[SOLVED] Old Xeon+Mobo Build Help

[ethan206]

I've been looking into building a PC on the cheap side lately and while at first I looked at low-end consumer parts like last-gen Ryzen 3 and 5, I also noticed that on eBay there are a ton of used Xeon CPUs with lots more cores than the low-end consumer chips and can be found dirt cheap ($10-$40). I do know that Xeons are server CPUs and will have lower clock speeds than consumer chips and will be pretty bad for gaming and other stuff, but I just want to build a budget PC that'll help edit some of my video projects (1080p and 1440p). With more cores, I think those chips will be slightly better than low-end consumer chips though at the cost of clock speed. However, I'm having trouble finding Xeon CPUs with compatible motherboards. Most Xeons use server boards but people online do say that some Xeons support consumer chipsets/boards. Does anybody know a good Xeon CPU+Mobo combo for under $100 (I'll most likely be doing all the shopping on eBay by the way). Also, do Xeons require you to have ECC memory or is it only a optional thing?

 

[vapour]

those MBs are not cheap for Xeons, trade-off. Your budget in total?

 

[logainofhades]

What model Xeon?

 

[kenclaw]

If you really want to go the Xeon route, for the past few years I have ran an ASUS P6X58D-Premium mobo with a Xeon X5675 (6 core 12 thread) that easily overclocked to 4.0 GHz (actually common to OC the X5675 to 4.0 - 4.3 range easily). Add a SATA SSD and good DDR3 Triple Channel Memory and it is an extremely fast system. I used mine as a DAW workstation. The X5675 is easy to find and fairly cheap price, this processor was $1400 when they came out, you can pick up a new one for 50 bucks or so. So if you can find an ASUS P6X58D-Premium or the ASUS P6X58D-E (either one) the X5675 is a drop in fit and works great. I ran mine 24/7 for years at 4.0. I just recently built an i9 9900k system and finally retired the old workhorse, although it was still kickin when I finally shut it down, but parts of it lived on in the new system, it was a parts donor.