Where to get a Socket 1366 Westmere CPU?

Hi.

I’m going to need to use my PC for loads of FEA and 3D modelling in the next year or so. My CPU is a Core i7 920 at 2.66 or 4GHz. At 4 it’s being pushed about as hard as can be expected of it 🙂

Now I see this:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1426601/xeon-w3680-playing-around-trying-to-get-above-5-0ghz-tips-11-3-cb-score

Is there, by any chance, a geeky STW user who has or can find me a cheap CPU like that, a 6-core Westmere. The w3680 look like the sweetspot for this motherboard!

Cheers!

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Tried Ebay?

Yeah man, they usually go for about £150. Seems like with older servers etc getting retired, I might find one much cheaper, if someone knows who is scrapping them or just was a nerd with a few old CPU’s.

I was under the impression we all worked in IT 😉

We do, but since the ‘cloud’ came along, we can’t salvage kit from old physical servers any more 😉

United we stand, divided by zero.

I’m pretty sure someone on here has one.

Late night geek bump? Where to get a 1366 Hexacore?

How is your software licensing?
The Amazon EC2 Compute Optimized might be of use to us
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
We have been pushing demanding stuff up there recently. I can install what I want and run it all from Remote Desktop.

Yeah, cheers for the tip.

I guess I can use that for the FEA, but for the modeling it would probably suck. I actually had this discussion with the network admins.

Thanks though 🙂

I’ve been looking at X3660s, can get one for about £80, but I’m still waiting on Gigabyte to get back and tell me if it will run in my motherboard. It’s not listed as compatable, but the 980/990~x are, and they’re the exact same hardware.

Fingers crossed.

Whats the issue with the modelling? There are some GPU optimised options too?
We don’t get the real benefit as all out stuff is single core but it does keep the temp in my office down and stops the electric meter spinning out of control.

Hmm, well you know how those packages are about certified graphics.

I can’t actually get that page to load, which is a little off-putting 😉

I’ll check again in the morning.

Fair enough if it’s specific but there might be one out there for you, there is a lot of choice. I have a couple that I just turn on for testing big stuff then drop them again after a few hours, been cheaper than popping out and upping the RAM in my machine to 32gb so far.

This one should be compatible with your your board; I use two in my z800 workstation.

X5650 on ebay for £65

If you can’t get what you need and have to get a cheap rendering rig running look for an 8 core AMD FX in the sales over the weekend. Many of the ASUS boards can even use unbuffered ECC memory if you need the extra stability.

Cheers guys! Yeah, those 5650’s are tempting. I assume it’ll overclock to at least 4 as my 920 was rated for 2.66 and that hits 4.1.

I was looking at the 5680 which was much more expensive but may be good for 4.5/5, hence the question about picking one up cheap, but that shop has ’50 and ’60 chips bloody cheap, so I may yet change my mind.

BEB – just curious, like, but have you tried building a PC with one of the X56– series and a domestic motherboard?

Thanks STW 🙂

BEB – just curious, like, but have you tried building a PC with one of the X56– series and a domestic motherboard?

Not yet, it would only be worth doing if it overclocked well else an AMD FX would yield a better performance/price ratio. These are the forums you need to look at:

Overclocking x56XX

X5650 on X58

Unfortunately I can’t overclock my X5650’s but I can tell you that a quad core Sandybridge i7-2600 is better for everyday usage thanks to its higher IPC ratio and a haswell i5-4570 feels like lightning. (I have N+1 on computers as well as bikes) Just be careful you don’t get so sucked in to overclocking an old chip that you should have just bought a new CPU and Motherboard!

Cheers dude, that’s all useful info.

Unfortunately, unless the Uni is going to give me a budget for a new machine, I’ll struggle to spend more than £200 on this thing, all in. But that should net me a 5650/5660 and 12GB of RAM, which is probably enough.

I also have a 7970VapourX and a FirePro 5800; and an SSD, so I should be good for all modeling then 🙂

Let me know if you happen to have some low latency DDR 3 1600 RAM 😉

Also, what is the clockspeed of the two newer chips you mention? Because If I can get 4GHZ+ then I suspect I’ll be feeling pretty snappy then, too.

You might be able to get the X5650 running smoothly at 4GHz but you would need a decent cooler and you wouldn’t know the history of the 2nd hand chip.

If you can stretch your budget of £200 slightly you could just about buy a brand new AMD FX8320 with a motherboard and cooler suitible for overclocking with some fast DDR3 RAM.

I used to have an FX8320 and it happily overclocked to 4 GHz without touching the core voltage on a motherboard with 8+2 Phases like the one listed:

Motherboard bundle

Reviewing results in Geekbench 3 an X5650 overclocked to 4GHz is faster in most tasks than an FX8320 at 4GHz but not massively so. Left at default speeds they are fairly similar.

Also, what is the clockspeed of the two newer chips you mention? Because If I can get 4GHZ+ then I suspect I’ll be feeling pretty snappy then, too.

The i5-4570 is 3.2Ghz with a 3.6Ghz turbo. The i7-2600 is 3.4GHz with a 3.8Ghz turbo.

Take a look at my Geekbench 3 profile and sort by multi-core score, you’ll find results for most of my machines in there; Geekbench 3 Browser Link

Yeah man, they usually go for about £150

Minus what you’d get for your old one. Should get £30 for it if eBay is any judge.

Reviewing results in Geekbench 3 an X5650 overclocked to 4GHz is faster in most tasks than an FX8320 at 4GHz but not massively so. Left at default speeds they are fairly similar.

I think I got that a bit wrong, you would need to overclock an AMD FX higher to match the multi-threaded score of an X56xx at 4GHz.

Oh, and sorry I’ve just checked, no spare desktop RAM, just a couple of laptop sticks. I did find a spare GTX 660Ti 2GB graphics card, a 2012 Mac Mini and spare 120GB SSD drive that I should have sold a few months back all gathering dust 😳

I’m interested in the 660ti Bigeared, what make is it?

I think I got that a bit wrong, you would need to overclock an AMD FX higher to match the multi-threaded score of an X56xx at 4GHz.

Sadly, for AMD, this is the case.

Hopes, for now, pinned on “Captain Jack”

BEB – thanks for all your help.

I think I’ll probably wait until the scholarship money starts flowing in a few weeks and make my decision then. Looks like there’s a fairly ready supply of these lower-end Xeons

Cougar: Seeing as the 920 has been lapped, it’s probably worth less than as stock. I’ll keep it in case I manage to break the Xeon [not that I’ve blown a chip before].

If I remember correctly the 1336 Xeons are the highest quality chips out of the batches hence the price. You will be looking to get the same clock speeds as with your 920 just with two more cores and it being an Xeons it is probably less likely to fail. I easily clocked my i7-950 to 4 but after that it was a pain in the arse. Those 1336 CPUs were the last Intel CPUs that were difficult to overclock but have massive potential, for example your 920 would bench pretty much to the same as my 950 if you got it to the same frequency. The newer ones are dead easy to overclock not much to them.

On this subject anyone know where to get some cheap triple channel RAM? Why does this stuff cost the same amount now as it did 4 years ago?

😯 😯 😯 n+1

On this subject anyone know where to get some cheap triple channel RAM? Why does this stuff cost the same amount now as it did 4 years ago?

If you need triple channel you just buy the sticks in threes. What you really need to know is it;

DDR3?
Speed?
ECC?
Unbuffered or buffered?

Workstations like my Z800 need DDR3 at 1333MHz buffered ECC. This can be found fairly cheap on ebay thanks to the number of servers and workstations being decommissioned were originally purchased between 2009-2011.

After reading up on overclocking socket 13636 Xeons I’m almost tempted to start another project since I don’t rarely use both CPU’s and all 48GB in my workstation – but I occasionally do so, no, none of you can have it 🙂

Defintely DDR3 off the top of my head I think I have 1600 speed RAM at the moment. It looks like I can stick a couple of dual sticks in and it will operate them as dual channel.

This my motherboard

http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/P6X58DE/

6 x DIMM, Max. 24GB, DDR3 2000(O.C.)/1600/1333/1066 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory
Triple Channel Memory Architecture

What’s the question?

Also – you’re replacing RAM that’s in it already? What are you taking out and what are you putting in? If you’re not actually short of memory for the work you do, going from 3 to 2 channels will slow the access down a little.

I was thinking to keep the 3×2 already in 3 of the channels then add 2×4 that would operate as dual channel. The 6gb that I have at the moment isn’t enough these days it is definitely a bottleneck.

Can you do that?

From ASUS

6 Dimm :
• A*: Supports two (2) modules inserted into slot A1 and B1 as one pair of Dual-channel memory configuration
• B*: Supports three (3) modules inserted into the orange slots (A1, B1 and C1) as one set of Triple-channel memory configuration
• C*: Supports four (4) modules inserted into the orange slots (A1, B1 and C1) and the black slot A2 as one set of Triple-channel memory configuration
• D*: Supports six (6) modules inserted into both the orange slots and the black slots as two set of Triple-channel memory configuration.

OOH STEAM SALE!

*Downloads Mirror’s Edge and Bioshock Infinite*

I was thinking to keep the 3×2 already in 3 of the channels then add 2×4 that would operate as dual channel. The 6gb that I have at the moment isn’t enough these days it is definitely a bottleneck.

I don’t think that would work, safest approach would be to buy 3 x 4GB sticks which match the speed of the ones you already have (same vendor and latencies would be best). Then you should get 18GB; if the new and old memory are incompatible with each other (sometime happens) you will still have 12GB and you can sell your old memory.

Today is a good day to look for RAM. If you are lucky you might find a deal on a 4 x 4GB set that is cheaper than buying 3 x 4GB sticks separately.

• C*: Supports four (4) modules inserted into the orange slots (A1, B1 and C1) and the black slot A2 as one set of Triple-channel memory configuration

If you find a 16GB set of 4x 4GB sticks it sounds like you could use them all as Triple Channel 😀

OOH STEAM SALE!

*Downloads Mirror’s Edge and Bioshock Infinite*

I just got all three BioShocks for less than £7. Now to find some spare time…

Hmmppf – that should be a t=45

EDIT: NSFW

Damn. I actually logged on to get this

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/11/goat-mmo-simulator-impressions-massively-moronic/

but forgot and bought other stuff instead.

Hmm so my mobo runs 4 dims as a triple?

!!!! Mine Does !!!! I had never noticed.