Second handed parts build

[Lord Athetos]

I'm building a gaming/editing PC using second hand parts. I have a 2630 v2 xeon that i got super cheap some months ago, and a fury X. I bought a generic x79 motherboard, but it was deffective, so now that i'll get a refund, i have some options. First, i also found the motherboard of the alienware aurora r4 and a 120mm AIO combo for arround 300$. Should I buy another chineese generic motherboard, get the alienware one or search for a second hand x79 board form a respectable manufacturer? there is also the option for a dual socket board, but those are quite difficult to find, and almost all of them have only 1 pcie slot, and something like the evga srx classified its too expensive, not to mention incredibly difficult to find. Next, is CPU. I also found some interesting offers on 4960x and 3970x. I alredy got a CPU, but xeons dont highlight for their single core performance, and these two having the same number of cores, it makes them interesting, considering their price (270$ for the 4960x and 170$ for the 3970x). Is the price difference between this two worth the performance? the 3970x has also some disadvantages. first, the heat, i have a 150W air cooler, and the heat output of the 3970x is exactly that, 150W, so if if pick it, I probably will have to get a beefier cooler, but the price difference makes me think if will be worth getting it with the alienware board + cooler. the other disadvanage, is pcie revision: I've alredy decided that i'm going to use a dual Fury X configuration, because i alredy own one, and they're relatively cheap on ebay (arround 250-300$), but the 3970x has only support for pcie 2.0, and the 4960x supports 3.0. What sould i do? 3970x, 4960x or stick with the xeon for now? i'm really lost at this build, some help will be heavly appreciated.

[dizmo]

Is the Alienware one a standard form factor, or is it custom? A lot of the time Dell will use custom boards that won't fit into another case, so you'd also be stuck finding an Alienware case for your build.

 

You can get LGA2011 chips super cheap, the motherboards are all expensive. Personally I'd invest in another platform.

Is there a reason you're trying to go enthusiast platform? Do you really do that much editing? I'd also imagine something like Ryzen would be just as fast.

[Herman Mcpootis]

2 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Is the Alienware one a standard form factor, or is it custom? A lot of the time Dell will use custom boards that won't fit into another case, so you'd also be stuck finding an Alienware case for your build.

 

You can get LGA2011 chips super cheap, the motherboards are all expensive. Personally I'd invest in another platform.

Is there a reason you're trying to go enthusiast platform? Do you really do that much editing? I'd also imagine something like Ryzen would be just as fast.

it's a standard matx form factor, but if it's $300 usd for just that and a 120mm aio then it doesn't feel like a good deal.

[dizmo]

1 hour ago, herman mcpootis said:

it's a standard matx form factor, but if it's $300 usd for just that and a 120mm aio then it doesn't feel like a good deal.

Yeah, I mean for that price you can (with a little looking) find a 1700 and a pretty good motherboard. Which, really, will beat the older Intel platform I'd imagine.