www.aliexpress.com/item/4000270150022.html
LC-Power LC-CC-120 Cosmo Cool
Sapphire Pulse RX 570 8GB
Seagate ST2000DM008
Thermaltake TR2 S 700W
Sharkoon VS4-W
ok, so, here's what i got. i found this kit to be the most reasonable in price-performance (8 cores, 16 threads, 16 gb, 1600 mhz) and because it was on sale when i got it even a little bit cheaper. i watched a whole lot of videos about different xeons for gaming, but the e5 2689 really seemed to be something special out of all the other common xeons for gaming, since it used to be an oem-only cpu and was never really available to consumers until now. apart from that some other xeons do also have their advantages for gaming with very low prices and high single core frequency like 1620, 1650, 2620 and 2650. they are all really nice, be they v1, 2, 3, 4 or ddr3 / 4, doesnt really matter, depending on what you are willing to pay and some are unlocked by default like 1620 v1 and 1650 v2. even the cheapest of them perform great in games.
checkout this dudes channel for some really nice comparisons:
English: On my channel I am testing different computer hardware and software. Українська: На цьому каналі я тестую різноманітні комп'ютерні залізяки та прогр...
www.youtube.com
it arrived in about two weeks and was sufficiently packed. regarding board components at first glance i really dont see any differences from lets say a regular motherboard since all our tech comes from china / taiwan anyway. their product engineering is highly advanced and these people clearly know what they are doing.
if i had known before there was such a thing, id never bought an am4 platform. the bios may look a bit old, but it sure is perfectly optimized, structured and performing. i plugged everything together and it worked perfectly on the first attempt. latest win10 and automatic driver update installed and are working perfectly, too. i remember a video though, were one guy said that official intel drivers bricked his board, which could well be since some of the boards components are salvaged and mixed together. but windows and its built in drivers are installing and working perfectly. i would stay away from installing any additional drivers and so on.
there was also talk about some bios options being hidden until optimized defaults are loaded. my board has the latest bios version X79GA00E from march 2020. one can clearly tell they do improve their product steadily. it also has got 1 year warranty, which is really nice for used parts and they are well tested before. their factories and equipment look really solid and legit. my board is revision 1.21, the latest one seems to be 1.3, where they changed the layout and added a dip switch to the m2 slot to allow for sata m2s. revisions before that would only allow for nvme m2s and wrong dip will BURN the motherboard. LOL, so be careful with that. my rev. 1.21 doesnt have the dip and it could only run m2 nvme / pcie, not m2 sata.
i didnt encounter any issues at all apart from one crash due to probable overheating. the gpu may be a little bit too close really to the cpu cooler. i picked the e5 2689 because well its not really unlocked but there was something different compared with other cpus since its an oem-exclusive cpu and not available for consumer. theres no need to tweak or overclock it, even with everything set to power saving its boosting well on all cores with 3,3ghz and above @ ~53°C and it still has huge performance in games.
windows hibernation does not work on probably most of these combos.
other cons are, theres no manual, no driver cd, but you get support from the seller. had to google for the proper pin setup, too. its the same for most boards from china or with little difference. green stands for power led, red for hdd led, black for power switch and blue for reset switch.
and heres some pics from the rig, rip cable management and preferring an open case for "best cooling properties" x'). the gpu gets too damn hot with the case closed i believe. radeon chill on 60-70fps helped and fans are not even running ingame, but i dont want to risk any overheat. everything was tuned on power saving and low temps, gaming is still butterly smooth. if you have some money i would recommend for a board with 32gb quad channel and fast ram. there are better boards than this called x79 deluxe / turbo / premium / p or p3. the ones from jingsha look pretty nice.
jingsha x79p:
www.aliexpress.com/item/4000739689858.html
snowman cooler:
www.aliexpress.com/item/4001048943147.html
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