Worth upgrading my i7 930 to an X5680?

[lexluthermiester]

It is 32nm, Westmere EP aka Gulftown

Not true actually. While they have similarities, WestmereEP has a feature set significantly different from Gulftown.

However, you are correct in that they should offer similar performance. The W3680 & W3690 have one benefit over WestmereEP, unlocked multiplier.

 

[Tomgang]

Now that we are talking about CPU-z bench. Here is my cpu compared to AMD 6 core and Intels newest 6 core cpu. Seems like it my cpu still gives AMD first gen ryzen a nice resistens while Intels shows a better improvement over the years. But not to shabby from such a old chip and can still give AMD´s ryzen 6 core resistance. Its no match for the I7 8700K throw, but Arent horrible behind either. None the less my CPU shut run games just as good as a first gen amd ryzen cpu. Meaning if i wants to se an improment on the gaming front a I7 8700K or better would be the only choise to go after or i can just as well keep the CPU i have now. I chose to keep the CPU i have now.

 

[Vario]

It makes sense if you already have a solid x58 board and ram with a Nehalem in it. If you don't and are building a complete system from scratch, it makes more sense to get a $200 i5-8600 or Ryzen 5 2600 with the appropriate $130 motherboard to go with it. But then you also pay the inflated DDR4 costs at the moment. Getting an intact working X58 boards which allows overclocking and isn't going to fail imminently is the tricky part.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

It makes sense if you already have a solid x58 board and ram with a Nehalem in it. If you don't and are building a complete system from scratch, it makes more sense to get a $200 i5-8600 or Ryzen 5 2600 with the appropriate $130 motherboard to go with it. But then you also pay the inflated DDR4 costs at the moment. Getting an intact working X58 boards which allows overclocking and isn't going to fail imminently is the tricky part.

Well you are kind of right but also It´s really depends....there are many factors when it comes to the old hardware but that does not mean that with a bit of luck you cant find some great mobo in good condition....there are still plenty of those X58 mobos with just I7 920 stuck in them that maybe didn´t been OC and push to the limits for all those years,in that case and if the price is right you can add some cheap 6 core Xeon and have decent platform that still could be valid for "few" more years.......

 

[Tomgang]

Well you are kind of right but also It´s really depends....there are many factors when it comes to the old hardware but that does not mean that with a bit of luck you cant find some great mobo in good condition....there are still plenty of those X58 mobos with just I7 920 stuck in them that maybe didn´t been OC and push to the limits for all those years,in that case and if the price is right you can add some cheap 6 core Xeon and have decent platform that still could be valid for "few" more years.......

I agreed to that.

It makes sense if you already have a solid x58 board and ram with a Nehalem in it. If you don't and are building a complete system from scratch, it makes more sense to get a $200 i5-8600 or Ryzen 5 2600 with the appropriate $130 motherboard to go with it. But then you also pay the inflated DDR4 costs at the moment. Getting an intact working X58 boards which allows overclocking and isn't going to fail imminently is the tricky part.

It properly depends also where you live and how much X58 is in demand in the given country. I can say with a fact that X58 bundle can be found to a nice price.

Take the setup i have. I7 980X cpu, ASUS P6X58D Premium motherboard, 12 GB of Corsair ram and a Noctua NH-D14 cooler. al this including shipping i got for what is about 220 USD back in the beginning of 2017 and seller told me that the setup has only been OC to 3.8 GHz what is nothing for X58 with a good motherboard and if i back then sold the I7 980X and got a 6 core Xeon like a X5660. The setup would had been even cheaper. Not every X58 is overpriced, but you have to look for it.

 

[Vario]

I agreed to that.



It properly depends also where you live and how much X58 is in demand in the given country. I can say with a fact that X58 bundle can be found to a nice price.

Take the setup i have. I7 980X cpu, ASUS P6X58D Premium motherboard, 12 GB of Corsair ram and a Noctua NH-D14 cooler. al this including shipping i got for what is about 220 USD back in the beginning of 2017 and seller told me that the setup has only been OC to 3.8 GHz what is nothing for X58 with a good motherboard and if i back then sold the I7 980X and got a 6 core Xeon like a X5660. The setup would had been even cheaper. Not every X58 is overpriced, but you have to look for it.

My father bought the P6X58D-E back in 2010 and had the i7 930 in it, he had me overclock it a few years ago to 3.8 GHz and replace the faulty Corsair ram he started with with Samsung 30nm Greens which I made a profit net on selling the Corsair. I will probably sell the i7 930 for $30 to offset the W3680.

 

[Tomgang]

My father bought the P6X58D-E back in 2010 and had the i7 930 in it, he had me overclock it a few years ago to 3.8 GHz and replace the faulty Corsair ram he started with with Samsung 30nm Greens which I made a profit net on selling the Corsair. I will probably sell the i7 930 for $30 to offset the W3680.

Seems like a good idea selling I7 930 for a W3680. The 32 NM 6 core chips has more overclock headroom than there 45 NM quad chips + more cores and L3 cashe. Im glad i got I7 980X replaced it with the I7 920 i had before that ran 4.1 GHz for every day use where the I7 980X runs 4.42 GHz al throw cooling has been upgrade since then, so that properly also plays a role there to alow for higher overclock.

I7 930 shut bee good for 4 GHz or more with proper cooling. Its possible on aircooling, i dit it with I7 920 air cooled.

 

[Vario]

Seems like a good idea selling I7 930 for a W3680. The 32 NM 6 core chips has more overclock headroom than there 45 NM quad chips + more cores and L3 cashe. Im glad i got I7 980X replaced it with the I7 920 i had before that ran 4.1 GHz for every day use where the I7 980X runs 4.42 GHz al throw cooling has been upgrade since then, so that properly also plays a role there to alow for higher overclock.

I7 930 shut bee good for 4 GHz or more with proper cooling. Its possible on aircooling, i dit it with I7 920 air cooled.

His i7 930 was a good one, it could run at 1.25V for 4 Ghz but temps were high and I wanted to be conservative so I set it to 3.8 Ghz at around the same 1.25V and the ram at 1700 9-11-11-33 (I think?) and 1.35Vdimm. Probably could have gone for ~4.5 on a watercooler. He is running a Coolermaster V8, far from the greatest heatsink around. For the W3680 I have it at 4.1 GHz 1.288V and ram at 1600 1.35V. I was able to reach windows with 4.6 but it was far from stable. I wanted it to be stable and at a reasonably low voltage around 1.28V at the max, and temperature under 70C, 4.1 achieves that and has decent benchmark scores. It seems very stable, time will tell but there is a lot of room for more voltage if needed. I wanted to keep the stress on the board to a minimum because he may be using this machine long term for quite awhile.

 

[Tomgang]

His i7 930 was a good one, it could run at 1.25V for 4 Ghz but temps were high and I wanted to be conservative so I set it to 3.8 Ghz at around the same 1.25V and the ram at 1700 9-11-11-33 (I think?) and 1.35Vdimm. Probably could have gone for ~4.5 on a watercooler. He is running a Coolermaster V8, far from the greatest heatsink around. For the W3680 I have it at 4.1 GHz 1.288V and ram at 1600 1.35V. I was able to reach windows with 4.6 but it was far from stable. I wanted it to be stable and at a reasonably low voltage around 1.28V at the max, and temperature under 70C, 4.1 achieves that and has decent benchmark scores. It seems very stable, time will tell but there is a lot of room for more voltage if needed. I wanted to keep the stress on the board to a minimum because he may be using this machine long term for quite awhile.

Im not afraid of feeding X58 chips with high voltage. The I7 920 i had when benched i feeded with 1.45 volts for 4.41 GHz and I7 980X i have now Im feeding 1.41 volts for 4.42 GHz oc and 1.55 volts for 4.75 GHz but that is benchmark only off cause. But have done it severel times now over the last year and a half. It has still not crap it pants or shown other signs of degradation like need higher volts for same oc than before. X58 CPU's and motherboards (at least those two asus board i have had now) a like can take some great beatings. That is what i have learned with X58 over the years. I mean X58 is now nearing its 10 years since relase and yet after all these years i havent seen many threads with dead X58 over the years and while i have replaced many parts in my pc like GPU, HDD, SSD or fans for that matter either because its dosent live up to my needs or it is worn down like the old fans where. X58 it self just keep takes beating like nothing and boots every time with out errors.

For your W3680 you can safely operate it up to 1.4 volts. according to intel 1.4 volts is maximum safe volts for W3680/3690 or I7 900 series 6 core chips. So yeah you have some head room left for voltage as long your cooler can keep up and at 1.4 volts or more they do need cooling. I have not spared any penny on cooling. Thermal paste is thermal grizzly kryonaut, and cpu cooler as you properly know a noctua NH-D14 with 3 noctua nf-f12 industrialppc-3000 pwm 120 MM fans mounted + high flow fans in the case as well filled up with Corsair ML120/140 fans. Even on the chipset i have mounted fans now. I like to puch hardware but i also take good care of it by keeping it cool.

This is my PC as it is now, to give an idea how serious i take proper cooling. The zip ties on cpu cooler is needed to prevent it from hitting the two chipsæt fans. What cant be seen is that there are also 3 fans in the front of the case and two more zip tied in the case to blast air to CPU and GPU cooler. The reason for two fans is that the front mounted fans is far away and sucks air through a dust filter that strangles the airflow. So to get some good pressure of air to cpu and gpu cooler I mounted ekstra fans. I have more pictures if you want to see a more detailed overview, let me know.

 

[Vario]

I would consider running a shroud from the back of the NHD14 to the rear of the case rather than having the exhaust fan right behind the heatsink fan, how it is now you may get a pressure build up between the two fans that reduces exhaust efficiency. Either way, in terms of sheer amount of fans you should have little problems with heat.

 

[Tomgang]

I would consider running a shroud from the back of the NHD14 to the rear of the case rather than having the exhaust fan right behind the heatsink fan, how it is now you may get a pressure build up between the two fans that reduces exhaust efficiency. Either way, in terms of sheer amount of fans you should have little problems with heat.

You know what. I think you might be right. Only one way to find out. Remove the exhaust fan or i cut mount that exhaust fan out side of the case. Its not as pretty as the inside, but performance over looks.

Sorry old girl time to take you a part again and exsperiment with fan placing.

 

[Vario]

You know what. I think you might be right. Only one way to find out. Remove the exhaust fan or i cut mount that exhaust fan out side of the case. Its not as pretty as the inside, but performance over looks.

Sorry old girl time to take you a part again and exsperiment with fan placing.

Probably just do 2 fans on the NHD14 and then the case exhaust will do, I had a similar setup on my computer trying 3x TY143 on a PHTC14PE and a grey Corsair SP120L behind it, the third fan didn't really improve temps, so now I am just running two on the 14PE and the SP120L (powerful fan from the original H100i). Overall seems to work well enough. Or could remove the ML120 fan behind the D14 leaving that spot empty and run the 3 fans on the D14. Experimentation is needed I think.

 

[mihalyk2000]

If mobo support it, than yeah, maybe you can aim even higher.

 

[KLMR]

@Tomgang: Hey, do you think its time to move to a new platform?

I recently had access to a couple of i9-9900k, air cooled (NH-15U) and for 150W out of socket, are pretty fast.

My X5690:

 

[Tomgang]

@Tomgang: Hey, do you think its time to move to a new platform?

I recently had access to a couple of i9-9900k, air cooled (NH-15U) and for 150W out of socket, are pretty fast.

My X5690:

View attachment 128998View attachment 128999View attachment 129000View attachment 129001

That really depends on what you use it for. Does it still provide the performance you need. If yes, keep it or if no then its time to upgrade.
I have deside my self, that its time to move on as X58 no longer has the power to handle the games i play and keep FPS above 60 FPS at all time and i am moving to a AMD Ryzen 3000 platform in the near future.

 

[Durvelle27]

@Tomgang: Hey, do you think its time to move to a new platform?

I recently had access to a couple of i9-9900k, air cooled (NH-15U) and for 150W out of socket, are pretty fast.

My X5690:

View attachment 128998View attachment 128999View attachment 129000View attachment 129001

This thread is old, you need to start your own thread

 

[lexluthermiester]

This thread is old, you need to start your own thread

Why? The discussion is relevant to the thread topic.

@Tomgang: Hey, do you think its time to move to a new platform?

I recently had access to a couple of i9-9900k, air cooled (NH-15U) and for 150W out of socket, are pretty fast.

My X5690:

View attachment 128998View attachment 128999View attachment 129000View attachment 129001

If you can get one for a good price(less than $400) then go for it. But remember you'll need a motherboard and ram as well.

 

[KLMR]

I remembered this topic had quite a lot of X58 lovers, but in the past few weeks I had access to brand new i9-9900k (that could have been 3900X) and I'm impressed by its performance per watt and how silent they are under a huge noctua heatsink. Having the i9 at 2 meters of the X58 makes me wonder if its time has arrived. This new generation of Ryzens, as well as consumer RAM price drop may kill the X58. Of course is still a good platform if you get a mobo for free and some 2GHz DDR3 sticks, but not at ebay prices.

Given the topic is:
Worth upgrading my i7 930 to an X5680?

And Tomgang seems to be as pleased as I am with the X58 I just wanted to update my opinion in this matter. As of 2019 I would only reserve a "new" X58 platform to play with (overclock). Or if you're very tight in budget and you have everything, just update the CPU, and of course a 150W cooler.
But speding 100€ (or 150€) in a mobo, 60€ in a CPU, 80€ or more in a cooler (cause they draaaaww power), 120€ in a 800W psu (cause you'll need some watts for the GPU), and some 100-150€ in 24GB of DDR3? I would say: don't do it. Save some money and take a 3600X instead.

 

[Vario]

The X58 with Xeon 3680 system my father runs has been pretty slow since the windows speculative execution patches. He claims it runs slower than it used to. I can't say as we didn't do any before after benchmarks. Regardless, as he is still on Win 7, he will build something new for win 10. These X58s are becoming rather dated in single thread speed since Skylake.

 

[Tomgang]

The X58 with Xeon 3680 system my father runs has been pretty slow since the windows speculative execution patches. He claims it runs slower than it used to. I can't say as we didn't do any before after benchmarks. Regardless, as he is still on Win 7, he will build something new for win 10. These X58s are becoming rather dated in single thread speed since Skylake.

Yes single core performance is rather slow on these old chips. But i just ran a CB R15 and a CPU-z bench and according to them i have not lost performance with the latest updates in windows 10. I still scores just over 1000 CB in CB R15 as i al ways have done. No mater what, its time to move on from windows 7 as Microsoft ends support and by that updates as well by januar 2020. So there are not so long time to that. Else you cut try windows 10 on your dads X58 system. It runs pretty good on my system and have run windows 10 on my pc since 2015. Also there are performance improvement from windows 7 to windows 10 even on X58. But there are off cause the question are your dad willing to offer a windows 10 licence for such an old system.

All i can say is that in windows 10, i have not exsperince performance drop with the latest updates.

 

[lexluthermiester]

The X58 with Xeon 3680 system my father runs has been pretty slow since the windows speculative execution patches.

Remove them. The chances of that system actually getting attacked using those vulnerabilities as an attack vector are smaller than a snowball's chance in a volcanic eruption.

Also there are performance improvement from windows 7 to windows 10 even on X58.

Not much of one. In the testing I've been doing for the past few days, it's been give and take in most of the benchmarks I've run. When 10 comes out ahead, it's by less than 4%. However...

But there are off cause the question are your dad willing to offer a windows 10 licence for such an old system.

... there is this if you want to upgrade;

URCDKeys Summer Special Pricing on Windows 10 Pro and Office 2019, Plus a Giveaway!

URCDKeys wants you to spend more money on your hardware, by choosing heavily discounted, genuine, globally-valid essential software for your new PC build instead. Windows 10 Pro is the operating system of choice for PC enthusiasts, and URCDKeys has it in store for as low as USD $11.17. Office...

www.techpowerup.com

$12 for a copy of Windows 10 Pro is a good deal.

 

[Tomgang]

Remove them. The chances of that system actually getting attacked using those vulnerabilities as an attack vector are smaller than a snowball's chance in a volcanic eruption.


Not much of one. In the testing I've been doing for the past few days, it's been give and take in most of the benchmarks I've run. When 10 comes out ahead, it's by less than 4%. However...

... there is this if you want to upgrade;

URCDKeys Summer Special Pricing on Windows 10 Pro and Office 2019, Plus a Giveaway!

URCDKeys wants you to spend more money on your hardware, by choosing heavily discounted, genuine, globally-valid essential software for your new PC build instead. Windows 10 Pro is the operating system of choice for PC enthusiasts, and URCDKeys has it in store for as low as USD $11.17. Office...

www.techpowerup.com

$12 for a copy of Windows 10 Pro is a good deal.

It's 4 year since i moved on from windows7 to 10. Since then, there might be a performance difference from back then to now.

12 usd for a windows 10 licence. Thats a very good price indeed. For that price i would try windows 10 on x58 for sure if i not al ready had it.

 

[Mr Bill]

Just found this forum, very informative discussion on the x58 boards and the Xeon's. I just purchased the Asus P6T Deluxe V2 with 24 gig ram and the i7 920 all in an Alienware Area 51 case like this one for
$80.00. I bought this a couple weeks ago, and I'm really surprised at the performance of this rig. So for I've only OC it to 3.7 GHz, the temps seem to be fine around 50-55C, I'm not a gamer, just enjoy some forums and surfing the web. Never bought a desktop, I've always built my own, I have a i5 4 gen rig with 8 gigs ram, and I truly believe this i7 920 rig is faster. I'm an 69 year young geek, my Dad was always into CB Radios, I guess my thing is PC's, been in the A/C business since 1984. I just wanted to introduce myself, great to be here.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

Just found this forum, very informative discussion on the x58 boards and the Xeon's. I just purchased the Asus P6T Deluxe V2 with 24 gig ram and the i7 920 all in an Alienware Area 51 case like this one for
$80.00. I bought this a couple weeks ago, and I'm really surprised at the performance of this rig. So for I've only OC it to 3.7 GHz, the temps seem to be fine around 50-55C, I'm not a gamer, just enjoy some forums and surfing the web. Never bought a desktop, I've always built my own, I have a i5 4 gen rig with 8 gigs ram, and I truly believe this i7 920 rig is faster. I'm an 69 year young geek, my Dad was always into CB Radios, I guess my thing is PC's, been in the A/C business since 1984. I just wanted to introduce myself, great to be here.

View attachment 167903

Welcome...that motherboard supports 6 core Xeons(need bios update)... get one of those and you will have a blast......

 

[dorsetknob]

Asus P6T Deluxe V2 will support X5690 i know because i have that combo