xeon Getting the Most out of Turbo Boost on a Xeon E5-1650

[mr cheese]

One of my friend generously offered me a Dell Precision T3600 with a Xeon E5-1650 0 (yes, none of the revisions), and I happily took it.

 

After doing some research on the Xeon I've discovered  that it can happily Turbo Boost, and apparently (using UserBenchmark) it can even reach a whole 4.65GHz

(taken from here)

 

When I first got the system I knew that cooling would be important, so with a helluvalot of paper towels, rubber gloves, a toothbrush (clean), and ArctiClean, I cleaned off the stock paste from the cooler and CPU and replaced it with an IC Graphite pad, which fit perfectly over the CPU. With the fans manually set in BIOS to run at "medium" (in between uselessly quiet and leaf blower), it idles at around 41C (keep in mind this is an air cooler).

I then ran to benchmarks. I decided on Intel XTU since I could monitor performance and let it run. Turbo Boost options were grayed out, but I wasn't really worried. Running the test for a while gave me these results:

 

Thermals plateau at around 66C, not bad for a full blast Xeon on air cooling, leaving some good wiggle room too. What was odd was the lock to 3.5GHz. No more no less from the system.

What's strange is the lack of thermal throttling (and even if I dare say impressive cooling) that could have triggered that Turbo Boost lock.

I can't think of any factors to contribute to this besides probably the most glaring one, the 420W PSU. The thing is, with this cooling and decent enough^TM wattage, I can't find a good reason for it to lock the turbo at 3.5GHz. There are no extra BIOS settings, no configurable Turbo Boost settings in XTU (greyed out as mentioned prev.), and I haven't really checked for any drivers (besides a BIOS update I'm doing now) that would contribute either. I have no clue how someone got there E5-1650 to a 1GHz jump over mine.

 

Is there anything else that I can mess with our download to get it there? Do I need a higher wattage PSU?

[Electronics Wizardy]

If I remember right, you can overlcock these chips on a x79 board, so thats probably where that 4.6ghz result came from.

 

But those dell boards are pretty locked down, so there isn't much you can do there.

[TheStyne]

First of all, max turbo boost is 3.8GHz. I generally don't trust UserBenchmark, there's a lot of garbage on there, and stuff that isn't garbage but is just an extreme overclock. I'm not super knowledgeable regarding Xeons, but is there maybe a voltage setting in the BIOS? It might not be getting enough to go all the way up to 3.8GHz?

[Turtle Rig]

1 minute ago, Fixinit1 said:

First of all, max turbo boost is 3.8GHz. I generally don't trust UserBenchmark, there's a lot of garbage on there, and stuff that isn't garbage but is just an extreme overclock. I'm not super knowledgeable regarding Xeons, but is there maybe a voltage setting in the BIOS? It might not be getting enough to go all the way up to 3.8GHz?

I don't understand why people get a Xeon then think they can OC it !  You want a OC get a desktop CPU,  You want threads but slow single core performance then go Xeon.

[mr cheese]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

But those dell boards are pretty locked down, so there isn't much you can do there.

What kind of price range would I be getting with an x79 board that could OC this

 

2 minutes ago, Fixinit1 said:

First of all, max turbo boost is 3.8GHz.

Yeah lol but I'm still missing that mark

[mr cheese]

1 minute ago, Turtle Rig said:

I don't understand why people get a Xeon then think they can OC it !  You want a OC get a desktop CPU,  You want threads but slow single core performance then go Xeon.

I got this for free but ok

Just trying to get the most out of what I have

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Turtle Rig said:

I don't understand why people get a Xeon then think they can OC it !  You want a OC get a desktop CPU,  You want threads but slow single core performance then go Xeon.

There are some xeons that can be oced, I think this is one of them. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, DaJakerBoss said:

What kind of price range would I be getting with an x79 board that could OC this

 

Yeah lol but I'm still missing that mark

The good x79 boards seems to be going for about 150-250 on ebay. Id just use it stock and save up for a faster platform, a oc isn't gonna make it that much faster.

[mr cheese]

29 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

-SNIP-

I'm aware of this but again I'm trying to make the most out of what I have.

[Jurrunio]

1 hour ago, Turtle Rig said:

I don't understand why people get a Xeon then think they can OC it !  You want a OC get a desktop CPU,  You want threads but slow single core performance then go Xeon.

because Xeons are cheaper than i7s. E5 1620,1650 and 1680 from v1 to v3 (except E5 1680, this doesnt exist) are all unlocked, making them practically 3930k/4930k/5930k/5960x with ECC and REG support on the right boards.

[X_X]

3 hours ago, DaJakerBoss said:

Is there anything else that I can mess with our download to get it there? Do I need a higher wattage PSU?

You could try ThrottleStop, but don't hold your breath. IINM that CPU has default ratio's of 38,38,37,36,35,35 depending on how many cores are active and a max multiplier of 57 if the board / bios allows. You can also get an idea of overclockability by checking CPUz for example but remember results may be extreme.

 

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

because Xeons are cheaper than i7s. E5 1620,1650 and 1680 from v1 to v3 (except E5 1680, this doesnt exist) are all unlocked, making them practically 3930k/4930k/5930k/5960x with ECC and REG support on the right boards.

FYI retail E5-16xx v3 below 1650 are locked.

[Vlad80]

Hi, check YouTube - overlooking Xeon E5 1650, a lot of video about this CPU.

I'm have 1660v1 and 1660v2 both can overlooking to 4.2 GHz, and main reason after you can overclock your ram too, So for example 1660v1 at the moment I'm overclock to 4ghz and memory overclock from 1600 to 1866 in quad channel. 2133 can't passed stress testing (((. 

So system works no faster.

But anyway if you looking for best performance on lga 2011 (v1-v2) best choice is E5 2680 v2 or E5 2690v2 both 10c/20t   also E5 1680 8c/16t unlocked.

Also running one 2690v1 good performance for $100 8c/16t.

Desktop CPU exactly the same like Xeon you can check on Intel website

PS. 420w PSU probably not enough. Please check all your components on online PSU calculator. But if you want overlooking your CPU I'm recommend use min 500w but 650 is more preferably, because CPU usage become more high. 1650v1 is about 130w in stock but can easily jump on 200-225w on Turbo bust

 

Sorry for my English...

 

[Vlad80]

One more think.

Don't forget overlooking can kill your CPU!!! because it overvoltage ant more high temperature. Not sure what CPU fan you use at the moment but definitely you will need minimum 150w tdp or more for overclocking. Or use liquid cooling.

RAM will overvoltage and overheating too. Also mother board. So full ventilation on you PC Case must have - otherwise your components will overheating all the time...

[Vlad80]

For overclocking cheap board on lga 2011 platform - have look on Chinese brand (sounds funny) Huanan deluxe gaming x79.

One of best on China market. Overclocking any CPU from box to 4.2ghz support DDR3 ECC reg (cheap server Ram) 

Lot of PC running on this platform. 

[Zando_]

On 3/10/2019 at 4:25 PM, Turtle Rig said:

I don't understand why people get a Xeon then think they can OC it !  You want a OC get a desktop CPU,  You want threads but slow single core performance then go Xeon.

He says, not realizing I've made an entire thread about OCing 90% X58 Xeons, with a few i7s here and there, and the fact there's a good few OCable X79 Xeons, and that Intel's latest HEDT platform only has Xeons for it and they're overclockable. I think there's a couple X99 ones you can OC or trick the turbo boost on as well. 

[NoxiousOdor]

On 3/10/2019 at 2:25 PM, Turtle Rig said:

I don't understand why people get a Xeon then think they can OC it !  You want a OC get a desktop CPU,  You want threads but slow single core performance then go Xeon.

 

4 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

He says, not realizing I've made an entire thread about OCing 90% X58 Xeons, with a few i7s here and there, and the fact there's a good few OCable X79 Xeons, and that Intel's latest HEDT platform only has Xeons for it and they're overclockable. I think there's a couple X99 ones you can OC or trick the turbo boost on as well. 

Yeah there are actually a lot of xeons that you can OC and often they do it better than their consumer counterparts

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

 

Yeah there are actually a lot of xeons that you can OC and often they do it better than their consumer counterparts

Often slightly better bins, they're enterprise CPUs meant to last for ages going at it 100% all the time. Also once all the datacenters and such hop gens, they tend to flood the market with old Xeons, making them much more affordable than the consumer counterparts (it's the reason why X58 Xeons are much cheaper than the i7s despite having a much higher original MSRP, there's just so many of them on the market).