xeon e5-1660 v3 overclockable?

[Gallo8894]

So, I saw a good deal on a mint condition Xeon e5-1660 v3 (8core/16 thread haswell-e) on ebay. I did some research on this cpu and was under the impression that e5 16xx v3 cpus were unlocked. I decided to pull the trigger on this deal as there was only one left and had free expedited shipping. After ordering the cpu i came across a thread on some forum and there was a person who bought a similar cpu (e5 1650 v3). They mentioned that they couldn't overclock it at all, not even a small bump on the bclk. So yea im a bit worried that i cant increase the speed now. Anyone know if these cpu,s are overclockable? I'll be using a evga micro 2 x99 motherboard and 24gb's of ddr4 2666mhz corsair memory.

 

[iamacow]

No. No XEON is overclockable. Simple. Fact.

 

[dextermat]

Don't want to say iamacow is lying but see the thread here:

Xeon x3220

Basically some xeon are overclockable

Xeon E5 V3

 

[iamacow]

Technically only some confidential CPUs have a unlocked multiplier because they aren't retail. All Xeons have locked multiplier, so easy overclocking that people do with auto settings and basically only knowing the basics, you can't do. You CAN raise the FSB and overclock that way, but it isn't very unstable. You have to manually set the memory too with a raise in FSB, otherwise it will run high and memory controller won't handle it. I played around with a E5-2670 and got it to 3.2Ghz and 3.8Ghz Turbo. Wasn't worth the trouble. After all, Xeons workstations are usually meant for stability, not balls to the wall overclocks even though they are the same chips as the consumer chips.

So yes you can overclock, but you its not the easy overclocking everyone is use to, you will spend more time tweaking voltage, playing around with memory and setting FSB than actually using the CPU. Than it will still crash randomly after a 24hr stability test.

 

[jr9]

You have a little bit of wiggle room with CPUs with locked multipliers but it's not really overclocking more like dinking around for marginal performance gains. Good for killing time. Buy a i7 k chip if you want overclocking and lots of cores/threads. Xeon is generally used for workstations and servers.