[MEGATHREAD] Personal Computer - Updated builds thanks to Logical Increments

[Tokthree]

A matte finish will reduce reflections in the screen, most cheap or older displays with have a glossy finish. Some high-grade panels even have anti-glare coatings so you can use them outdoors

[Ad Bot]

[ShadowsfeaR]

Anyone have experience with using old Intel Xeon server CPU's in a more consumer mobo (X58 chipset)?

[shitlord]

check your motherboard cpu support list
if it doesn't say xeon, i wouldn't try it, but if you have all the parts ready to go then give it a shot and see if it boots

[pefu19]

potentially usefil, courtesy of 4chan
click to make big

[ShadowsfeaR]

check your motherboard cpu support list
if it doesn't say xeon, i wouldn't try it, but if you have all the parts ready to go then give it a shot and see if it boots

I'm not specifically talking about compatibility with existing parts on a running build (x58 mobo's are made with the LGA 1366 socket). I'm talking about making a PC build using parts off eBay to get power for cheap. Wondering if anyone here has experience with that. Xeon's aren't consumer chips, they are server CPU's. The thing is that if you get an old enough one, its still powerful by today's standards, and its cheap (around $100 mark).

[suburb]

Xeons are very capable of gaming just fine, you just have to find the right board to go with it.  I highly recommend just finding an old Mac Pro, 2008 or later so you can get PCI-E 2.0 vs 1.0 on the 06 and 07.  Use Mac Pro 3,1 for your search terms

Reference this for a comparison of an older Xeon at a 2X 5150 and a 2X X5355 upgrade vs a 6350 for comparison

WARNING:  THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG POST

I recently performed a CPU upgrade on the 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 I got off craigslist for 150 dollars.

I as well placed a reference HD 7950 in it that I got off craigslist for 80 dollars

Later on I put 20Gbs of DDR2 667 Mhz ECC RAM in which can be topped out at 32Gbs if I so wanted to later on.

In 2006, which the Mac Pro 1,1 came out, the model I obtained was the 2.66 Ghz 2X Xeon 5150 tier.  This specific model retailed at roughly $2499 USD back in August of 2006, however with the CPU upgrade of 2X Xeon X5355's, a set of processors that retailed at $1172 (per chip) which would total this machine at $4,843 USD before taxes or other fees.  After performing some Passmark tests on both the 5150's and the X5355's, it is quite evident that even with processors that were manufactured in 2005-2006, can still perform just as fast, if not in some cases, faster than modern day processors. *Note* some scenarios for gaming the Mac Pro 1,1 does not handle the best with PCIE 1.0 lanes halving the bandwidth*

I noted on GTA V, on ver high and 8X AA, all advanced graphics on, 60 fps was easily achievable in the intro of the game, however, some explosions and other high activity scenes diminished to 40 fps.  This is more than likely due to PCIE 1.0 having a bottleneck on the 7950 performing to it's best ability versus a CPU bottleneck.

PASSMARK RESULTS
In these tests I compared the CPU results of both xeons against my existing 6350 OC'd at 4.20 Ghz on a consistent basis while being watercooled by a Corsair H105.


 
In summary, I note that the X5355's improved twice over the 5150's while still lagging slightly behind the 6350, which has the benefit of being nearly a full 2 Ghz faster in clock speed over the 2.66 X5355's.  The X5355's however do maintain a strength over many processors today with the elimination of L3 cache, and focusing on a large L2 cache which is why the prescence of L3 cache even exists.  L3 cache is stored off chip allowing for larger storage, but being off chip requires more time to access set instructions for the CPU, with L2 being large at a beefy 8 Mb per chip on the X5355's, it doubles up to become 16 Mb of L2 cache achieveing much faster memory access within the chip's themselves.

I found out that the FX-6350 has a slightly unbalanced advantage being nearly 2 GHz faster, however, we are comparing two 2005 processors to a 2013 processor.  Looking at our first column, we see the 6350 at 7197, the 5150 at 3677 and finally our new X5355’s at 6308.  Giving us a 2600 point increase, doubling what it was before, even though it still has not beaten the 6350.  When it came to compression measured at Kbytes per second, the X5355’s truly outshined both the 6350 and the 5150’s at 12048 placing it 4.9% faster than an average result of a FX-8150 leaving it still 60.1% behind a i7-5820K at 3.30 GHz.

Single threading is a category I feel doesn’t exemplify the Xeon’s in any light, this is due to the fact Xeon’s are built to dual process (spreading out a work load between two CPU chips) and often not will single thread on a single chip, so I just look at this category as exempt.  Extended Instructions (SSE) showed a large improvement on the X5355’s over the 5150’s at an improvement of 10.5 Million Matrices per second.  This left the X5355’s at 6.6 behind the 6350 and shockingly, the Xeon’s were less in physics at 352.8 frames per second where the 6350 was at 459.3 frames per second.  I would have presumed the X5355’s to speed ahead on this category due to the fact most physics powered games and applications are directly CPU and with dual processing and hyper threading (however, the X5355's do not have hyper threading technology due to age) it should triumph easily over the 6350 and it’s glorified 3 physical cores and 6 logical versus the X5355’s 8 physical cores and 8 logical cores.  

TL;DR

A 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 with 20 Gbs of RAM and two quad core processors with $339.98 USD put into this thing total, makes one hell of a machine in comparison to some machines in 2015.  Yes, it is slower in terms of RAM and graphics bandwidth, but if it needs to run anything CPU intensive, this thing will knock and deliver results.

Bonus Pictures

Edit:  If anyone wants two LGA 771 Xeon 5150's, let me know I have two laying about that work fine Linky Dinky Doo

[Oasis]

Apparently I'm in the market for a mechanical keyboard. Leaning towards the K70, but go ahead and recommend some stuff.

[ZERØ]

Guys I just recently started getting random BSOD's again, its the MEMMORY_MANAGEMENT error, I have a feeling its my ram, It gave me the same thing 5 months ago, but I fixed it back then by taking it out and cleaning the contacts and then I switched it to the other slot.

Its a 4GB stick of Corsair Vengeance running at 1600mhz, I know its little and I'm due for an upgrade but I really want to make this stick last, I hope it the "fix" works again, also does anybody know why cleaning the contacts and switching slots temporarily fixes this? It doesn't make any sense to me, but it works somehow.

Also no Its not an unstable overclock, My AMD A8 (Trinity) is at a stable 3.9 GHz, incase you where wondering, it starts getting unstable at 4.0 and 4.2 is a crash whenever starting up anything.

My plan for ram is to buy a 16gb (DDR3 8GBs x2 Set) dual channel kit at 2400mhz, since AMD APU's general like faster ram in general, going with Corsair Ram again, but I don't know whether to go with a Vengeance Pro Kit or a Dominator Platinum kit. If you have any suggestions for ram then go ahead, I'm looking for anything to match my Black mobo in white case build.

[-Fate-]

So for Christmas im getting one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487154&cm_re=gtx_960-_-14-487-154-_-Product to upgrade my pc and I want to know if the AMD A6-6420K will be capable of going along side it

[Bisjac]

I was always interested in a dual cpu game comp. But the motherboards are so bare bones basic. I dunno if i would miss all the bells and whistles of the gamer boards. Especially oc support.

[espio100]

So for Christmas im getting one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487154&cm_re=gtx_960-_-14-487-154-_-Product to upgrade my pc and I want to know if the AMD A6-6420K will be capable of going along side it

For a GTX 960 I would highly recommend getting atleast a quadcore to decrease bottlenecking to its minimum. AMD CPU's arent that expensive anyway. I don't know why you would get a dual core AMD if you can get a quadcore for a couple of dollars more. (unless its prebuild its not really your mistake)
If you are getting the GX 960 I would suggest AMD Athlon X4 860K
Or get a new motherboard and an intel CPU if you are going to use the GTX 960 for gaming.

Can you also post what mb you have?

[-Fate-]

For a GTX 960 I would highly recommend getting atleast a quadcore to decrease bottlenecking to its minimum. AMD CPU's arent that expensive anyway. I don't know why you would get a dual core AMD if you can get a quadcore for a couple of dollars more. (unless its prebuild its not really your mistake)
If you are getting the GX 960 I would suggest AMD Athlon X4 860K
Or get a new motherboard and an intel CPU if you are going to use the GTX 960 for gaming.

Can you also post what mb you have?

no i already have the amd a6 and it is prebuilt from a guy off of ebay. What do you mean mb if you mean ram thats gb and its 8 if not sorry for being dumb

[espio100]

no i already have the amd a6

Socket: FM2, Clockspeed: 4.0 GHz, Turbo Speed: 4.2 GHz, No of Cores: 2, Max TDP: 65 W

Get atleast a quadcore for the GTX 960, seriously.
Also forget the CPU I suggested, its stuff.
Wait nevermind, I think yours will do fine.

What do you mean mb

Motherboard.

[shitlord]

no he will bottleneck the hell out of the 970
i already have a really bad bottleneck because of my pentium dual core, i could only imagine how bad it would be on a loving AMD processor

Guys I just recently started getting random BSOD's again, its the MEMMORY_MANAGEMENT error, I have a feeling its my ram, It gave me the same thing 5 months ago, but I fixed it back then by taking it out and cleaning the contacts and then I switched it to the other slot.

Its a 4GB stick of Corsair Vengeance running at 1600mhz, I know its little and I'm due for an upgrade but I really want to make this stick last, I hope it the "fix" works again, also does anybody know why cleaning the contacts and switching slots temporarily fixes this? It doesn't make any sense to me, but it works somehow.

Also no Its not an unstable overclock, My AMD A8 (Trinity) is at a stable 3.9 GHz, incase you where wondering, it starts getting unstable at 4.0 and 4.2 is a crash whenever starting up anything.

My plan for ram is to buy a 16gb (DDR3 8GBs x2 Set) dual channel kit at 2400mhz, since AMD APU's general like faster ram in general, going with Corsair Ram again, but I don't know whether to go with a Vengeance Pro Kit or a Dominator Platinum kit. If you have any suggestions for ram then go ahead, I'm looking for anything to match my Black mobo in white case build.

run memetest86 and it will tell you whats wrong, if anything is wrong. 

Apparently I'm in the market for a mechanical keyboard. Leaning towards the K70, but go ahead and recommend some stuff.

http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/

[espio100]

no he will bottleneck the hell out of the 970
i already have a really bad bottleneck because of my pentium dual core, i could only imagine how bad it would be on a loving AMD processor run

Its a 960 tough.
Anyways his CPU for some reasons gets allot more rating on various site than most other AMD CPU's with even more cores.
If I were to suggest you CPU's to minimize bottlenecking get for AMD:
AMD FX 6300 (Hexacore 3.5Ghz (4.1Ghz overclocked))
AMD Athlon X4 860K (Quadcore 3.7Ghz)
AMD FX-4350 (Quadcore 4.2 Ghz)
Intel:
Intel Core i5-4590 (quadcore 3.3 Ghz) (Going to buy this allongside my GTX 960 tho.
Intel Core i5-4460 (Quadcore 3.2Ghz, if you want to save some money and not get the 4590).

If you opened them all and are looking at the prices and you like "Bruh, AMD has more cores, clockrate and is allot cheaper"
The big difference between intel and AMD is that intel has a much better single-core peformance. Wich is really good in games actually since they most game only use 1 or 2 cores. Some 4. Depends on the game really.
AMD is good for multitasking with programs like photoshop and stuff.

Keep in mind if you are going to buy an intel CPU you also want to buy a new motherboard since you probably have one that only supports AMD chipsets.

Can you also post your PC specs?