What's the current Golden Child in the Xeon lineup for a home computer?

[nroslm]

I know we've had a few Xeon's over the years that people have used for desktops that people buy used and enjoy the benefits of cores and cache.

My question is then are there any current or semi current Xeons that prove useful on the dekstop?

To clarify I'm not looking for PURE MAX SUPER GAMING but I want to play games. I also want to stream and render, I also use a lot of Adobe photography kit. Is there anything Xeon on the used market that might suit me?

Also note this will be a secondary computer in partial use by my partner. I currently use a 7700k for pure Photoshop performance so I don't need perfection but just something that can serve well in rendering and in batch process jobs and that can hopefully be used by my partner to play a game or two with me.

 

[13thmonkey]

why xeon?

 

[nroslm]

@13thmonkey

because i've seen alot of cool older gen systems. Systems with copious amounts of capability, if i can tie a strong proc to some decent ram I can use that for workloads that don't tie up my system. Again things like rendering, batch processing and the like. I'd rather go cheap and go a few gens older then buy a Ryzen or Coffee Lake. It should be self evident what I'm doing here. Threads and ram are what I am after, its a workhorse computer that will be used here and there for gaming. I know we've been able to pick up old Xeons that fill the roll, so what is the current xeon people are looking at for such a use case?

 

[13thmonkey]

I'm not sure you'll get the bargain you are looking for.
This is a skylake Xeon: https://www.ebuyer.com/826252-exdisplay-intel-xeon-e3-1270-v5-3-60-ghz-socket-lga1151-8mb-cache-retail-ebr1-bx80662e31270v5
This is the similar i5: https://www.ebuyer.com/718336-intel-core-i5-6600k-3-5ghz-socket-1151-boxed-processor-bx80662i56600k
The i5 is cheaper.

I seem to recall some locking down of platforms occurred around the time of haswell, so only the 'xeon mobos' would work with xeon, there's a chipset difference.

So you might want to start looking for i7 4970's from people have have upgraded to ddr4 platforms, I doubt there is much in it cost wise. The loss of the igpu doesn't really influence cost.

 

[guanyu210379]

If you are looking for Xeon as a cheaper alternative to I7 7700.
Well, the price benefit is no longer like on the older generation.

As I bought my e3-1231V3 it was almost €100 cheaper than an I7 4790k, 3-4 years ago.
I have never seen a price benefit like this anymore, especially since Hasswell.


If you are looking for an upgrade from your I7 7700k, there is practically almost none.
Only going for coffee lake is actually possible.

 

[milsorgen]

Why Xeon? Cores and Cache mostly and then value.

Some are looking at 10 core chips from modern proc families for less than $220 on ebay.

I am most certainly not looking for an alt to an i7 7/8700k, I'm looking for a usable and potent secondary rig for my kids and wife that might also be useful for me in many threaded applications.

Any real advice for OP and me?

 

[13thmonkey]

Care to share links?

 

[guanyu210379]

If you need threads, lots of em, and if you want it to be relative low cost, AMD is your answer.
Ryzen 7 1700 has 8 cores with the total of 16 threads.
If you need more, go for Threadripper.

Just keep in mind, Intel I7 8700 is also not bad either, with it's 6 cores and 12 threads.

Hunting Xeons on eBay is really luck-dependent.

 

[13thmonkey]

So I found one of these quite quickly, sandy-EP, 10 cores, £150. 2.2 Ghz to 3.0, so probably averaging out at 2.5 in windows.

https://ark.intel.com/products/64584/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2660-20M-Cache-2_20-GHz-8_00-GTs-Intel-QPI

2 socket only, so I think you need 2 of them, and dual socket mobo to go with it, and at least 4 memory sticks, preferably 8 to get quad channel.

And sandybridge was 2012-15, so between 3 and 6 years old depending on how you count it.

This seems to agree with needing 2 sockets: https://serverfault.com/questions/787313/intel-xeon-processors-difference-between-2s-4s-and-s2s-s4s-scalability

Be aware of socket compatibility 2011 is not always 2011. https://www.anandtech.com/show/7773/intels-three-versions-of-socket-2011-not-compatible