Motherboard choice

[marijn720]

Hello everyone,

This video from Linus got me into building my own (cheap) gaming rig. I managed to get 2 xeons (x5470) for €30 and now I am looking for a suitable lga771 motherboard.
But after a little bit of research, I found out that a single Xeon in a lga775 (modded) could work as well and most importantly, is overclockable. Do I really need the 8 cores the lga771 is offering? Or should I go for the overclockable lga775 option and sell the other Xeon? I am planning to add a R9 380x to my system, would this work with a single cpu?

Thanks!

[Hackentosher]

9 minutes ago, marijn720 said:

Hello everyone,

This video from Linus got me into building my own (cheap) gaming rig. I managed to get 2 xeons (x5470) for €30 and now I am looking for a suitable lga771 motherboard.
But after a little bit of research, I found out that a single Xeon in a lga775 (modded) could work as well and most importantly, is overclockable. Do I really need the 8 cores the lga771 is offering? Or should I go for the overclockable lga775 option and sell the other Xeon? I am planning to add a R9 380x to my system, would this work with a single cpu?

Thanks!

Should be fine, I'd be a little worried about drivers, cooler mounting, and form-factor though.

[oskarha]

14 minutes ago, marijn720 said:

Hello everyone,

This video from Linus got me into building my own (cheap) gaming rig. I managed to get 2 xeons (x5470) for €30 and now I am looking for a suitable lga771 motherboard.
But after a little bit of research, I found out that a single Xeon in a lga775 (modded) could work as well and most importantly, is overclockable. Do I really need the 8 cores the lga771 is offering? Or should I go for the overclockable lga775 option and sell the other Xeon? I am planning to add a R9 380x to my system, would this work with a single cpu?

Thanks!

You would definatly be bottlenecking a 380x with a single cpu at stock speeds (gtx660 + e5420 = bottleneck in most games).

Dual xeons would also be slow in single threaded tasks.

If you use programs that can use 8 cores, get a dual xeon mobo.

If you use programs that use 4 or less cores, sell one xeon and get a decent lga 775 mobo (like a p5q deluxe) and overclock the hell out of that xeon win a good mobo + cooler.

See this for a compability list of lga 775 mobos:

http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/3/

You would probably be bottlenecking a 380x with anything lga 771/775, so you might want to aim for a lower end cpu.

These lga 771/775 cpus seem to be the same or better than amds fx series clock for clock.

[marijn720]

14 minutes ago, oskarha said:

You would definatly be bottlenecking a 380x with a single cpu at stock speeds (gtx660 + e5420 = bottleneck in most games).

Dual xeons would also be slow in single threaded tasks.

If you use programs that can use 8 cores, get a dual xeon mobo.

If you use programs that use 4 or less cores, sell one xeon and get a decent lga 775 mobo (like a p5q deluxe) and overclock the hell out of that xeon win a good mobo + cooler.

See this for a compability list of lga 775 mobos:

http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/3/

You would probably be bottlenecking a 380x with anything lga 771/775, so you might want to aim for a lower end cpu.

These lga 771/775 cpus seem to be the same or better than amds fx series clock for clock.

Thanks for replying, appreciate it!

 

What I forgot to add was that my budget for this motherboard is about €50, but that should be no problem as I found some cheap ones on ebay. 

I don't want to do anything crazy with this build, just a little bit of gaming like rocket league or maybe GTAV, which to my understanding are fine with 4 cores.

As for the bottleneck problem, let's say I were able to overclock the xeon to 4.0 Ghz. What would you recommend as GPU?

[oskarha]

12 minutes ago, marijn720 said:

Thanks for replying, appreciate it!

 

What I forgot to add was that my budget for this motherboard is about €50, but that should be no problem as I found some cheap ones on ebay. 

I don't want to do anything crazy with this build, just a little bit of gaming like rocket league or maybe GTAV, which to my understanding are fine with 4 cores.

As for the bottleneck problem, let's say I were able to overclock the xeon to 4.0 Ghz. What would you recommend as GPU?

Its hard to say what gpu you should aim for, but something like a gtx 950/760/750ti should be just fine. In some games you might be cpu bound, but with a decent oc you should be fine most of the time.

Also, for motherboards, you have to make sure that its tested with a xeon e5xxx or x5xxx series xeon, and you probably want to go with a decent p45 chipset board for the best overclocking results.

See this guide for how to overclock on lga775:

 

[marijn720]

13 hours ago, oskarha said:

Its hard to say what gpu you should aim for, but something like a gtx 950/760/750ti should be just fine. In some games you might be cpu bound, but with a decent oc you should be fine most of the time.

Also, for motherboards, you have to make sure that its tested with a xeon e5xxx or x5xxx series xeon, and you probably want to go with a decent p45 chipset board for the best overclocking results.

See this guide for how to overclock on lga775:

 

Wow thank you this really helped me! 

I think I know everything I need to know now, I am looking for a p45 motherboard and aiming lower for my GPU.

Thanks once again!

[oskarha]

1 minute ago, marijn720 said:

Wow thank you this really helped me! 

I think I know everything I need to know now, I am looking for a p45 motherboard and aiming lower for my GPU.

Thanks once again!

Seems like your on the right track!

Im happy to know that i could help

If you have any more questions dont hesitate to ask me or anyone else on the forum

[marijn720]

3 hours ago, oskarha said:

Seems like your on the right track!

Im happy to know that i could help

If you have any more questions dont hesitate to ask me or anyone else on the forum

I might have been really lucky, because I found this motherboard for 37.50€. I called the guy and I managed to get it for 25€ if he left out he allready installed RAM and CPU. He has been active on the site for 7.5 years and he has good reviews. Looks like a deal to me right?

[oskarha]

20 minutes ago, marijn720 said:

I might have been really lucky, because I found this motherboard for 37.50€. I called the guy and I managed to get it for 25€ if he left out he allready installed RAM and CPU. He has been active on the site for 7.5 years and he has good reviews. Looks like a deal to me right?

Looks good to me