Looking for opinions on Xeon E5420's I can snag. $225.00 a piece for 2 of them USED. Harpertowns seem to be less expensive than clovertowns as far as I can tell. Was looking at the L5420 (lower wattage) but there about 100 bucks more. You guys think this is a good deal?
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Xeon E5420?
- Thread starter bearcatrp
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Not going in a mac pro. Building a crunching machine. To bad you can't put them in a 2006 mac pro as they are a drop in replacement like my asus mobo I have now. Since I sold my 2006 mac pro I upgraded, got an itch to see how much difference in price it would be to build a similar octo. So far it will be around 1200 bucks if I buy these chips compared to 2400 I spent on my 2008 mac pro.
You might want to take a look at the ASUS Z7S WS, as you can OC the CPU's via firmware. It's a nice board, and IIRC, there's a few reviews on it (search list), that indicated it was a better board than the SkullTrail. It's not exactly an inexpensive board (example price), but it's far cheaper than more expensive processors.
I wanted to keep the cost down so grabbed this.. ASUS DSBV-DX Dual LGA 771 Intel 5000V.. 239 for the board. Can use clovertowns or harpertowns. But can oly use 667mhz ram though. Already have it together using 2 2ghz xeons from my old mac pro I upgraded (then sold) but figure I would put the harpertowns I found. 225 a piece for 2.5ghz harpertowns seem to be pretty good used. Newegg sells them for 340 new. 80 watts for these. The lower 50 watt ones are around 100 bucks more everywhere. That board you recommended is a bit pricey. Newegg discontinued it too. Found it from some other place but wants 500 for it. Ouch.
As I mentioned, the board isn't inexpensive, but you save money in the end by overclocking less expensive CPU's. It makes up for it and then some.
With adaquate cooling, you won't have a problem, as it's still a Workstation board, and is built as such. So it has better Voltage Regs,... that you'd get with worstation/server gear. It adds better cooling (North & Southbridges) and the firmware options to OC, as well as different slot configs, more conducive to workstation use IMO (multiple graphics cards for example). This could benefit GPGPU work, if it's a number cruncher (example).It was mentioned as an option, but as you've already aquired the parts, you might want to attempt a BSEL mod for the pair of E5420's. Off hand, I'm not aware of anyone that's done it personally on LGA 771's, but it's possible I think (last I looked at the data sheet). Worth searching at least.
Technically speaking however, it should work. But it would run slower FSB and memory (it drops down to 667MHz on the FB-DIMM's). Not worth it IMO.
The reason is, that board was meant to use parts with a 1600MHz FSB. The E5420 is 1333MHz FSB part.