Intel Xeon W-2140B in a PC?

[PeterPorker3]

I see a lot of listings similar to this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-XEON-W-2140B-PROCESSOR-8-CORE-16-THREAD-3-2GHz-LGA2066-SR3LK/143645150127?epid=6033162609&hash=item2171eb0baf:g:~PcAAOSwl-de-lps

Intel doesn't have an ARK page for a "Intel Xeon W-2140B", so this is a very weird CPU.  It seems to be an Apple specific part found in the iMac pro, and I'm considering getting one of these with a bare bones Dell T5820. However I couldn't find much info online from people who have tried this, but If it's real its a great value, should I go for it? The sellers say its compatible with the T5820.

[Letgomyleghoe]

16 minutes ago, PeterPorker3 said:

but If it's real its a great value, should I go for it? The sellers say its compatible with the T5820.

Yes but no, it’s a pretty terrible cpu for the price, but if your putting it in a system you already have or a cheap cheap used prebuilt, sure.

[PeterPorker3]

14 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

Yes but no, it’s a pretty terrible cpu for the price, but if your putting it in a system you already have or a cheap cheap used prebuilt, sure.

I guess it's true that a Ryzen 3600 would have similar performance for 60 dollars less, but the issue with getting that is I plan to run linux with windows running in a KVM, and my previous consumer motherboards always had something that didn't work correctly in linux with virtualization or basic functionality, like audio or usb not working with no support from the manufacturer, and I want something that is guaranteed to work with linux, like the Dell t5820. I could get that asus AM4 workstation board, or upgrade to EPIC, but I definitely cant afford either of those options especially since I can't find any AM4 motherboards in stock at all. This approach also lets me get officialy supported ecc memory and lots of PCI express slots/lanes for adding GPUs or fast storage to use with more VMs.

[TehDwonz]

33 minutes ago, PeterPorker3 said:

I see a lot of listings similar to this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-XEON-W-2140B-PROCESSOR-8-CORE-16-THREAD-3-2GHz-LGA2066-SR3LK/143645150127?epid=6033162609&hash=item2171eb0baf:g:~PcAAOSwl-de-lps

Intel doesn't have an ARK page for a "Intel Xeon W-2140B", so this is a very weird CPU.  It seems to be an Apple specific part found in the iMac pro, and I'm considering getting one of these with a bare bones Dell T5820. However I couldn't find much info online from people who have tried this, but If it's real its a great value, should I go for it? The sellers say its compatible with the T5820.

Anything with a B after it is Apple only.

Source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13116/the-intel-xeon-w-review-w-2195-w-2155-w-2123-w-2104-and-w-2102-tested

[PeterPorker3]

3 minutes ago, TehDwonz said:

Anything with a B after it is Apple only.

Source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13116/the-intel-xeon-w-review-w-2195-w-2155-w-2123-w-2104-and-w-2102-tested

I can't find where it says they only work in apple products, it just says they only come with apple products. I have contacted the sellers of these chips and they claim they will work in the workstation I plan to use.

[TehDwonz]

Just now, PeterPorker3 said:

I can't find where it says they only work in apple products, it just says they only come with apple products. I have contacted the sellers of these chips and they claim they will work in the workstation I plan to use.

It's not impossible...

[Ashiella]

27 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

Yes but no, it’s a pretty terrible cpu for the price,

 

12 minutes ago, TehDwonz said:

Anything with a B after it is Apple only.

Proof apple is terrible for the money.

[Letgomyleghoe]

6 minutes ago, Ashiella said:

 

Proof apple is terrible for the money.

I mean I payed $350 for my base model 11 with a sale at sprint, I don’t mind their mobile products.

[Ashiella]

Just now, Letgomyleghoe said:

I mean I payed $350 for my base model 11 with a sale at sprint, I don’t mind their mobile products.

I dont mind their mobile products either, just the desktop/laptop area.

[PeterPorker3]

This conversation got carried away lol... Regardless, I think a used workstation product line provides more value to me than a cheaper, consumer one for my work. So i think i'm going to go this route. Continue reading for my end of the rant.

4 hours ago, Ashiella said:

 

Proof apple is terrible for the money.

Regardless of the fact that Apple did not make these CPUs, they just requested them from intel because their machines can't handle the higher clocked versions and cannot be bought new from anywhere else besides from an Apple Product, this comparison doesn't make sense. These CPUs are still pretty recent workstation CPUs which are always a worse value for the money in terms of performance, but that's not why you buy workstation parts. The systems that contain the Xeons have support for stuff like ECC memory and a few other features, and the motherboards (usually, notable exception being Apple's machines) are much higher quality and much more reliable than consumer ones. So yea, this isn't as good of a value as a brand new Ryzen 5 3600 even while being a used part, but again, that's not why I'm considering this. You could argue that the additional features the Xeons have could easily be transferred over to the formerly consumer platform, or that most apple users don't need the improved reliability for the Facebook browsing they do, but all of this doesn't matter anymore because we are talking about PCs running Linux doing real work, not a fancy overpriced Facebook browsing machine.

[Ashiella]

13 hours ago, PeterPorker3 said:

These CPUs are still pretty recent workstation CPUs which are always a worse value for the money in terms of performance, but that's not why you buy workstation parts. The systems that contain the Xeons have support for stuff like ECC memory and a few other features, and the motherboards (usually, notable exception being Apple's machines) are much higher quality and much more reliable than consumer ones. So yea, this isn't as good of a value as a brand new Ryzen 5 3600 even while being a used part, but again, that's not why I'm considering this. You could argue that the additional features the Xeons have could easily be transferred over to the formerly consumer platform

Thats why there are X58/X79/X99 communities trying to keep those systems alive, mainly x58 by clocking them xeons, but that has died down a little more. X79 is becoming a better value now, with avx support it's still pretty good, and its just before DDR4.

[Guest]

I'm not sure what you're using now but I would refer to the Anandtech benchmarks to compare productivity performance and make an educated decision from there. For reference, on X99 (or C612, you pick) the equivalent processor would be the E5-1660 v3 which can be had on eBay for less than $170, compared to the W-2140B which can be found for $188(!) now or $170 for the QS chip.

 

Anandtech benchmark comparison substituting the 5960X for the E5-1660 v3 and the i7-7820X for the W-2140B: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2403?vs=2257

 

So yes, the Skylake X/W chips are very good in productivity compared to the older HSW-E and BDW-E chips thanks in part to AVX-512 and higher clocks, however C422 is much more expensive at the moment than C612 platforms. If you already have a T5820, I would say go for it. Otherwise, I might recommend to you a T5810 or HP Z440 instead and get the Haswell-E CPUs because it is very difficult to find a barebones T5820 for a good price (<$250).

 

Currently I am using a HP Z440 with a Xeon E5-1650 v3 with 32GB of DDR4-2133R that I bought last November for a net cost of around $240. It was actually $380 but I sold off 32GB of the 64GB RAM it came with for the net of $240. I imagine that you could find even better deals 10 months later if you decided to go the X99/C612 route.

 

I do want to get a T5820 myself to mess around with the W-2150B CPUs also going for cheap on eBay, but I can't yet justify the cost of replacing this Haswell-EP system with Skylake-W until the cost of barebones T5820s comes down another few hundred dollars. If you do manage to find a place liquidating T5820s on the cheap, please let me know!

 

Cheers.

 

P.S. Keep in consideration that some T5820 systems are X299 and will only support the Core X CPUs. You want the C422 variant. Make sure to double-check with sellers before you buy anything.