Overl0rd

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.
 

2990WX
 



 
i3 12100F BCLK




 
i7 7820X




 
i7 3770K

Lamborghini Miura I guess.

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.
 

The Windows 10 licence hooks into the hardware (mainly the motherboard) of your system. If it recognizes the hardware has been changed it will need to be reactivated again.

Improved the stock 5300U score R20 indicates by quite a bit ? And this was only with single channel DDR3.

Intel Quick Sync of the Haswell generation does not offer VP9 decoding, hence everything will be done by the CPU.

And no, the helmet was not edited in.  B)

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.
 

It's not an ideal situation, especially since the rear case fan has no filter, but you what you could try first is reverse the airflow. 
So the rear fan and top fan as an intake, then through the CPU cooler and out through the radiator. In that way you could at least verify that the radiator as intake is not the culprit.
 

The Intel Skulltrail, the only time Intel gave enthusiasts a dual CPU platform with processors specifically designed to be overclocked. It was truly a different Intel back than as we know it now, as just over a 10 years later, we've yet to see a product like this again. And that's why now I would really like to give this aging beast some attention again after all those years. To remind people what the hardware industry was like a decade ago, when Intel didn't seem like an opponent to the consumer and gave it all they got.
 
Initially Intel launched the 'V8' media creation platform in mid 2007, in reaction to AMDs QuadFX dual CPU platform. Intel however went a step further and used two quad core CPUs instead of dual core, for a total of eight physical cores. The V8 was far from a consumer product though, sporting a motherboard taken straight out of their workstation/server division with very little changes and utilized Xeon CPUs.
 
In a move few were expecting, Intel then set out and and modified this platform in what would be every enthusiasts dream; dual CPU overclocking. They took the same 771 dual socket server platform and added all the things computer enthusiasts want; nVidia SLI/ AMD (back then still ATi) CrossFireX support, LGA 775 mounting hardware, four PCIe slots and of course all the BIOS features overclockers want to push silicon to its limit. 
 
Then they of course needed a CPU for it. After all, Xeons have a locked multiplier. So they cherry picket some 45nm Yorksfield chips, removed all the restrictions and created the Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9775. They named it the Yorksfield XE and it sat at the top of the Core 2 lineup with a TDP of no less than 150 Watt.
 
It was no easy feat gathering the necessary components to make this happen, with a retail price of $600 for the D5400XS motherboard and around $1200 for each of the Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9775 CPUs, it is no wonder the are extremely hard to come by nowadays. Luckily I have managed to do, so come along for the ride as I attempt to put together one of Intel's greatest products.
 
What's I also found interesting is that one of the first builds of @LinusTech‍ on the old Linustechtips.com website was a Skulltrail, dating back to april 28th 2008. Have a look for yourself. https://web.archive.org/web/20080505214254/http://www.linustechtips.com:80/build-logs/working-on-a-skulltrail-system
 
Specifications so far:
- Intel D5400XS motherboard
- 2x Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9775
- 4x 4GB Samsung FB DDR2 5300 667MHz
 

 

 

 

 

 
For those who'd rather like a video of the process, I've also made a small video series on YouTube. 
 
 
 

Most likely a bug in HWinfo, more people on Reddit are reporting that their chips are recognized as such.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ci526p/3900x_engineering_sample/
 

I better comment this, before someone thinks it's all true...
1) Max. L2 cache you can get for LGA 771/LGA 775 is 12MB (in 2x 6MB slice), there are no Xeon CPUs on this platform that have more than 12MB.
2) There are no X54xx series CPUs with 12MB of cache and FSB slower than 1066MHz (effective) :
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/TYPE-Xeon 5400.html
3) Highest multiplier for E0 revision chip has X5470 (x11 at 1333MHz FSB). Not sure if you will be able to clock it that much higher on FSB side, considering Dual CPU configuration nature of this platform. Also, QX9775 have both base FSB set at 1600MHz.
4) Pre-Core 2 CPUs are NOT Quad Cores. They only have two cores with enabled Hyper Threading (codename: Presler).
5) AMD never made "non-true quadcore". Phenom I is monolithic Quad Core design from 2007 (B2 revision). 
You can even argue it's more true quad core than Core 2 Quad ever was (monolithic die, IMC).
Q6600 is two Conroe dies in one package (Xeon 54xx are two Wolfdale dies in one package).
6) Intel did Skulltrail for enthusiasts, but I highly doubt it was made to counter AMD at any point.
AMD had 4x4 Quad FX platform that was made from 2x Opteron Dual Core CPUs (Four cores/Threads).
So, one OC'ed Q6600 was capable to compete with it (but not with ALL tasks, since IMC gives really nice boosts to some server stuff).
7) You don't need all the EFI stuff to boot from SATA3 (LOL)
PS. @Krisalex
Like everyone else said : There are no DDR3 boards for Skulltrail (or server stuff, FB-DIMM is the reason). Standard DDR3 is "a thing" that LGA 775 can support via P35/P45/X38/X48 and few cheap chipsets (actually, it's not THAT rare).
However max. DRAM frequency is limited by effective FSB speed of procesor (1333MHz FSB CPU can only set 1333MHz as max. DRAM Frequency).
Also, more than frequency itself, tweaking NB is MUCH MORE valuable for latency and effective bandwidth (strap/perf. level/etc.), assuming BIOS has the options for it.

very nice  

Finally had some quality time with the SR-2, managed 4.53GHz on the dual X5675s at 1.475V under air cooling. 
 

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.
 

some recent scores

 
worst 3960x ever


 
e5 1620 v2  would not recommend this over the v1, the v1 is much fasteri


 
e5 2609 

 
3970X

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.
 

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.
 

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.
 

If memory serves it was able to run 1.38 volts to get 4.4 stable (silicon lottery?) I did have an excel document full of configuration settings used for each step of the way but I genuinely can't seem to locate it on any old hdd  

I had a lot of problems with memory compatibility, I ended up with some Kingston 800Mhz FB-DIMMS KTA-MP800K2 and had to lax off the timings to keep things stable due to the FSB bump.  I also had a corsair active memory cooler on the top as the memory modules run HOT.
 
The whole system ran hot and the power draw was colossal but it was a really fun system to build, I've always been an enthusiast for dual socket builds as I have always worked primarily with server hardware with dual and quad socket mainboards.   Speaking of such, I do have a pair of X5492's which OC'd really well, I think they surpassed the QX9775's with similar voltage, I still have those knocking around in the basement if they are of any interest to you?  Got a load of old hardware like that just sat in the basement doing nothing.

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.
 

Things to add :
1) RTX Titan needed (Titan XP is too old ;D)
2) NVMe (use those PCI-e slots properly !)
^software like DUET or Clover should be enough to make it bootable on this
[Optane standalone ?]
3) Won't overheating chipset/NV bridges cause throttling ?
4) Driver overhead test : RTX vs. RDNA  (which gets more "necked"/can sqeeze more)
5) 16GB RAM or bust (DO NOT run/test it with again 8GB).
6) Bandwidth and Latency test on RAM (FSB is worse, but by how much)
7) GPU usage on 4k and Ultra settings
8 ) Compatibility with Windows based OC/Tweak programs :
https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/MemSet.shtml https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/ https://setfsb.en.lo4d.com/windows
PS. Old QVL lists get outdated the moment platform goes on sale (I used 16GB of DDR3 on Rampage Extreme fine*).
*only Double Sided 4GB memory modules are supported.

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.
 

Overl0rd from the forum here  thanks for the shout out at the beginning @LinusTech, I’m happy to have been of assistance ? Awesome that this obscure platform is getting some love again!
A couple of points I would like to mention: 
 
-While the QX9775 CPUs are the most awesome way to go on this platform. It will work just fine with regular 771 Xeons and back then a TON of people went that route. The board will also work just fine with a single CPU. Especially the CPUs with a 1333MHz FSB have great OC headroom (as 5400 chipset runs out at around 430MHz bus speed) and could potentially reach beyond 4GHz. Overclocking the QX9775s is rather straightforward, mine do 4GHz at 1.41V. Just make sure to have proper cooling on not just the CPUs, but also active cooling on the north bridge and the FBDIMMs; those will get up to around 90C.
 
-Despite the fact that the drivers of the Nforce 100 chips are troublesome in Windows 10, SLI should work fine using PCIe 2 and 4 (I have tested this personally). The problems are less under Windows 7, but still present.
 
-16GB of RAM is definitely supported out of box. I personally run 4x4GB 667MHz overclocked to 800MHz. To do this you do have to have the latest BIOS version, as more memory config options were only added later on.

For those interested in some comparative testing and further information, on my Youtube channel (Dellchannel21) I have a lot of videos covering this platform in detail.
In short; it still holds up reasonably well in gaming considering the age of the microarchitecture and having that extra CPU now definitely make a difference. It of course won’t be a valid option for a 144Hz setup, but in somewhat older titles it is playable. Crysis 3 was the best example of the extra cores really kicking in. This was tested with a GTX 1060 6GB in 2018.

SKULLTRAIL GAMING - How does Intel's $4000 Overclockable Dual Socket system perform?
 
For how it compares to under synthetic benchmarks; here I clocked both QX9775s to 4.2GHz with 16GB 800MHz CL5 memory and it was still really impressive. Beating the 5GHz FX 9590 Bulldozer and coming very close to the stock Skylake 6700K.

OVERCLOCKING SKULLTRAIL - Dual QX9775 over 4GHz
 
For how the latest and greatest games do, well… you can actually sort of play Battlefield V 64 player and I’m extremely impressed that was possible.