1366 X58 Xeon 5650

Draeger · 7 Feb 2017 at 16:37

Stu;30479893 said:
Just seen an x5660 up for Buy-it-now at < £50. Prices coming down? I need to sell off my i920 and spare Xeon before they are worth nothing!

I didn't even bother selling my trusty old i7 920 DO when I picked up my Xeon. It's sat in a box doing nothing. Was a great little clocker as well but they are worth about £20 used if you're lucky so I didn't see the point.

Kurgen · 7 Feb 2017 at 19:46

I have just picked up a Xeon X5660 , I'm a complete muppet at overclocking. I haven't put the chip in yet, but tried a xeon before I was a member here and didn't have any success. I have had my i7 920 upto 3.8, its now my 2nd pc and its running at about 3ghz. the last time I did this I watched a really old youtube video and I just followed the steps with not much clue what I was doing. I have posted 3 screen shots below of the current bios settings with the i7 in place. could anyone advise what I have to change in each one.. I think these are the main 3 areas which need to be changed.

daveyb · 7 Feb 2017 at 21:55

depends how far you want to go with it really, i think around 4.0ghz is an easy to achieve one on most chips, takes more tinkering and sometimes higher temps going past 4. if you're going 4.0 id disable all the turbo stuff/c3 states etc, multiplier 20 blck 200 and vcore about 1.33 and then if that works you can slowly drop off the vcore. over 4.0 the pll/ioh volts need boosting, tbh im not sure if the ioh/ioc slight increases even make an impact on mine but im too lazy to test.

these screens are for an x5650 4.0ghz at 1.26875v which was the lowest vcore i could get it stable and 1600mhz ram but it should be pretty similar for the x5660.

Kurgen · 7 Feb 2017 at 22:27

thanks I will try at the weekend

tris179 · 10 Feb 2017 at 13:33

Draeger;30480111 said:
I didn't even bother selling my trusty old i7 920 DO when I picked up my Xeon. It's sat in a box doing nothing. Was a great little clocker as well but they are worth about £20 used if you're lucky so I didn't see the point.

I'm the same.... I think I could be rocking my 1366 for a couple of years to come... Best machine I've ever had!

daveyb · 10 Feb 2017 at 14:28

Sold off my 920 and some spare ram to pay for the Xeon which I'll definitely be rocking for the foreseeable future. Given current DDR3 prices I'm half debating buying 24GB of ECC server RAM (seems to be around the £50/60 mark on the bay) and selling my 12GB kit of Corsair Vengeance RAM which also seems to be around that price point. Would be a slight drop in speed (1333MHz vs 1600MHz) but I feel like double the capacity would more than make up for it and definitely help out when rendering/photoshop work/etc. Gonna hopefully get something like a 980 in there and I should be good for the next few years.

ibpalle · 11 Feb 2017 at 02:55

Just bought a x5680 to replace my i7-930 which is serving as my file/media/directory/firewall server. Not doing any OC as it's on 24/7. The extra 2(4) cores are great and it runs cooler too. Great buy

I think that system is going to keep chugging along for a long time. Great platform.

jigger · 11 Feb 2017 at 14:07

Just retired my last X58 Xeon system. I will salute them all and have a memorial built in my garden.

Dave2150 · 11 Feb 2017 at 20:23

jigger;30493623 said:
Just retired my last X58 Xeon system. I will salute them all and have a memorial built in my garden.

Indeed, considering their power usage and general speed these days, the time is ripe to retire X58 systems.

I still have my i7 920 system built as my second backup PC though, think I may just keep it built for old times sake

Had it since December 2008, such a legendary chip.

dmsims · 11 Feb 2017 at 20:40

Dave2150;30494721 said:
Indeed, considering their power usage and general speed these days, the time is ripe to retire X58 systems.

So you have been reading this thread?

Kurgen · 12 Feb 2017 at 13:11

daveyb;30481200 said:
depends how far you want to go with it really, i think around 4.0ghz is an easy to achieve one on most chips, takes more tinkering and sometimes higher temps going past 4. if you're going 4.0 id disable all the turbo stuff/c3 states etc, multiplier 20 blck 200 and vcore about 1.33 and then if that works you can slowly drop off the vcore. over 4.0 the pll/ioh volts need boosting, tbh im not sure if the ioh/ioc slight increases even make an impact on mine but im too lazy to test.

these screens are for an x5650 4.0ghz at 1.26875v which was the lowest vcore i could get it stable and 1600mhz ram but it should be pretty similar for the x5660.

tried your settings pc wont boot, seems it wont boot with anything above 150BCLK

googled it and the person on the link has the exact same issue with the same board

https://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/59756-ga-ex58-ud4p-overclocking-xeon-x5670-help.html

currently running at 3ghz which is only a 200mhz over clock

ED209 · 12 Feb 2017 at 13:18

Kurgen;30495989 said:
tried your settings pc wont boot, seems it wont boot with anything above 150BCLK

googled it and the person on the link has the exact same issue with the same board

https://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/59756-ga-ex58-ud4p-overclocking-xeon-x5670-help.html

currently running at 3ghz which is only a 200mhz over clock

Whats your ram speed?

I have issues with my PC booting if I go over 1600mhz on ram.

mine is auto adjusted with the OC so I have to manually lower it down to just below 1600mhz otherwise it will not boot

Kurgen · 12 Feb 2017 at 13:29

at 3ghz the ram is only running at 1333

it is 1600mhz ram.. do I need to change the system memory multiplier, its currently 8

DragonQ · 12 Feb 2017 at 14:19

Kurgen;30495989 said:
tried your settings pc wont boot, seems it wont boot with anything above 150BCLK

googled it and the person on the link has the exact same issue with the same board

https://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/59756-ga-ex58-ud4p-overclocking-xeon-x5670-help.html

currently running at 3ghz which is only a 200mhz over clock

Some boards are a bit weird about the BCLK they like. I've definitely seen people say that their boards won't boot at say 150 MHz but work fine at 180 or 200 MHz. So maybe try a higher speed?

chickadee · 12 Feb 2017 at 15:16

Kurgen;30496032 said:
at 3ghz the ram is only running at 1333 it is 1600mhz ram.. do I need to change the system memory multiplier, its currently 8

How many sticks? 6 sticks in these boards is a disaster if your playing with clock speeds.

Kurgen · 12 Feb 2017 at 16:33

I do have 6 installed should I try with 3

ED209 · 12 Feb 2017 at 20:06

with mine I just set XMP and it runs at 1600mhz.

try with three sticks and once its going try with all in

chickadee · 12 Feb 2017 at 22:01

Kurgen;30496491 said:
I do have 6 installed should I try with 3

Yes its very very hard to get stable overclocks with 6 sticks, its been a known flaw sinse X58 was released, you can pick 6 sticks or stable/high overclocks but its rare to get both.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 12 Feb 2017 at 22:07

Its surprising how long lived the platform is - to think people would be using it 8 years later!!

loonyk · 12 Feb 2017 at 22:10

chickadee;30497345 said:
Yes its very very hard to get stable overclocks with 6 sticks, its been a known flaw sinse X58 was released, you can pick 6 sticks or stable/high overclocks but its rare to get both.

Using 6 sticks of 4Gb, got stable 4.2ghz. Bet it's not the limit, but i don't have time and decent cooling to do that. If interested can make pics of Bios settings. I'm using Gigabyte Guerrilla G1