$191 Upgrade to keep my old X58 system alive and kickin'

[BobbyG]

So, back in late 2009 I built this system 

 

Specs:

• Gigabyte X58-UD3R Motherboard
• Core i7 920 @3.8ghz with Thermalright air cooler
• Corsair 850 PSU
• 12GB 1600mhz DDR3 (4x3)
• XFX Radeon HD 5870 (max overclock) with a custom Thermalright cooler

The system has performed flawlessly and been a beast. But now in 2015 it was starting show its age (still playing games well), but i wanted more. But, my budget currently didn't give me the budget to build new. So, instead I spent a total of $191 and picked up a 6core/12thread overclockable Xeon x5650 cpu for $56 and also a MSI R9 280x for $135 (said to be 4 months old). This seems to have been a great bang-for-the-buck upgrade. Yes, I know many of you will say the CPU upgrade was worthless, but for $56 I felt it was worth the shot. The TDP of the Xeon makes my system run even cooler, and performs better even in single core benchmarks. Also, if DirectX 12 works the way they are saying and lets API's use all threads, I'll have an additional 4 threads with the xeon, and give me even a better overall upgrade for minimal $$.

 

Here are the results (not extensive tweaking or testing yet)

 

Core i7 920 @3.8ghz, air cooled, idle temps 35c, 100% load temps 70c

Radeon 5870 core clock 900, mem clock 1300

 

Xeon x5650 @4.4ghz, air cooled, idle temps 26c, 100% load temps 58c

MSI R9 280x core clock 1150, mem clock 1650 

 

Benchmarks:

 

Intel ETU CPU Benchmark

• i7 920 - 442
• x5650 - 592

Cinebench Benchmark

• CPU
• i7 920 - 602
• x5650 - 1026
• CPU Single core
• i7 920 - 118
• x5650 - 137
• Open GL
• i7 920 - 96.22
• x5650 - 114.79

Firestrike

• 5870 - 2995
• 280x - 8482

Valley (ultra 1080p)

• 5870 - 40.7fps / 1701
• 280x - 77.9fps / 3148

I'm pleased with my results so far and also how cool the system runs. I think for the little amount of money I put into this 5 year old system, I've made it usable for a good bit longer. And as I said before, with the way dx12 is supposed to use all threads for game api's, it'll even be a better upgrade overall.

[harrynowl]

Yes old Xeons are a great way of bringing life to old systems

 

Nice price on that card too!

 

Glad to see your PC lives on to fight another battle

[Compl3xity_]

My old X58 system died. Sucks. I took it apart and was gonna fix it then my cousin bent the mobo pins. :'(

[Razarza]

That is a pretty decent upgrade for less than $200, especially the GPU which you really needed. Hopefully DX12 does make it easier for games to use more threads.

[BobbyG]

That is a pretty decent upgrade for less than $200, especially the GPU which you really needed. Hopefully DX12 does make it easier for games to use more threads.

I did get lucky on the R9 280x price, but the X5650 CPU sells for that price regularly. Making it a decent option for fairly cheap if your x58 boards can handle Xeons. I also looked at the x5670 and x5690, both are a good bit more money and the performance increase wasn't big enough to warrant the extra money. Especially when the goal was to do a cheap, yet highly effective upgrade to keep the system playing well for a bit longer.

[TravisTea]

Nice man! I almost went that route with my X58 because I read that cpu is great. Decided to retire the X58 and get a newer i5 instead. I still have my X58 and now I'm tempted to build it up too lol

[WaitForMeImOnDialUp]

the older xeons were awesome overclockers, you got higher cinebench 15 score than i got. and you're ready for when dx12 comes out and puts all those threads to use!

 

if i had a x58 motherboard i wouldnt hesitate to buy a x5650 for 70 bucks on the ebay, it smokes a fx8350 with ease and in games that can use more cores it beats alot of cpus, it will handle battlefield 4 like a boss.

[bimmerman]

I have your exact build, just with a 950 instead of a 920, and have been looking to upgrade the cpu for some time now. I think I'll go look at some Xeons....

[JustCallMeVlad]

5650 = lower clocked and locked 980X

[dylan43270]

I love my x5650. Once I get some time I may test to see if it can bottleneck my Sli 970s. Overclocked to 4.5ghz it does have decent single core performance, even for todays standards.

[dylan43270]

5650 = lower clocked and locked 980X

They were the last xeons that can be overclocked by blck.

[StarFire]

You could pick up a Xeon W3670 for $150 on ebay.

[BobbyG]

You could pick up a Xeon W3670 for $150 on ebay.

 

The extra +$ isn't worth it over a x5650 (which I got for almost $100 less), the performance is only slightly more.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-X5650-vs-Intel-Xeon-W3670

[lostRoadrunner]

Good upgrade, I retired my X58 / 920  

 

and upgrade to i5 4960K and z97 board.

 

only had to pay out of pocket about $120 to $150

[StarFire]

The extra +$ isn't worth it over a x5650 (which I got for almost $100 less), the performance is only slightly more.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-X5650-vs-Intel-Xeon-W3670

I'm not sure a dual proc chip will work in a single socket. Will it?

[JustCallMeVlad]

They were the last xeons that can be overclocked by blck.

What I meant was multi locked

[Bhav]

I'm still using an I7 980. It can OC to 4.4 Ghz, but even at stock speed it isn't struggling with anything plus SLI GTX 970s.