Low Budget LGA1366 Xeon Overclocking fun

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Hi folks

New to the forum but not new to the world of building PCs and overclocking. Built my first PC in 1994 and overclocked it - a Cyrix soldered on board 486 clone that I ran at 40Mhz instead of the stock 33. After that followed a long line of self built and overclocked systems such as a Cyrix 586-133 running at 160, a dual Pentium 75 running at 100, an SL32A Celeron 300A running at 464, a Duron 600... you get the picture.

Since the hot running Netburst days put me off overclocking and secondhand ex-corporate hardware became easily available I've been using HP workstations bought cheap and upgraded, I don't remember all of them, but there was an XW6400 with dual 604 Xeons I was fond of, currently using a z400 with an X5687 and 24Gb of triple channel DDR3 to run Linux Mint 20 and it's stable as a rock and still powerful enough to do all my productivity tasks.

However, I have a hankering to do some building and overclocking and would like to have a Windows 7 system to play a few old games like Freelancer, Football Manager and Civ 5, that I used to play until a couple of years ago when I finally got sick of Micros**t bloatware and switched to Linux.

The monitor I intend to use is a 32" 1080p LCD TV, so the graphical requirements are nothing too major.

My current thoughts are something like this:

Cheap secondhand LGA1366 X58 motherboard such as an ASUS P6T (the Chinese junk boards made from recycled e-waste and bottom of the barrel quality components don't interest me, they don't have triple channel memory and the OC potential with their dodgy VRMs is probably non-existent)

Cheap ATX case

Secondhand AIO water cooler such as a Corsair H60

12800E ECC unbuffered RAM (already have a few assorted 2Gb and 4Gb sticks of this)

Cheap secondhand LGA1366 Xeon, one of the 6 cores with HT.

Now, it is in the choice of Xeon that I am in a quandry. My understanding is that there are basically two approaches to overclocking on X58, firstly by increasing BCLK and reducing the RAM multiplier; secondly by changing the multiplier, which requires an unlocked Xeon.

But which Xeons are unlocked? I have been able to find out that the W3680 and W3690 are, but those chips are still costing 40 quid or more from the Far East.

Other, much cheaper options - the E5640, E5645 and E5649 are all 6c/12t chips but have a 5.86MT/s QPI, which is less than ideal. Same goes for the L5638 and L5640 low power chips, they are 6c/12t but they use a 5.86 QPI speed.

Why is the QPI speed an issue? Well, the X56xx series have a 6.4MT/s QPI and it seems silly to settle for less. 6c/12t chips are the X5650, X5660, X5670, X5675, X5680 and X5690.

So, I'm thinking one of the cheapest 6c/12t, 6.4 MT/s QP option is my best bet - an X5650, X5660 or X5670, depending on what I can find at what price. These have locked multipliers as far as I'm aware, so it's a case of increasing the BCLK to overclock them, which is why I will use 12800 RAM instead of 10600 - it will run a bit faster so I might get away with more aggressive setting of the memory speed divider.

I'm just looking for advice from people who are familiar with the X58 platform and the Xeons for it, to make sure what I propose is going to work and spot any pitfalls I might have overlooked. Issues I foresee include VRM and southbridge cooling, so I expect to have to add some heatsinks and airflow to those.
 
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I've got a Gigabyte X58-UD3r Mobo with a Xeon X5670 that I've recently upgraded and they're sitting doing nothing. The mobo was bought second hand and the ethernet port doesn't work, board is generally not a mint one by any means, not looking for much for them if you can make use of them. My son is still running the same setup OC to 4GHz as I bought the Xeon's as a matched pair. I'll post on MM if you're interested, I don't normally sell stuff as I usually have my money's worth out of it before upgrading. I can screenie the overclock settings when I get home. I've found RAM voltage could be an issue as I was/am overclocking 1333mhz to I think 1600mhz on the ram. By no means an expert, all my overclocking settings were from google research and testing what worked and what didn't.
 
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I've got a Gigabyte X58-UD3r Mobo with a Xeon X5670 that I've recently upgraded and they're sitting doing nothing. The mobo was bought second hand and the ethernet port doesn't work, board is generally not a mint one by any means, not looking for much for them if you can make use of them. My son is still running the same setup OC to 4GHz as I bought the Xeon's as a matched pair. I'll post on MM if you're interested, I don't normally sell stuff as I usually have my money's worth out of it before upgrading. I can screenie the overclock settings when I get home. I've found RAM voltage could be an issue as I was/am overclocking 1333mhz to I think 1600mhz on the ram. By no means an expert, all my overclocking settings were from google research and testing what worked and what didn't.

He's only got six months and 999 posts to go! :D
 
Soldato
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Don't bother getting a case, if you want to oc x58 properly you need a test bench. Also a 120mm aio isn't going to get you very far on a 6 core chip, if you are just doing it for fun get a 4c4t or 4c8t or a bigger cooler.

I find the Xeons overclock very well most of them do over 200bclk but you also want a multi around 20+ so you don't run into a motherboard bclk wall before the chip is at full speed.
 
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The X5675 is usually a good overclocker with 4.5-4.6ghz not uncommon.

Ram is easy enough if it's 1600mhz as you just set bclk to 200 and drop the ram multplier to X8 so 200x8 1600 etc so you can overclock the CPU while still keeping the ram at its rated speed.

When cranking up bclk just set QPI link speed to the lowest setting but not "slow mode" if your board has that option.

QPI/CPU VTT voltage keep at or under 1.35. This needs raising as bclk increases.
CPU vcore up to 1.4~1.45 if you have good cooling.

Uncore can be set from 1.5-2x ram speed so for 1600 then 3200 ect although you can push it a bit more but it could cause instability over 3600.

These have locked multipliers as far as I'm aware, so it's a case of increasing the BCLK to overclock them.

The multipliers upwards are locked but you can use a lower multiplier with a higher bclk, you can also use the turbo multiplier but some boards such as the PT6 can throttle if you do.

Just how much heat do 6 cores produce above 4 cores?

The 6 core Xeons actually run cooler the 4 core i7s from my experience as they're server chips so they have the best silicon. A hyper 212 should be easily able to handle a 4.2ghz OC although you may want something bigger if you plan to go for 4.4+.
 
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Cheers Joxeon, that's exactly the sort of info I need. I'm toying with the idea of getting a W3680 and a Noctua air cooler for my z400 and using XTU to OC it rather than do a new build. One of the things that puts me of though is the lack of any heatsinks on the VRM of the z400 and the vertically mounted mosfets that mea I can install something like one of the Thermalright VRM coolers.
 
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I have no room on my desk for a test bench and don't see the need for one, why do you say I need one?

Just how much heat do 6 cores produce above 4 cores?
Fair enough. Just much easier to oc on a test bench because you can get to the cmos jumper or battery.

A 6 core produces about 50% more heat than the 4 core funnily enough. You might find it hard to max out a 6 core. Mine often pull 300-400w
 
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Yeah, I wish I had a dedicated workbench area for messing with PCs, but sadly I don't. If I did, I'd definitely follow your suggestion on using a test bench rather than a case.

What 6 core do you have that pulls 300-400W? The Westmere 6 cores are 130W TDP.
 
Don
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Cheap secondhand LGA1366 X58 motherboard such as an ASUS P6T
Not really such a thing as a cheap 1366 motherboard - outside of the chinese rubbish you've mentioned

12800E ECC unbuffered RAM (already have a few assorted 2Gb and 4Gb sticks of this)
Not sure ECC unbuffered is a benefit when trying to overclock
 
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Yeah, I'm not seeing any cheap 1366 boards on ebay other than the Chinese e-waste specials that aren't capable of overlocking.

Unbuffered ECC isn't a detriment when overclocking as far as I'm aware, lots of people seem to have used it with success in conjunction with cheap Xeons.
 
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Yeah, I'm not seeing any cheap 1366 boards on ebay other than the Chinese e-waste specials that aren't capable of overlocking.

Unbuffered ECC isn't a detriment when overclocking as far as I'm aware, lots of people seem to have used it with success in conjunction with cheap Xeons.
There are some good deals on X58 which come up from time to time.
 
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Fair enough. Just much easier to oc on a test bench because you can get to the cmos jumper or battery.

A 6 core produces about 50% more heat than the 4 core funnily enough. You might find it hard to max out a 6 core. Mine often pull 300-400w
I would disagree with this as the 4 core i7s are generally on the 45nm vs the westmere 32nm which is much more efficient and the Xeons are specially binned silicon for the server market where efficiency and heat output are important factors.

I replaced an i7 950 which at 4ghz would hit around 70c with a X5670 which would hit around 70c at 4.4ghz with the same cooler.
 
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Please keep in mind these old X58 systems lower speed SATA with a couple faster SATA at best, don't' have USB3, bluetooth, etc. It's main reason I've shelved my 2x 980s and [email protected]. That said, fast SATA and USB3 PCIe cards do work.
 
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I would disagree with this as the 4 core i7s are generally on the 45nm vs the westmere 32nm which is much more efficient and the Xeons are specially binned silicon for the server market where efficiency and heat output are important factors.

I replaced an i7 950 which at 4ghz would hit around 70c with a X5670 which would hit around 70c at 4.4ghz with the same cooler.
yes the 45nm are hotter, but i'm taking about a 4c8t 32nm vs 6c12t 32nm xeons.

Yeah, I wish I had a dedicated workbench area for messing with PCs, but sadly I don't. If I did, I'd definitely follow your suggestion on using a test bench rather than a case.

What 6 core do you have that pulls 300-400W? The Westmere 6 cores are 130W TDP.
Fair enough, i guess you can leave the side panel off while you get it dialed in.

Any of them can pull 300-400w, the tdp is at stock base clock not overclocked. to max them out on ambient you need about 1.5v, obviously you are going to be limited by cooling, so for overclocking fun the 4c8t will be better as you can go higher on the same cooler. If you want to use the pc for multi thread the obviously the 6 core will be faster no matter how much extra you can oc the 4c8t.
W3670
X5650
X5660
X5675
X5680
those all oc high enough without being limited by the motherboard or bclk on ambient cooling

i also have E5645 and L5640 which were limited by bclk before i ran out of cooling.
 
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