Xeon CPU and LGA1366 question. Best choice?

[Helgaiden]

So a friend of mine offered to sell me his i7-950 for $40 when he upgrades in a few months. My little brother has been riding on outdated components for a long time and his current setup is past trying to keep relevant. First revision of the hand me downs he got was an Athlon xp 2500+ barton with 1gb RAM and radeon 9500 pro, that turned into an Athlon 64 x2 5200+ with 2gb RAM and a GTX 460, then finally a Core2Quad Q6600 with 6gb RAM and a GTX 560. If we play Battlefield 4, he can do alright but Division and Siege are a little more out of reach (as well as any modern title for the most part). So when i heard my friend was upgrading, bells were going off in my head again especially since my brother's birthday is soon. I'm saving for a wedding and other major things so i cant blow it out for him, however i can still try. A failed attempt at sticking a Xeon X5470 in his system brought me back into the Xeon ideas again when my friend's LGA 1366 i7 was mentioned. He claims his motherboard has problems so that mobo is out. Turns out, there aren't really good 1366 mobos available out there for any semblance of "affordable."

So onwards to ebay i went. This little guy has piqued my interest.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201587306172?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
HP Z400 Workstation ATX Motherboard for $50! I believe it is an x58 chipset as well. And it looks like triple channel memory.

So, the idea of putting a xeon in entered my mind once again. My little brother would primarily be gaming on this machine. So i set off to gather information from ebay about different Xeons for the socket. I got this little list (the processors above the x5687 are 6-core)

1366 Xeon
W3690 $185-$200. 9531 passmark
W3680 $120-$130. 9358
X5690 $275-$300. 9211
X5680 $150-$175. 8983
X5675 $100-$120. 8582
X5670 $75-$88. 8107
X5650 $60-$75. 7601
X5687 x4 $88-$90. 7195
X5677 x4 $60-$70. 7020
W3580 x4 $55-$60. 6486
W3570 $46-$75. 6256
W5590 $50-$58. 6181
Core i7-950 $40. 5641


and for comparison, the i7-3770k in my main rig scores 9569 for that benchmark (all numbers from cpubenchmark.net).

So then my question is, would those Xeons work with that motherboard? And if so, which would you guys suggest would be best to go with it?
Affordability considered, it looks like the bottom end would start with the x5677 but then the higher end would be maybe the w3680 with the x5670 in the middle? Would the 6 cores be overkill here and go for the higher clocked quad core like the x5687 at 3.6ghz? (the fastest of the 6 cores on the list is 3.47ghz).

any feedback appreciated! Thanks all.

 

[clutchc]

I think the best thing to do would be to pose that question on the HP forum if you don't get a final answer here. HP may have certain micro code that limits which CPUs can be recognized. My Dell workstation has a Xeon W3670 in it. At stock speed, it can keep up with my OC'ed FX-8350 gaming! I even tried it with my GTX 980 and it blew the FX-8350 out of the water in the Firestrike benchmark. So the W3680 should be just that tiny bit better. The X5xxx CPUs are generally designed for dual CPU boards, so I'm not sure if that would be an issue with the single CPU board you are looking at or not (because it is an HP proprietary design)

 

[Helgaiden]

Found a board with a Xeon 3550 and 6gb of ram for $100 after shipping and taxes on ebay i think my brother will be happy with. Hell of a deal i think. Thanks all.