Chinese X79 Motherboards?

[cyrryanc]

Has anyone tried those x79 motherboards for home lab purposes? I have seen some youtube video's on them being used for gaming and they seem alright but what about 24/7 reliability? Want to upgrade from my aging X5670 servers and thinking of pairing it with a Xeon e5 2670 V2 and 32GB of ECC ram I have laying around.

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by LogicalDrm
Shortened links not allowed

[RollinLower]

i used one in my F@H server for a little while.

it ran for about a full day before the VRM died with a regular 2670 in there. so i wouldn't recommend these for 24/7 work.

it could also be that i just got a bad board from the get go, but i dunno.

pic of the rig i was running in the spoiler below.

Spoiler

 

[Bruno_A]

I tried one of the dual socket ones. Still own it, still works. However, at the price of one of those, if you plan on using only one CPU, I'd go with a known brand.

[aisle9]

A lot of these boards use a bastardized, salvaged B75 or Z77 chipset. Easy way to identify those: four DIMMs. Much like the "X58" boards that actually used a salvaged P55 chipset and could be readily identified by having two or four DIMMs on what should have been a triple-channel board. If you're expecting to get real X79 performance out of them, forget it. If you're expecting them to last a particularly long time under any kind of significant use, forget it--these are all salvaged chipsets from dead boards that have been forced to work with a CPU they were never designed for. Best case, they're salvaged X79 chipsets from dead boards. Either way, they're on a doom clock.

 

Personally, I'd sooner buy an actual X79 board. Even a used ASUS, Gigabyte, whoever's bottom of the line offering is going to be more stable, more effective and longer-lived than one of these dumpster fires. Spoken from X58 experience. And "4 channel" on four DIMMs...lol.

[cyrryanc]

2 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

A lot of these boards use a bastardized, salvaged B75 or Z77 chipset. Easy way to identify those: four DIMMs. Much like the "X58" boards that actually used a salvaged P55 chipset and could be readily identified by having two or four DIMMs on what should have been a triple-channel board. If you're expecting to get real X79 performance out of them, forget it. If you're expecting them to last a particularly long time under any kind of significant use, forget it--these are all salvaged chipsets from dead boards that have been forced to work with a CPU they were never designed for. Best case, they're salvaged X79 chipsets from dead boards. Either way, they're on a doom clock.

 

Personally, I'd sooner buy an actual X79 board. Even a used ASUS, Gigabyte, whoever's bottom of the line offering is going to be more stable, more effective and longer-lived than one of these dumpster fires. Spoken from X58 experience. And "4 channel" on four DIMMs...lol.

Yeah I actually found a HP Z420 board for a coupe dollars cheaper but only support the V1 series chips because its a revision 0Y but way better built. Also considering diving into Ryzen but I have so much DDR3 ECC memory I don't want to go to waste.

[3 Lions]

It's not great to be honest, you should probably look on Ebay for a used X79 board that is better quality. 

[Bruno_A]

8 minutes ago, cyrryanc said:

Yeah I actually found a HP Z420 board for a coupe dollars cheaper but only support the V1 series chips because its a revision 0Y but way better built. Also considering diving into Ryzen but I have so much DDR3 ECC memory I don't want to go to waste.

I own one of those boards. You need an adapter for the ATX power cable, as it has a proprietary cable.

[aisle9]

2 minutes ago, cyrryanc said:

Yeah I actually found a HP Z420 board for a coupe dollars cheaper but only support the V1 series chips because its a revision 0Y but way better built. Also considering diving into Ryzen but I have so much DDR3 ECC memory I don't want to go to waste.

First-gen Ryzen is the price/performance king right now, and probably will be for a long time because of how much is out there and how well it holds up today. X79 doesn't make sense anymore unless you find a good board at a great price. The board you linked here is neither.

[cyrryanc]

1 minute ago, Bruno_A said:

I own one of those boards. You need an adapter for the ATX power cable, as it has a proprietary cable.

I was just reading about that, do u know the best place to find that cable? Ebay?

[Bruno_A]

Just now, cyrryanc said:

I was just reading about that, do u know the best place to find that cable? Ebay?

I remember, at the time that I purchased it, it was about £20, which was expensive, for an adapter. If you find a really cheap one, let me know, as I have one of those boards sitting around.

[cyrryanc]

13 minutes ago, Bruno_A said:

I remember, at the time that I purchased it, it was about £20, which was expensive, for an adapter. If you find a really cheap one, let me know, as I have one of those boards sitting around.

Think I found a cheap one on eBay. I assume the 8Pin on the motherboard is standard?

Canada:  https://www.ebay.ca/itm/24Pin-to-Motherboard-18Pin-Power-Supply-ATX-Cable-30cm-18AWG-for-HP-z620-Z420/163240312567

UK: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ATX-24pin-to-Motherboard-18pin-Adapter-Power-Supply-Cable-18AWG-for-HP-Z420-L6C1/324012598491?epid=808697593&hash=item4b70a7e4db:g:Pb8AAOSwuMNd9PGC

[vobchopper]

I have been had one of these chinese boards in my set up for about a year now its a "runing" branded board, (I don`t suppose that means a lot) its running a xeon 2650 v1 with 64GB of ECC, watercooler, and eight 3TB WD reds, PCIe intel ethernet card (freenas is a little picky), the whole thing is purring like a kitten, true the Bios on these boards is very basic and some of the claimed features are a little odd, but it depends what you want to do and how much you want to pay, I bought mine through Ebay, so there is a little bit of customer backup

[zeruns]

[aBattleBorn]

i don't own this specific platform but i do own 2 x58 china motherboard,they are fine,specially for the price.

1 is my work lab 32 gb of ecc ram and xeon x5675 to be honest it is not that stable and i got my mb slightly bent,it works but it crush once or twice a week.

i have another one which is pretty new and is used as home server with xeon x5690 and 32gb of ecc ram,i have it for around 2 weeks and is extremely stable and is running 24/7 without problems so far, i recommend cooling the chip set because it get extremely hot and has a very minimal cooler.

if you are buying on ali exspress search for mb with good reviews and buy it

[Zando_]

On 12/15/2019 at 12:34 PM, aisle9 said:

First-gen Ryzen is the price/performance king right now, and probably will be for a long time because of how much is out there and how well it holds up today. X79 doesn't make sense anymore unless you find a good board at a great price. The board you linked here is neither.

^^^ This. X79 is better if you plan to use a higher core count Xeon for some heavily multithreaded task that does not need good single core performance, or if you're an enthusiast. Unless you get a great deal on a solid board and can/will overclock, you're going to get a CPU performing worse than a Zen/Zen+ chip for usually more money. Quad channel DDR3 means you don't lost much bandwidth vs dual channel DDR4, but RAM prices have come down for DDR4 anyways so that's not really a deciding factor in most cases. 

I would defo not recommend any chinesium boards, at best they're questionable.