771 Xeon questions

[H0R53]

I put a 771 Xeon in my LGA 775 Dell Inspiron 545. It's got a modded BIOS, the mod sticker, the whole 9 yards. It's an X5460, and I'm quite happy with its performance relative to my previous processor, the Q9400.

I have some questions about the Xeon, though. 

1. At idle with the stock 545 cooler, it runs at about 35C. However, when rendering videos in WMM or when playing Need for Speed it heats up fast. Is this normal for a Xeon?

2. I have a 700W power supply. I have a GTX 460, a solid state C:\ drive, a 500GB 7200RPM Seagate, and two 160GB drives in RAID0. I also have 4 sticks of DDR2, 6GB in a 2GB-1GB-2GB-1GB symmetrical dual channel layout. I have an older WLAN card, a USB Bluetooth dongle, a gaming keyboard and mouse. The Cooler Master PSU calculater recoomends 600W and I'm drawing 500 from the wall at max load (Passmark PTest v9 benchmark suite). Is 700W enough if I wanted to get a DDR3 motherboard and run 2 GTX 460s in SLI?

3. Does the 771-to-775 mod hurt the motherboard at all?

4. Why wouldn't a 1600MHz Xeon 'like' my 1333MHz FSB? What would happen if I tried a 1600MHz Xeon?

5. What is the life expectancy of a processor that exceeds its TCase/TJunction by ~10C?

[The Sloth]

if it works it works, your xeon is really old the improvement in power and thermal in 9 years is a lot 

[Energycore]

4 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

1. At idle with the stock 545 cooler, it runs at about 35C. However, when rendering videos in WMM or when playing Need for Speed it heats up fast. Is this normal for a Xeon?

It's the stock cooler, don't expect it to be cool. Upgrade it if you like

5 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

2. I have a 700W power supply. I have a GTX 460, a solid state C:\ drive, a 500GB 7200RPM Seagate, and two 160GB drives in RAID0. I also have 4 sticks of DDR2, 6GB in a 2GB-1GB-2GB-1GB symmetrical dual channel layout. I have an older WLAN card, a USB Bluetooth dongle, a gaming keyboard and mouse. The Cooler Master PSU calculater recoomends 600W and I'm drawing 500 from the wall at max load (Passmark PTest v9 benchmark suite). Is 700W enough if I wanted to get a DDR3 motherboard and run 2 GTX 460s in SLI?

First off, don't do SLI 460s it's not a good idea. Second off, it really depends on the PSU model. A lot of "700W" PSUs can't actually do 700W

6 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

3. Does the 771-to-775 mod hurt the motherboard at all?

No

6 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

4. Why wouldn't a 1600MHz Xeon 'like' my 1333MHz FSB? What would happen if I tried a 1600MHz Xeon?

Wouldn't know

6 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

5. What is the life expectancy of a processor that exceeds its TCase/TJunction by ~10C?

Not long. Cool it better, there are coolers available for $25 that'll do the job like the Deepcool Gammaxx 400

[H0R53]

@nerdslayer1 I know, I know, but my system board is also 7 years old. I plan on keeping it as long as possible, but it's not DDR3 compatible.

@Energycore Thank you. I will be buying a Silverstone AiO on Wednesday.

I tested this PSU in a buddy's build when I first got it. He's got a Kill-A-Watt and we were able to draw 680W from this PSU. His rig wasn't able to draw much more, even with (everything) overclocked.

[Dabombinable]

2 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

if it works it works, your xeon is really old the improvement in power and thermal in 9 years is a lot 

My friends comment when he was using my Xeon X5450 at stock-"its a space heater, using it for half an hour makes the room too warm".

[Dabombinable]

Long story short, you'd be fine with a DDR3 motherboard, in fact the power consumption would go down a bit. And the temperature is uite normal, just be glad that its very good at transferring heat to coolers unlike Ivybridge and newer CPU.

[Energycore]

5 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

@nerdslayer1 I know, I know, but my system board is also 7 years old. I plan on keeping it as long as possible, but it's not DDR3 compatible.

@Energycore Thank you. I will be buying a Silverstone AiO on Wednesday.

I tested this PSU in a buddy's build when I first got it. He's got a Kill-A-Watt and we were able to draw 680W from this PSU. His rig wasn't able to draw much more, even with (everything) overclocked.

I'm not letting you off without that model number

[H0R53]

2 minutes ago, Energycore said:

I'm not letting you off without that model number

Model No. of what?

[Dabombinable]

6 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

@nerdslayer1 I know, I know, but my system board is also 7 years old. I plan on keeping it as long as possible, but it's not DDR3 compatible.

@Energycore Thank you. I will be buying a Silverstone AiO on Wednesday.

I tested this PSU in a buddy's build when I first got it. He's got a Kill-A-Watt and we were able to draw 680W from this PSU. His rig wasn't able to draw much more, even with (everything) overclocked.

Get the Xeon to around 4-4.4GHz under the AIO with DDR3, and you have very similar performance to an i5 4440. For a CPU that turns a decade old this year your X5460 is still good.

[H0R53]

Are there any cheap (sub $50) DDR3 LGA 775 motherboards that support Xeons? My current mobo doesn't support overclocking.

[Dabombinable]

1 minute ago, H0R53 said:

Are there any cheap (sub $50) DDR3 LGA 775 motherboards that support Xeons? My current mobo doesn't support overclocking.

The first half decent LGA775 ATX motherboard that I could get which was ATX was my P5 Turbo (DDR2), and it had 2x dead RAM slots+was really difficult to get stable with any CPU at stock-and it cost me $150 AUD. And DDR3 motherboards are rarer and more expensive.