Bought a roughly $2500 dual Xeon computer from 2012 for $50, what should I do with it? pics and specs below

[Blue4130]

8 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

its not worth $50... its worth $400 to $700...

If you priced it at $400 to $700, you'd be sitting on it for quite a while before you found a buyer. It would happen eventually, but the market for something like this is very limited. 

[thrasher_565]

12 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

If you priced it at $400 to $700, you'd be sitting on it for quite a while before you found a buyer. It would happen eventually, but the market for something like this is very limited. 

parting it out would proby be better then listing the mb on ebay.  w/e the case there money to be made. the case looks like its lian li witch already fetchis moeny these days... just saying

 

is it worth using the mb not really but it dose fall in to the collector category.

[thrasher_565]

20 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

 

"Old" hardware like this is definitely not e-waste. Despite its age, it's more than capable of quite a bit, especially in heavy multithreaded workloads. I'm also a bit shocked to find that some people think of this stuff as "e-waste". For comparison, I keep around a pet-project Thinkpad T400, complete with a Core 2 Duo T9900, 8GB of memory, and an 850 EVO. Yes, that thing's 14 years old. But it can easily juggle twenty Chrome tabs and a fine game of Celeste on a Windows 10 install. It's a very good office-work machine. So despite its relative inefficiency compared to current-gen hardware, computers like the one OP posted about are still quite useful.

 

X58 doesn't have just sentimental value; it's still a good platform for a surprisingly powerful budget desktop/workstation, especially given how dirt-cheap LGA1366 Xeons and DDR3 are for it. Also, it's definitely not a Windows XP system--Windows 7 (and 10, if the drivers play nice) are the OSes best suited to it.

 

This feels a bit misinformed. As long as the software you're using is fine with managing memory across multiple NUMA nodes, then having dual- or quad-socket systems is a good way to scale performance while also effectively managing heat. It's why many high-end workstations and servers use this approach. So yes, multi-socket systems might see less utility in consumer applications. But they're not not useful.

 

Technically, that's true. But it's efficiency that matters here. Sure, the 3090 Ti might draw over 450W, which is several times more than the 250W of a GTX Titan, for instance. However, because the 3090 Ti is just so much more powerful than the GTX Titan, it will be able to complete workloads in a much shorter period of time, thus being in a high-power state for shorter and thus using less energy in total.

 

i dont no what this system was used for all i no is but it also was at a different time line were you want more cores you need 2 sockets or more and this had the advantage of ocing thow i hard it was horable... i dont no what single core cpu that this would come close too but that's other peoples arguments that a new single core would be cheaper to run and faster...

 

myself i love x58 i have like 8 systems... but that's when me and my dad got in to water cooling and one point has same mb but he had the i7-930 and corsair gt ram  i had the i7-920 with g skill ram... but i full wc my mb well he did the nb.

 

that's why i personally would love to have one.  but im trying to do an xp build and thought this could work for it and look cool too but ill probably still go x79

 

i think the old stuff looks better imo thats why im upgrading to an x299 mb or trying too...

 

almost seem like a fresh install that its faster then my 6600k aha...

Edited August 12, 2022 by thrasher_565

[Moonzy]

On 7/22/2022 at 5:00 AM, shactheorb15 said:

a 1080ti that I'm fairly sure has a mining bios

I don't think Nvidia cards require bios modding to mine effectively though, that's an AMD card thing, no?

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

its not worth $50... its worth $400 to $700...

If it's worth 400 dollars then it's because of the coolers, case and maybe the PSU.

The other parts such as the CPU, motherboard, memory and GPU are pretty much worthless, regardless of how much non-paying forum users will scream about how rare the motherboard is, or how cool it is to have a dual socket system. 

[thrasher_565]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

If it's worth 400 dollars then it's because of the coolers, case and maybe the PSU.

The other parts such as the CPU, motherboard, memory and GPU are pretty much worthless, regardless of how much non-paying forum users will scream about how rare the motherboard is, or how cool it is to have a dual socket system. 

ok w/e....

 

 

[LAwLz]

22 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

ok w/e....

 

-image-

Damn, looks like I was wrong.

I am very surprised someone paid over 550 dollars for that piece of junk. 

 

Found another SR2 based system with dual E5649 on ebay and that auction ended with it going for 280 dollars. Even that seems overpriced to me.

You can get something way better for the same money.

 

You can pick up a Ryzen 3700X for about 150 dollars on eBay. That will perform better than a dual E5649 and use like 1/3 the power. Throw it on a ~120 dollar motherboard and you will arguably have a better motherboard as well. Might not have as good power delivery, but it won't have to because the CPU is so much more power efficient. It will not have as many PCIe slots, but the slots it has will be way faster (PCIe 2.0 vs 4.0). And it will support modern standards like NVMe SSDs.

[BondiBlue]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

If it's worth 400 dollars then it's because of the coolers, case and maybe the PSU.

The other parts such as the CPU, motherboard, memory and GPU are pretty much worthless, regardless of how much non-paying forum users will scream about how rare the motherboard is, or how cool it is to have a dual socket system. 

I'm going to have to disagree here. EVGA SR-2 boards still regularly sell for several hundred dollars on eBay, and there's still a small but active group of people out there who like to use these older boards. I think it's a nice board, but I personally wouldn't pay much for one, but that doesn't mean they're worthless. 

 

5 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

You can get something way better for the same money.

 

You can pick up a Ryzen 3700X for about 150 dollars on eBay. That will perform better than a dual E5649 and use like 1/3 the power. Throw it on a ~120 dollar motherboard and you will arguably have a better motherboard as well. Might not have as good power delivery, but it won't have to because the CPU is so much more power efficient. It will not have as many PCIe slots, but the slots it has will be way faster (PCIe 2.0 vs 4.0). And it will support modern standards like NVMe SSDs.

You do realize that people don't buy and use these old high-end dual Xeon boards just for their performance, right? And in most cases they'll be fine with the older standards it supports. Not everyone cares about raw performance or having the latest and greatest. Some people just find this old stuff more interesting, and if they think it's worth spending hundreds of dollars on an old motherboard then more power to them. 

[LAwLz]

Just now, BondiBlue said:

You do realize that people don't buy and use these old high-end dual Xeon boards just for their performance, right? And in most cases they'll be fine with the older standards it supports. Not everyone cares about raw performance or having the latest and greatest. Some people just find this old stuff more interesting, and if they think it's worth spending hundreds of dollars on an old motherboard then more power to them. 

I feel like a motherboard or a CPU is such a commodity and utilitarian tool that I find it extremely hard to understand why someone would attach some kind of sentimental value to it. I don't see why an old motherboard, one that is only 12 years at that, any more interesting than a modern one.

 

I would understand it more if it was some old piece of hardware of historic importance. But this was just another high end board of the time. There were plenty of high end boards before and after it.

To me this is similar to someone going bonkers over a VW Golf from 2012, saying that it is worth far more than a brand new VW Golf from 2021 or 2022, because the engine uses more fuel and the suspension is worse.

I would understand it if it was a classic car from the 60s or something, but not a fairly recent, power hungry motherboard that performs terribly and doesn't support modern standards.

[Kilrah]

18 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

You can get something way better for the same money.

You can get a good bag for cheap, people will still buy Guccis and whatever.

 

These are more of a nostalgia/sentimental thing, "it was the most baller thing back then", "I always wanted one when they were the hottest thing and can buy one now", "I want to play with a dual CPU setup for no particular reason"...

 

Just like X99, still sells for crazy prices to the right people even if being on one right now I would never buy any of it today for what I care about. Yes it was crazy when it came out but is a dog today, but some people will still go after the memories.

 

Everybody's got different things that make them tick, sometimes it'll be the most meaningless thing to you, and vice-versa.

[Beerzerker]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Everybody's got different things that make them tick, sometimes it'll be the most meaningless thing to you, and vice-versa.

Definitely.
 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Damn, looks like I was wrong.

I am very surprised someone paid over 550 dollars for that piece of junk. 

 

Found another SR2 based system with dual E5649 on ebay and that auction ended with it going for 280 dollars. Even that seems overpriced to me.

You can get something way better for the same money.

 

You can pick up a Ryzen 3700X for about 150 dollars on eBay. That will perform better than a dual E5649 and use like 1/3 the power. Throw it on a ~120 dollar motherboard and you will arguably have a better motherboard as well. Might not have as good power delivery, but it won't have to because the CPU is so much more power efficient. It will not have as many PCIe slots, but the slots it has will be way faster (PCIe 2.0 vs 4.0). And it will support modern standards like NVMe SSDs.

Seems to be alot of personal bias against it just because it's old to the point of calling it junk - I'd almost () have to call it discrimination due to it's age.
Unless something was made to collect in the first place it's nothing more than a common, everyday object of it's time. Things that become collectible follow a standard of aging, decreasing supply of it with good demand for it still around, driving up the price/worth of it.

Some here may collect things like Funko's for example - Nothing more really than molded pieces of vinyl and doesn't do a damn thing except sit there yet many love to collect them and yes - Some go for crazy-high prices.

The opposite could be applied here in calling that kind of thing junk and a waste of money but not gonna do that myself, I don't care because if that's what you want you're welcome to it and it's none of my biz if you do or not.
It may be junk to me but I'm not gonna preach that it IS junk - Get it if you want or leave it alone if you don't.

The choice is yours.

[LAwLz]

40 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

Seems to be alot of personal bias against it just because it's old to the point of calling it junk - I'd almost () have to call it discrimination due to it's age.
Unless something was made to collect in the first place it's nothing more than a common, everyday object of it's time. Things that become collectible follow a standard of aging, decreasing supply of it with good demand for it still around, driving up the price/worth of it.

I have absolutely no idea how you could reach that conclusion. Did you even read my posts? Not once did I say it was bad because it's old.

I said it was bad because:

• The performance you get out of it will be low. Very low.
• The connectors are outdated and as a result limits the components you can put in it, for example SSDs and modern GPUs.
• It uses a ton of power.
• You can get much better parts for a lower price (not aimed at OP that bought it for 50 dollars, but aimed at the people selling it on eBay for 280 dollars).
• It's a NUMA system so the performance will be much more variable and usually poor in regular applications. It also requires special software to take advantage of (some SKUs of Windows just doesn't detect the second CPU).

 

None of those arguments are "it's bad because it's old". You might have missed it, but I never said the things like the PSU or the cooling was bad, despite them being the same age. If my argument was "it's bad because it's old", then I would have also called those parts bad. But I didn't... Because "it's bad because it's old" was never an argument I was even close to making.

I honestly feel insulted that you are trying to pull this strawman argument that I only dislike it because it's old. I have listed several reasons why I think it's bad, and you completely ignored every single one of them.

 

 

For those interested, the CPUs in the board OP bought performs worse than an i5-2500K. A lot worse. 

The Xeon has 2 more cores, but because of the low clock speed and significantly worse architecture the multicore performance is roughly the same as the i5-2500K, and in single core performance the i5 is almost twice as fast. The 3700X that I mentioned earlier absolutely destroys this system. We are not talking a little bit faster, but we're talking like 3 times faster in multi-core scores, and maybe 4-5 times faster in single-core performance.

[Beerzerker]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I have absolutely no idea how you could reach that conclusion. Did you even read my posts? Not once did I say it was bad because it's old.

I said it was bad because:

• The performance you get out of it will be low. Very low.
• The connectors are outdated and as a result limits the components you can put in it, for example SSDs and modern GPUs.
• It uses a ton of power.
• You can get much better parts for a lower price (not aimed at OP that bought it for 50 dollars, but aimed at the people selling it on eBay for 280 dollars).
• It's a NUMA system so the performance will be much more variable and usually poor in regular applications. It also requires special software to take advantage of (some SKUs of Windows just doesn't detect the second CPU).

 

None of those arguments are "it's bad because it's old". You might have missed it, but I never said the things like the PSU or the cooling was bad, despite them being the same age. If my argument was "it's bad because it's old", then I would have also called those parts bad. But I didn't... Because "it's bad because it's old" was never an argument I was even close to making.

I honestly feel insulted that you are trying to pull this strawman argument that I only dislike it because it's old. I have listed several reasons why I think it's bad, and you completely ignored every single one of them.

 

 

For those interested, the CPUs in the board OP bought performs worse than an i5-2500K. A lot worse. 

The Xeon has 2 more cores, but because of the low clock speed and significantly worse architecture the multicore performance is roughly the same as the i5-2500K, and in single core performance the i5 is almost twice as fast. The 3700X that I mentioned earlier absolutely destroys this system. We are not talking a little bit faster, but we're talking like 3 times faster in multi-core scores, and maybe 4-5 times faster in single-core performance.

No strawmen to burn here, I said IT SEEMS like there is bias against it, not that there was so reread what I posted - Reread it twice if you must.

I too feel insulted in the way it was worded, because of the way it was stated as being junk and nothing else. Would have been much better/more accurate to plainly say "It's junk to me because it doesn't meet today's standards".... And that's perfectly fine if you feel that way. I'm just saying from what I read, seems like it was stated as being junk period when it's not. 
Semantics mean alot you know and I'm just pointing that out to avoid misconceptions and misinformation about it, that being my purpose here.

 

On 8/11/2022 at 6:55 AM, LAwLz said:

1: It's crap.

Some parts might have some value, like the coolers and chassi, but that's about it. My advice would be to try and sell it as parts and recoup your 50 dollars.

 

2: The GPU is bad.

The CPUs are bad.

The memory is bad.

The motherboard is bad.

 

3: Just because it was high end once upon a time does not mean it is good today.

4: Just because it has Xeon processors or whatever does not mean it is good

5: Also, just because something is rare does not mean it is valuable or good.
 

1: This is the real example of what I'm getting at.
2: Reenforces #1 on your part.
3: Even though you did follow with a bit of explanation, it then goes to point 4.
4: Shows what came after that re-enforced an arguement about it being junk.

5: No arguement here, that's an on target, 100% accurate statement.

Just know we're not talking about a certain PSU model known for exploding from pressing the power button, that I would call junk period because of things like that but you must remember the board in question was and is a product of it's time, just like what's new today is new today..... But not tomorrow.

[Rocketdog2112]

21 hours ago, Schnoz said:

 

"Old" hardware like this is definitely not e-waste.

 

X58 doesn't have just sentimental value; it's still a good platform for a surprisingly powerful budget desktop/workstation, especially given how dirt-cheap LGA1366 Xeons and DDR3 are for it. Also, it's definitely not a Windows XP system--Windows 7 (and 10, if the drivers play nice) are the OSes best suited to it.

 

 

Couldn't agree with you more!

After many years, (even though it's a Dell) I'm still in love my XPS 730X with it's X58 Tri Channel motherboard running a i7-990X. Could be considered historical in the sense it was the first purpose built retail gaming desktop to use the all new i7 cpu.

 

It easily runs on Windows 10.

[thrasher_565]

ya saying that it uses old parts is bs still uses all stander atx psu. the i7 was vary popular of its time might even be all time... just cant get wb mb now adays...

 

funny i got a "junk" 6800 ultra off ebay must be junk too...

 

[thrasher_565]

5 hours ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

Couldn't agree with you more!

After many years, ( even though it's a Dell) I'm still in love my XPS 730X with it's X58 Tri Channel motherboard running a i7-990X. Could be considered historical in the sense it was the first purpose built retail gaming desktop to use the all new i7 cpu.

 

It easily runs on Windows 10.

nice junk there

Edited August 13, 2022 by thrasher_565

[thrasher_565]

Just now, Schnoz said:

Now that is a fine specimen of a machine! I love it.

 

If Rocketdog's computer reliably does what he needs it to do, then it's not junk. Even if it doesn't, it's gonna be a long, long time before that thing ever becomes e-waste.

(its a joke...)

[Rocketdog2112]

6 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

(its a joke...)

Yeah... My first reaction was to come back with a very rude demeaning response, then you showed your junk. I got the joke

 

But seriously, we got to quit talking about each other's junk!