Need advice for a relative, CPU upgrade or GPU upgrade?

[Boze]

So, to update.

I did the kiddo one better than what he and I had discussed. The IT guys at work were upgrading some servers and they took a few of the machines and did pulls on known good hardware. They had a Xeon X5690 CPU that I offered to buy off of them, but they checked with the department head and gave it to me for free.

I picked up an old EVGA X58 FTW3 motherboard off eBay and installed the X5690, bought a Corsair H110i, and I bought him three 2 x 4 GB DDR3 1866 RAM kits from Newegg (el cheapo ADATA XPG, only $65 per kit).

We gutted his old case, installed the new motherboard and RAM, found a place for the H110i radiator to go, and then booted the whole thing up. He and I googled some guides on overclocking Xeon X56xx CPUs and managed to get it within the neighborhood of 4.6 gHz.

I took his old motherboard, RAM, and processor. I don't know what I'll do with them yet, probably tinker around with an Asterisk PBX installation after I throw the guts into an old case with a PS, since I've been wanting to learn more about that.

Kiddo is tickled shitless. His games run noticeably faster. Overall system responsiveness is pretty amazing, actually. To go from a 6 core FX-6300 to the 6C/12T X5690 was just a phenomenal upgrade.

Best part is, looking at benchmarks, his setup is easily holding pace with i7-4790K setups that are overclocked, and I honestly do not think we've pushed the CPU as hard as we can. I really believe 4.8 gHz is within the realm of possibility, but he's afraid to overclock it for fear of damaging it. At this point though, Id be willing to buy him a new CPU from Amazon / eBay just to see if 4.8 is attainable.

At any rate, thanks for the advice guys.

 

[RaistlinZ]

Nice setup he's got now.

 

[AtenRa]

What motherboard was he using with the FX6300 ??

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Kiddo has heard that from me on more than one occasion.

He's 16 though, and he's got some money, and its burning a hole in his pocket. Most of us can remember what that's like. Married people with kids might be too far gone to know the sensation, but I can remember when I was 22 and the Navy handed me the first $7000 of a $20,000 enlistment bonus. I got a new 14" Sony VAIO laptop that was heavy enough to bludgeon someone to death with, but I didn't care because I could play games on it, and not long after that, my best bud and I went on a 2.5 day bender that lasted from 1600 on Friday until 0300 on Monday, so... I know where the kid's coming from.

Same thing happened to me when I was 16 and had coincidentally $350. I bought a p4/2GB/Radeon x850 system and built most of it myself.

And as an ET2, I get where you're coming from.

$400? I'd either get an i7/MoBo combo and reuse the GPU, or see if the board can take the 8320/50, 290x and a new cooler/case.

Edit: saw the update, he got hooked up!

 

[VirtualLarry]

He and I googled some guides on overclocking Xeon X56xx CPUs and managed to get it within the neighborhood of 4.6 gHz.

Can someone who has one of those rigs comment on that OC? That actually seems quite a bit higher than average to me, but I don't know 1366 OCs all that well. Seems a little weird that they would OC as well as Haswell, being 32nm and all.

 

[Venoom]

seems high to me to, I struggled just to reach 4.4GHz with my X5675, on the exact same board, I am curious to see your BIOS settings if you're willing to share them

very solid upgrade that he can easily keep for 2 or 3 years and maybe just upgrade the GPU at some point.

don't let him use the SATA "3" ports by the way, the Marvell chipset is crap.

 

[Boze]

seems high to me to, I struggled just to reach 4.4GHz with my X5675, on the exact same board, I am curious to see your BIOS settings if you're willing to share them

very solid upgrade that he can easily keep for 2 or 3 years and maybe just upgrade the GPU at some point.

don't let him use the SATA "3" ports by the way, the Marvell chipset is crap.

They're not my BIOS settings, they're his. The next time I visit them, I'll take a closer look. I've bookmarked this thread and put a sticky note on the monitor, so I'll get back with you guys eventually.