x5355 - why still so expensive?

[cryingrobot]

Ive been on the lookout for a pair of these quad core chips for a few months now in order to extend the life of my 2006 mac pro but I am surprised (and frustrated) at how the price is holding up despite the chips being 3 years old. Its difficult to find one under USD350. Is it the rarity (as no one makes these anymore) or is it because the CPU still holds up to the newer chips?

Its hard to understand..I mean, how many other people could there be that still need this chip?

 

[J&JPolangin]

...try pricing "new" 512 MB Rambus RAM chips, same thing... they just cost too much to produce and the prices never really came down...

 

[gugucom]

The X5355 and the X5365 Clovertown were actually only generally released in mid 2007. So they are only a bit older than 2 years now. Initially they were priced over 1000$.

People exchange these CPUs in servers to get lower operating power from the 5400 Harpertown series which is basically a die shrink on the 5300 series. Unfortunately for those who are keen to buy those chips on the used parts market servers are mainly leased on a fixed 3-year schedule. Those clients typically do not upgrade CPUs.

Intel also introduced the 5500 Gainestown series which brings additional benefits in terms of much higher bandwidth and Intel will bring the 5600 six core Gulftown in spring. So many users will probably get new servers with 5500 and 5600 Nehalem CPUs in summer. The number of used 5300 parts should increase when more servers are recycled after the lease period.

Right now there are several 3,0 GHz x5160 Woodcrest Xeons still for 1€ on Ebay Germany. They are only dual core but they are a nice upgrade for 2,0 GHz MacPros from 2006. You get 50% more performance.

Sometimes with server CPUs it also helps to search for the sSpec numbers (SLAC3, QWTH, SLAED) for the 5365

 

[cal6n]

There are a lot of 2 - 3 year old workstations (not just mac Pros) that were equipped with 51XX series dual-core processors. All of these machines benefit from an upgrade to a pair of 53XX chips, effectively doubling their multi-thread performance.

In today's economic climate, that level of performance upgrade holds its price.

 

[cryingrobot]

ebay auction

Did anyone else monitor the 4 used 5355s that were just auctioned? They went for about 300-350 range each. I put in bids and got carried away but am kind of glad I got outbid in the end. I think sub $5-600 is a decent price for a pair but when they start approaching $700 its time to start putting that money in the pot for the new system.

 

[bozz2006]

keep looking. be diligent. i got mine for $155 each, so the deals are out there.

 

[Tesselator]

keep looking. be diligent. i got mine for $155 each, so the deals are out there.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say too. The "reason" IMO is that you're shopping in the wrong place.

 

[PurpleLogix]

Where should we be looking?? Trying to get a pair as well.

 

[flatfoot]

Where should we be looking?? Trying to get a pair as well.

eBay.
Bought a Server for €470. Took the two X5355, a 75GB Raptor and 8GB (4x2GB) RAM out of it.
Resold it for €130.
=> two X5355, a 75GB Raptor, 8GB of RAM for €340!

 

[PurpleLogix]

I have being thinking of doing the same. I'll keep stalking eBay till I get them. Still hoping to pick up 2 x5365, but they sell for more than my budget

 

[JPamplin]

I'd like to echo Gugu's and Bozz's comments - as a fellow 5355 upgrader, I'll tell you it's very worth it.

BUT, something you need to consider - if you are truly looking for speed, then your hard drives are the bottleneck (if you don't have gobs of RAM). In addition to upgrading my CPUs, I created a striped 3-drive RAID0 which gave the Mac Pro a more balanced performance profile. You'll notice a difference, especially if you do anything that's I/O intensive.

JP

 

[redash]

I found some quad cores from a guy that did a server farm refresh here in South Korea. i bought 6 clovertown x5355 and 4 harpertown xeon chips off the guy in the hope to make small profit reselling on ebay.
I listed first pair today.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330393078131&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT


this is me
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jdpope

I actually want to make a hackintosh from HP xw8400 but the damn thing has cost me so much that I think it would be cheaper to buy a complete system. you can pick up hp mainboard / plus case / plus cpu heatsink / plus ram / plus / plus ....but it all adds up. If you take this diy HP workstation path - do your maths.