards that we modded (again thanks to tips found on this thread).

I especially want to thank the OP, Primetime, for starting this thread, as well Zoson for his clear explanation on Westmere-EP overclocking.

Take it easy! :)
 
ghabhaducha said:
Hi everyone, I made an account on HardForum just to say thanks!

After reading this thread page to page, along with reviews on OCN (where I predominately frequent), I decided to help a friend bring his X58 system back to life with a Intel Xeon L5639 (back in 01/2014). Since then, I have been so impressed with the setup, that I not only built a Xeon X5650 + Sabertooth X58 system for myself, but convinced an additional three friends to do similar X5650 builds with their existing X58 motherboards. Two of them had EVGA X58 SLI (e758) boards that we modded (again thanks to tips found on this thread).

I especially want to thank the OP, Primetime, for starting this thread, as well Zoson for his clear explanation on Westmere-EP overclocking.

Take it easy! :)
Click to expand...

Very nice, very classy. Welcome to the club. You guys should get years of good performance out of the Xeon-X58 combo
 
Hello guys. How do you get past or fix the unresponsive 20x uncore multiplier of the X56xx Xeons? I've been struggling a lot with this issue and can't find a real solution. No matter what value I enter, it seems to ignore it and always run at 20x.
This ridiculously high multiplier forces me to go much higher on the CPU VTT than it's necessary just to reach some mediocre clocks.
I'm aware that the max safe CPU VTT voltage is 1.35V and I shouldn't get past that, so I'm following this rule of thumb. So this voltage gives me 193x22 for X5650 and I can't go higher without increasing it.
I'm almost certain that if I somehow manage to reduce the uncore multi, I'd be able to either go higher on BCLK or reduce the CPU VTT.
I've read that there are "hacked" bioses for some motherboards with added microcode for these specific CPUs which actually fully unlock these multipliers. Any idea how to achieve that and mod my own bios?

The motherboard is Foxconn FlamingBlade GTI with the latest BIOS.
The CPU is Xeon X5650 B1.

Any ideas or advices would be highly appreciated.
 
nitrobg said:
Hello guys. How do you get past or fix the unresponsive 20x uncore multiplier of the X56xx Xeons? I've been struggling a lot with this issue and can't find a real solution. No matter what value I enter, it seems to ignore it and always run at 20x.
This ridiculously high multiplier forces me to go much higher on the CPU VTT than it's necessary just to reach some mediocre clocks.
I'm aware that the max safe CPU VTT voltage is 1.35V and I shouldn't get past that, so I'm following this rule of thumb. So this voltage gives me 193x22 for X5650 and I can't go higher without increasing it.
I'm almost certain that if I somehow manage to reduce the uncore multi, I'd be able to either go higher on BCLK or reduce the CPU VTT.
I've read that there are "hacked" bioses for some motherboards with added microcode for these specific CPUs which actually fully unlock these multipliers. Any idea how to achieve that and mod my own bios?

The motherboard is Foxconn FlamingBlade GTI with the latest BIOS.
The CPU is Xeon X5650 B1.

Any ideas or advices would be highly appreciated.
Click to expand...
I'm not familiar with your board or its BIOS.
My uncore defaults to 2x my ram multiplier. So my BCLK is 205, ram thus runs at 8x 1640 and Uncore is 3280 or 16X. Are you running 10X on your ram? Perhaps reducing that to 8x will trigger the uncore to reduce automatically.
If you need better assistance try PMing Zoson at the top of this page. He is the x58 expert around [H]; helped me out many times.
Good Luck
 
GonzoP said:
I'm not familiar with your board or its BIOS.
My uncore defaults to 2x my ram multiplier. So my BCLK is 205, ram thus runs at 8x 1640 and Uncore is 3280 or 16X. Are you running 10X on your ram? Perhaps reducing that to 8x will trigger the uncore to reduce automatically.
If you need better assistance try PMing Zoson at the top of this page. He is the x58 expert around [H]; helped me out many times.
Good Luck
Click to expand...

I'm running 6x RAM just for testing purposes to isolate the max reasonable BCLK overclock I can achieve. However, this unresponsive uncore multiplier forces me to bump the BCLK voltage to 1.35 just to reach the seemingly low 193MHz BCLK. This is the issue.

I think that I've managed to isolate the cause of the issue and it is most likely in the outdated microcode in the latest BIOS from Foxconn.

So far I've managed to find 2 possible microcodes for all CPUs with CPUID 206C2.

cpu000206c2_plat00000003_ver0000000f_date20100618.bin
cpu000206c2_plat00000003_ver00000013_date20100907.bin

The first one dated Jun 18, 2010 is the old one, bundled with my BIOS. It seems like this this one has the said uncore bug.
The second one dated Sep 07, 2010 is the updated one and is bundled by some updated BIOSes and therefore most users with the newest BIOS don't know and are not affected by this issue.

Some manufacturers are just too lazy to add the new microcodes and the end user has to do their job.

So, can anyone help me with removing the old microcode and adding the new one?
BIOS file here, all unpacked microcodes here.
Possible donor BIOS from ASUS Sabertooth X58.
I've followed this guide but I can only manage to add the new one. It's possible to remove the old microcode using a hex editor but it seems like a really dirty and potentially dangerous way. Having both the old and the new microcodes might cause issue and confuse the motherboard.
So, can anyone do it for me, please?
 
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FINALLLLLY Got my L5639 installed, in my Gigabyte X58 UD3R with a leftover (NIB) H60 I have :D


3.6ghz Achieved in short-time, playing around. Probably a bit too much voltage.

What software should I use to post screenshots of the correct info to share? CPU-Z doesn't seem to have much.
 
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CPU Clock Ratio: 16x
QPI Link: 7.2ghz
BLCK: 200
Performance Enhance: Standard
System Memory Multiplier (SPD): 8.0
All cores enabled
TurboBoost Enabled
PCI Express Freq: 101
CPU vCore: 1.3
QPI/VTT Voltage: 1.28
DRAM: 1.5
-----------------------

Kept all the same, upped BLCK to 205 so far so good.
 
CPU-Tweaker 2.0 with HWMonitor are probably the two best pieces of software for these chips.
 
I think I may drop the QPI ratio, and up the BLCK more see if I can get 4.0 out of her, booting at 3.69 currently and loading Win fine. Although it seems to me the GB mobo is slow to boot with OC options/config... like there's a delay 5-10second prior to POST screen, then it works fine. Which i've read others have had same issues with this mobo. So, not sure if it's standard?
 
ToddW2 said:
I think I may drop the QPI ratio, and up the BLCK more see if I can get 4.0 out of her, booting at 3.69 currently and loading Win fine. Although it seems to me the GB mobo is slow to boot with OC options/config... like there's a delay 5-10second prior to POST screen, then it works fine. Which i've read others have had same issues with this mobo. So, not sure if it's standard?
Click to expand...

This is standard with many x58 boards. It's called memory retraining, and is a result of the integrated memory controller. Some of the more expensive boards like the Rampage 3 Extreme allow you to turn it off.

It's basically there to attempt to prevent the 'only seeing 2 of my 3 memory sticks' bug that plagued the platform.
 
Zoson said:
This is standard with many x58 boards. It's called memory retraining, and is a result of the integrated memory controller. Some of the more expensive boards like the Rampage 3 Extreme allow you to turn it off.

It's basically there to attempt to prevent the 'only seeing 2 of my 3 memory sticks' bug that plagued the platform.
Click to expand...

Ah, perfect ;)
 
My buddy has an old 920 system that he was going to use as more or less a console for his tv. Would going with a 6 core xeon offer a decent performance improvement for him? He says he couldn't even get his 920 o/c'd very far.
 
outers said:
My buddy has an old 920 system that he was going to use as more or less a console for his tv. Would going with a 6 core xeon offer a decent performance improvement for him? He says he couldn't even get his 920 o/c'd very far.
Click to expand...

Depends how much he's doing with that 1 system.

Most 920s OC well....
 
It takes my L5639 @ 3.2 GHz to equal to my 930 @ 4.2Ghz. That of course is when you are using all of the 6 cores on the xeon. The good is the low 60 watts it only uses. The bad 16x locked is the highest you can go. The rest is 17x turbo up, etc and only uses a few cores. But I used maybe used a tiny bit +1 to use 3.2Ghz daily on the voltage. Great chip for the price but if I had to do it again. I would get one that has a multi unlocked for my needs.

For the price/performance it is a no brainer though. Very solid for a cheap price.
 
ToddW2 said:
Depends how much he's doing with that 1 system.

Most 920s OC well....
Click to expand...

Maybe he just didn't know how to OC all that well, but he basically told me he couldn't take it much farther than the stock frequency.
 
I'd go with this CPU over the 920 for power saving in-itself, esp if left on all the time w/out the low-low power saving modes enabled.
 
KILLER_K said:
It takes my L5639 @ 3.2 GHz to equal to my 930 @ 4.2Ghz. That of course is when you are using all of the 6 cores on the xeon. The good is the low 60 watts it only uses. The bad 16x locked is the highest you can go. The rest is 17x turbo up, etc and only uses a few cores. But I used maybe used a tiny bit +1 to use 3.2Ghz daily on the voltage. Great chip for the price but if I had to do it again. I would get one that has a multi unlocked for my needs.

For the price/performance it is a no brainer though. Very solid for a cheap price.
Click to expand...

like many of us you can buy a 5660/ or 5670 and sell your 5639 for nearly what you spent on it and be rocking 4.2 all the time with no need for turbo (which truthfully is the overclock that is really guaranteed without high end water)
 
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So, I dug up a Xeon x5670 I had lying around and popped it into a MSI X58 7522 board that I also had as a spare.

I have a water CPU block and pump in the radiator, the type you get for less than $100 at local stores.

I have 2 PNY GTX760's in SLI. Built this as a gamer box, works well so far.

So, I wanted to OC from the stock 2.93 and I went for 4015MHz, which I got easily, ran Prime95 overnight, and my games have not locked up.

Here are my settings, which I am still perfecting (I want to see how much lower I can go with volts, but as-is these settings are stable):

MSI 7522 x58 Motherboard OC
CPU = Xeon 1366 2.93 x5670
OC to 4015MHz
EIST = Auto
C1E = Enabled
Turbo = Disabled
CPU Base Frequency = 182
DRAM timing mode = unlink
XMP = Disabled
Memory Ratio = 4 , 1384MHz
Vdroop = Low Vdroop
CPU Voltage = 0.310
CPU PLL = 1.98
QPI = 1.40
DRAM = 1.62
IOH = 1.30 (auto)
ICH = 1.70 (auto)
Spread Spectrum = Enabled
 
take it for what its worth....these are max safe voltages for 32mn cpus

Zoson [H]ardness Supreme, 13.1 Years

vCore: 1.45v
CPU PLL: 1.9v
QPI/UCLK/Vtt: 1.35v
vDDR: 1.65v (Possibly QPI+0.5v)
IOH/ICH: 1.25v
PCI-E: 1.51v

Here's the datasheet for reference
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www...heet-vol-1.pdf


of course we can afford a little risk on bargain cpus:)
 
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outers said:
My buddy has an old 920 system that he was going to use as more or less a console for his tv. Would going with a 6 core xeon offer a decent performance improvement for him? He says he couldn't even get his 920 o/c'd very far.
Click to expand...
no point upgrading unless he will run apps/games that heavily utilize multiple cores, like battlefield4 or video encoding apps, otherwise there will be little difference in performance
 
Well we live and learn. Now I got one sitting here on the desk not being used.


primetime said:
like many of us you can buy a 5660/ or 5670 and sell your 5639 for nearly what you spent on it and be rocking 4.2 all the time with no need for turbo (which truthfully is the overclock that is really guaranteed without high end water)
Click to expand...
 
KILLER_K said:
Well we live and learn. Now I got one sitting here on the desk not being used.
Click to expand...

you could probably get a hundred on ebay......or keep it for a spare...its still a wonderful cpu....my brother kept his and is perfectly contempt on sticking with it till at least skylake or beyond
 
Picked up a X5670 on ebay hoping that it would be an upgrade to my daily driver of a i920 @ 3.8GHz... problem is, I'm having a heck of a time trying to get it to OC at all. Guessing the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P is the issue? Someone else in this thread seems to have had no luck with it. Not sure why this would be an issue since it OCs the i920 just fine....

Running the F14p BIOS. Noticed a F14q on Tweaktown but have no idea what the changes are so not sure if it would be relevant.
 
schmuckley said:
I'm running this for daily: http://valid.x86.fr/ex2qjy
I like it!
Click to expand...

Schmuckley, lookin' good man! Though I'm pretty sure you can lower the voltage a bit at that frequency. Here's my CPU-Z under IBT v2.54 "very high" load: http://valid.x86.fr/k3qm6e

I still need to OC the ram (waiting on a better set), but here are the other specs:
Sabertooth X58
Xeon X5650 4.3GHz (215MHz BCLK, 20X multi w/no turbo 1.32V after vdroop)
Corsair H100i in a Fractal Arc Midi

I'm sure with the P6X58D-E that you have, you can probably get similar stats. I had to put it under load, since i'm offset overclocking.


Primetime and all others on this thread, thanks again for your efforts, at this point I have helped NINE people move on from their 45nm i7-9x0 quads' (all the people I know still on X58).
 
So is the X5670 and X5660 the best bang for $. What is a good buying price on these. Any other chips to look at. Should be getting my MB back in the next 2 weeks.
 
? What do you mean by that. They are more efficient than the 920 I had and I sold that for $40. Need a system with ECC ram so going to buy one of those.
 
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