# Xeon X5690 safe voltage for 24/7 load?



## [XC] Oj101 (Mar 9, 2015)

I recently upgraded from two Xeon E5645s which were running at 180x18, the maximum BCLK this board plays nicely with for 24/7 use. I have benched up to 199x18, but the sound starts slowing down and getting choppy while the CPUs are under load - a problem that starts from around 184 MHz and gets worse as you continue upping the BCLK. As a result, my limit was 3.24 GHz and I had no need for anything more than a slight voltage bump for stability.

These new Xeon X5690s obviously have a higher multiplier meaning I have a lot more wiggle room, in theory up to 180x26 but I doubt I'll be seeing 4.68 GHz on these anytime soon 

I'm aiming for somewhere around 4.00-4.20 GHz which will need a fair bit more voltage, but how much can these Westmere-EPs handle? Keep in mind that it isn't a gaming PC as such, so it won't be sitting idle 20+ hours per day. It'll be under 100 % load 24/7.

Thanks


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## R-T-B (Mar 9, 2015)

I had a similar version of that CPU (the workstation single CPU version) recently.

I never pushed it beyond 1.35v personally, but have heard that 1.4v is the absolute limit before it gets really dicey.

100% load will limit you more with heat than voltage, IMO.


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## [XC] Oj101 (Mar 9, 2015)

Thanks for the reply, I was thinking around 1.300-1.350v but wasn't sure. I'm been out of the game for way too long


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## R-T-B (Mar 9, 2015)

For 24/7 that's probably a good number you have there.


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## Vego (Mar 11, 2015)

1,41 running for 3 years now but with good water cooling

at 1,48 i had 5ghz


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## [XC] Oj101 (Mar 11, 2015)

Do you have more pictures of your PC? I saw the one you posted in the most expensive computer thread, but I want to see a full shot of it


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## rruff (Mar 11, 2015)

[XC] Oj101 said:


> I'm aiming for somewhere around 4.00-4.20 GHz which will need a fair bit more voltage, but how much can these Westmere-EPs handle? Keep in mind that it isn't a gaming PC as such, so it won't be sitting idle 20+ hours per day. It'll be under 100 % load 24/7.



I'm guessing that you use an old CPU to save money and get good performance, but I wonder if you've included electric costs in your calculations?


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## [XC] Oj101 (Mar 11, 2015)

rruff said:


> I'm guessing that you use an old CPU to save money and get good performance, but I wonder if you've included electric costs in your calculations?



It's not that bad. Even at 3.9 GHz I get performance that a Core i7-5960X can't hope to rival with a 300 MHz clock speed advantage... And I have a lot more to give. Once the cooling has been upgraded a bit I can add the better part of another GHz to my speed.

Add to that fairly cheap power and it's a no brainer.


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## [XC] Oj101 (Mar 12, 2015)

Let me elaborate on pricing to show why going for a modern CPU is not viable. I'm going to do direct price conversions to US$ to make things simpler.

When I bought the SR-2, I was already in the market for a Corsair 800D which goes for around $500 here. I managed to pick up a Corsair 800D, two Xeon E5645 CPUs, two Thermaltake Frio coolers and the SR-2 two years ago for under $1000. At the time, even on the second hand market that kind of money would have bought me the case, a high end Z68 motherboard and a Core i5-2500K - nowhere NEAR the level of performance offered by the Xeons. I already had enough RAM to fill all the RAM slots, I had bought 8 GB kits of Patriot G2.Series DDR3-1600 back when they were around $40/kit as I knew about the imminent RAM price increases.

Fast forward to today and I paid just under $300 for BOTH X5690s brand new with full warranty. I can turn around and sell the E5645s for slightly more, but I'll do them for the same price. If I sold the SR-2 I could get $350 for it locally - I already someone interested but I'm not budging much to his chagrin  Add the E5645s at $300 and it gives me $650 to play with for something that needs to outperform the two E5645s (24 threads) at 3.4 GHz.

The i7-5960X would set me back $1200 locally, and I still need a decent X99 board that can take both of my 780s, my 580 and my Sound Blaster Zx, as well as a minimum of eight RAM slots - there are some cheap options such as the MSI X99 SLI Plus but that's still $300 odd. It also leaves another problem in that I will be dropping from 48 GB RAM to 32 GB RAM, so I will need to sell eight of the 4 GB modules and replace them with four 8 GB modules. That's around another $200 that I will need to chip in, bringing my total up to $1700. The 250w difference in power usage totals around $25/month.

Keeping in mind that this upgrade effectively cost me nothing (potentially I could make an EXTRA $100 by selling the E5645s at a slightly higher price) vs having to sell a bunch of hardware and be without my main PC for a while and still having to fork out another $1050 from my pocket... With the power draw difference being $25/month, we're talking 3.5 years of running just to get to make up the power cost difference. I will also have a lower performing setup (multithreaded performance is where it's at for me and with my use I get near linear scaling with any number of cores).

Oh, and before you ask... I often get extremely close to maxing out my RAM so don't suggest that 16 GB or 32 GB would do 

Second oh: If you want to know how I got such good pricing, it's by watching deals like a hawk. Over in SA we have an IT classifieds forum called Carbonite which is EXTREMELY active compared to the sale sections of other forums - there are easily 50+ new sales each day. I'm also rather good at price bargaining


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## Vego (Mar 12, 2015)

[XC] Oj101 said:


> Do you have more pictures of your PC? I saw the one you posted in the most expensive computer thread, but I want to see a full shot of it



here you have my last 2 overkills:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/my-new-pc.136658/
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/actina-gameon-most-ultimate-biggest-bang-ever.169178/


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## rruff (Mar 12, 2015)

[XC] Oj101 said:


> Let me elaborate on pricing to show why going for a modern CPU is not viable. I'm going to do direct price conversions to US$ to make things simpler.



Yes, I looked into it some more and realized those old Xeons aren't that bad for cycles/watt. 

I have an urge to pick up a Xeon (X5660 can be had for <$100 any day) for general use, but then noticed the used motherboards are not quite so cheap, and they are also less reliable. Plus I'd be giving up some new features and it would have slower single thread performance, so for most apps I wouldn't see a speed improvement. I just like the idea of 6 cores and 12 threads. It's like having a V12 instead of the 4 banger I've got...


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## R-T-B (Mar 12, 2015)

rruff said:


> Yes, I looked into it some more and realized those old Xeons aren't that bad for cycles/watt.
> 
> I have an urge to pick up a Xeon (X5660 can be had for <$100 any day) for general use, but then noticed the used motherboards are not quite so cheap, and they are also less reliable. Plus I'd be giving up some new features and it would have slower single thread performance, so for most apps I wouldn't see a speed improvement. I just like the idea of 6 cores and 12 threads. It's like having a V12 instead of the 4 banger I've got...



The motherboards are ridiculously inflated... some of them are going used for more than they cost new.  I funded my upgrade from LGA1366 to Haswell-E basically just on that fact.


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## [XC] Oj101 (Mar 12, 2015)

My SR-2 can fetch $350 locally, I wonder what it's worth on the international market? Not that I'll actually sell it, I'm just wondering. My rig was built with several things in mind, in decending order of importance:

World Community Grid
GPUGrid
Photoshop/Lightroom/After Effects/Premier/3DS Max
Gaming
General use (internet, Word, etc)
Bragging rights


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## rruff (Mar 12, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> The motherboards are ridiculously inflated... some of them are going used for more than they cost new.  I funded my upgrade from LGA1366 to Haswell-E basically just on that fact.



Some of the 1366 boards are reasonably priced, but I suspect that is because they are suitable only for servers. Do you know of any decent general use MBs that can be had for ~$100?


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## R-T-B (Mar 12, 2015)

rruff said:


> Some of the 1366 boards are reasonably priced, but I suspect that is because they are suitable only for servers. Do you know of any decent general use MBs that can be had for ~$100?



No, sadly I do not.  I happened to have one of the one's that's going for insane numbers (Sabertooth X58)

My advice is to watch the FS forum here and grab one when someone inevitably upgrades.  They can be had cheap that way.


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## rruff (Mar 13, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> My advice is to watch the FS forum here and grab one when someone inevitably upgrades.  They can be had cheap that way.



Any thoughts on what I should look for?


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## R-T-B (Mar 13, 2015)

I would snatch up any of the following:

Asus sabertooth x58 (rampage x58 is great too)
Intel dx58so2 (only x58 with uefi)
Pretty much any x58 evga

There's others but those are the ones I hear the best things about from that era.


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## Capitan Harlock (Mar 13, 2015)

hi i made my "new" pc out with ebay by punchasing my xeon w3520 at 33€ ,motherboard Asus p6t deluxe v2 1366 X58 for 80€ ,6gb or ddr 3 ram for 60€ and now with some saving i have find in january a hd 7950 for 130€ + in the past i buyed the great psu that i have from a lot of years now Thermaltake thoughpower xt modular 775watt and im finally happy to have a powerfull pc .
Returning to the topic i think that if you have watercooling you can push a little without risk but depends ok the chip you got too.
For example my xeon w3520 is like a i7 920 and if you have a revision C0 you cant go that much higher with oc instead of a revision D0 like mine and i have pushed the voltage for get 4ghz at 1,32 and something volts or just a little but i was scared for the temps but because i have a good case and a good cooler im worried with a max temp under prime at 74 °c when gaming and other stuff cant push so hard like prime so depends on what you need.
You do a lot of stuff so you need performance so if you have a good coling solution take little steps without worries and try 1.35 volts or something just a little higher like 1,38 not directly 1,4 XD


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jun 16, 2015)

@rruff any updates?
 We can get MSI X58 Pro -E in EU for about $100 US, but in general its the same score here, Xeons are well priced but the mobos are like rocking horse shit.

I was considering a X 5690 to put in it to replace my excellent X5650 (which runs with a 50% o/c on the MSI)


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## Ferrum Master (Jun 28, 2015)

Those CPU's are cheap now. I living board is the most valuable thing. I have 3 1366 CPU's dusting in the shelf also.

Clock it to the skies, just order some i920 or xeon counterpart on ebay for the reserve, I got one last year for 30$ even from Israel lol.

MSI X58 Pro-E is worst X58.

Their RAM tracing and shielding is flawed. Any ram setting past 1333Mhz will turn into random BSOD.


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