LGA1366 Upgrades

[DevonNelson]

Around a year and a half ago I bought a Z800 motherboard off of eBay, and made the necessary adapters to make it work with an ATX PSU, in an HPTX case. I bought 64GB of PC3-10600R for a steal, and paired it with an X5680. Initially I had 2x 970's in here, but I've recently upgraded to a 980ti, and put the 970's to use mining. I'm looking to use my Z800 board for mining, so I figured it was time for an upgrade.

 

I want to keep the X5680, because it has plenty cores, and single threads very reasonably for a 3.3GHz CPU, but I want to get back into overclocking (something I have not done since LGA775/771 mods using an X5470).

 

I've been looking at getting an ASUS P6X58D-E, as they are pretty cheap for what they are, have excellent overclocking features, and I'm familiar with ASUS motherboards. It is advertised as only supporting 24GB of RAM, but in practice supports 48GB (more than plenty), because 8GB sticks of DDR3 were not being produced at the time the board was released. Here's where the problem lies:

 

I am trying to do this upgrade for as cheaply as possible, so I would like to take advantage of my existing RAM if possible. (I could put 6 DIMMs in this system, and leave 2 DIMMs in the Z800 build). I need to find an LGA1366 Motherboard that supports overclocking, and ECC memory. Form factor does not matter (as I am simply going to put it in my HPTX case), details like number of PCI slots, SATA ports, PCI versions, and SATA versions do not matter to me. Most of these boards will have PCIe v2 which is perfectly fine, and I have a SATA 3 expansion card I use for my drives already.

 

Anyone know any good candidates for a board? I know ECC is actually detrimental to a gaming experience, but it's what I have on hand, and for some reason it seems the price of PC3-12800U/PC3-10600U has more than doubled in the past year according to my findings.

 

Thanks guys!

[Guest]

My board (check the signature) has everything you want (I think). 

The only thing you might want to double check is if it supports ECC ram cause it suspect it does but in 'default' mode. 

[DevonNelson]

8 minutes ago, ImadKnight said:

My board (check the signature) has everything you want (I think). 

The only thing you might want to double check is if it supports ECC ram cause it suspect it does but in 'default' mode. 

This board is around $40-50 more expensive, but easily worth it if it supports ECC. However, I cannot find anyone who owns this board who is also using ECC memory. It does not state on Gigabyte's site that they support ECC memory, but that obviously doesn't mean much given that they don't claim to support Xeons, or more then 24GB of ram (which they clearly do).

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, DevonNelson said:

This board is around $40-50 more expensive, but easily worth it if it supports ECC. However, I cannot find anyone who owns this board who is also using ECC memory. It does not state on Gigabyte's site that they support ECC memory, but that obviously doesn't mean much given that they don't claim to support Xeons, or more then 24GB of ram (which they clearly do).

They state that it supports XEONS (scroll down), but sadly not ECC (go to specifications). 

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-X58A-UD3R-rev-20#ov

[DevonNelson]

Know of anywhere to buy cheap but decent RAM? I've scoured eBay, Craigslist, local second hand stores, etc. and the best I've been able to find is 6x4GB of PC3-10600U by a brand called "Super Talent" for $90. The first problem is, I don't want 4GB sticks, the second problem is I'd really rather not overclock with RAM from a non-reputable brand. The best cheap brand I've come across is Hynix.  

[Pasi123]

X58 boards doesn't support registered memory but non-registered ECC memory works as normal DDR3.

[DevonNelson]

I remember back in the LGA775 days there was high density, and low density RAM. High density being much worse, and only compatible with AMD systems. Would that be the case with this?

 

 http://www.ebay.com/itm/32GB-4x8GB-PC3-12800-1600Mhz-DDR3-240-PIN-NON-ECC-AMD-CPU-Chipset-Desktop-Memory-/351976672751?hash=item51f371cdef:g:Oa4AAOSwjDZYmt2G

 

I dont see any indication leading to me believe it would not work in my use case.

 

And thank you for pointing out that non registered ECC would work, prices seem a bit more reasonable for these DIMMs

[TheCherryKing]

12 hours ago, DevonNelson said:

Around a year and a half ago I bought a Z800 motherboard off of eBay, and made the necessary adapters to make it work with an ATX PSU, in an HPTX case. I bought 64GB of PC3-10600R for a steal, and paired it with an X5680. Initially I had 2x 970's in here, but I've recently upgraded to a 980ti, and put the 970's to use mining. I'm looking to use my Z800 board for mining, so I figured it was time for an upgrade.

 

I want to keep the X5680, because it has plenty cores, and single threads very reasonably for a 3.3GHz CPU, but I want to get back into overclocking (something I have not done since LGA775/771 mods using an X5470).

 

I've been looking at getting an ASUS P6X58D-E, as they are pretty cheap for what they are, have excellent overclocking features, and I'm familiar with ASUS motherboards. It is advertised as only supporting 24GB of RAM, but in practice supports 48GB (more than plenty), because 8GB sticks of DDR3 were not being produced at the time the board was released. Here's where the problem lies:

 

I am trying to do this upgrade for as cheaply as possible, so I would like to take advantage of my existing RAM if possible. (I could put 6 DIMMs in this system, and leave 2 DIMMs in the Z800 build). I need to find an LGA1366 Motherboard that supports overclocking, and ECC memory. Form factor does not matter (as I am simply going to put it in my HPTX case), details like number of PCI slots, SATA ports, PCI versions, and SATA versions do not matter to me. Most of these boards will have PCIe v2 which is perfectly fine, and I have a SATA 3 expansion card I use for my drives already.

 

Anyone know any good candidates for a board? I know ECC is actually detrimental to a gaming experience, but it's what I have on hand, and for some reason it seems the price of PC3-12800U/PC3-10600U has more than doubled in the past year according to my findings.

 

Thanks guys!

You will have to find a true workstation-grade or server-grade board to get ECC memory support. 

[DevonNelson]

19 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

You will have to find a true workstation-grade or server-grade board to get ECC memory support. 

I have a Rev. 3 Z800 board laying around. I bought it recently for around $130 with promise of support for dual 5600 series Xeons. While the Z800 is easily the cheapest LGA 1366 workstation board available, it was DOA, I have no way of getting my money back, and I am kind of turned off to the idea of buying another Z800 board. I soon after realized that rather than more threads, I need faster single threads. Afaik there are no workstation boards that support overclocking, as most people in Enterprise aren't meant to be smart enough to achieve a stable overclock. I probably need to just keep an eye out for cheap UDIMM memory and forget about ECC support.

 

Thank you guys for the help! I appreciate it!

[DevonNelson]

I'm thinking I'll buy an X58 motherboard (I have options from ASUS, Gigabyte, and EVGA that look promising), and just like 8GB of UDIMM for now. I'll wait a few months in hopes the price of UDIMM goes back down. I already have the X5680 and a 212 EVO, so hopefully the transition should be smooth.

[System Error Message]

i manage to get mine up to 4.2Ghz stable running in a 2U case. Good temps with a low profile air cooler too.

[DevonNelson]

I've landed on getting an ASUS or EVGA X58 motherboard. Just depends on what I find cheap. I like ASUS, but also want to try out EVGA's motherboards (as I own 3 PSU's, and 6 GPU's made by them and counting, and have had a good experience overall). The problem is RAM prices. Best I've found is a used 3x8GB kit of PC3-12800U for $90! I've never paid that much for that little RAM before. Crazy what prices are doing.

[DevonNelson]

Just thought I'd let everyone know what I ended up with.

 

I found an ASUS P6X58-e for $70 and a 16GB of Kingston HyperX Fury PC3-14900 for $73. I paired this with my X5680 I already had, and dropped in my 980 TI. I managed 4.3 GHz with a CoolerMaster 212 Evo, but plan on getting a larger air cooler at some point in the future. This overclock took me from the X5680 causing a 25-30% bottleneck on the 980 TI, to there being no bottleneck at all. This is confirmed by benchmarking in Passmark, as well as games like PUBG, DOOM, Witcher 3, etc. I would recommend a setup like this to anyone. I'm seeing around 70% of the single thread of a Kaby Lake i7, for a fraction of the cost, and I have two more cores. 

 

Entertainingly enough this looks alot like what we are seeing on this season of Scrapyard Wars.

 

[asand1]

My Asus Sabertooth X58 supports unregistered ECC RAM, has six slots, and overclocks with my X5680 very well. 

[DevonNelson]

(Probably) final update worth mentioning for this build. Bought a Noctua NH-D15. I managed a 4.73 GHz overclock. I now have the fastest aircooled X5680 out on hwbot.org. Looking to get a little more out of it, as even at this much of an overclock, the damn Xeon still has traces of stability left in it. Lol