One downside of Intel canning BCLK OC on SKL

[Denithor]

If Intel is going to block SkyOC at least they should silently release X79 to some of their low budget OEM partners (example; ECS or BioStar).

E5 2670 is down to $63 (or best offer) shipped for ebay "buy it now" listings.

These former open compute server processors could be repurposed as PCs on the cheap while serving as a pipe cleaner for the Cannonlake 8C/T16 and Zen 8C/T16 mainstream CPUs.

Just buy a whole machine instead of the chip?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precis...102713?hash=item2a614d9c79:g:ua8AAOSwG-1WvgsC

Keep in mind, these are server chips, OC is not an option (unlike the previous generation Westmere chips). So there's no benefit to using a "performance" X79 board, you can't overclock anyway.

On above, drop in an SSD and GPU, install W7, upgrade to W10 and let it rip. The only potential drawback I can see is that the PSU is not standard ATX (not easy to replace) and it looks to have tiny fans (2x40mm probably) so could be noisy.

 

[hojnikb]

Even if the board uses an ICH7, which doesn't offer AHCI mode, so no NCQ on the SSD? The ASMedia does offer AHCI and NCQ.

Plus, the mobo only has two SATA ports, and if I add an SSD to the mix, along with the HDD (keep it for storage), and DVD drive, that's three SATA devices and only two ports.

It's still a third party solution, that has to through chipsets pcie (slow).
Besides, as long as trim works (which works, because you dont need ahci for trim) you should be fine.

Extra sata card is just not worth it (to slow of an system to benefit from faster speeds), unless you're running out of sata ports. But then again, grabbing a ide dvd solves that.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It's still a third party solution, that has to through chipsets pcie (slow).
Besides, as long as trim works (which works, because you dont need ahci for trim) you should be fine.

If you don't have a graphics card, or multiple GPU slots, you can of course hook it up to PCIe lanes from the CPU for better performance.

Some boards dislike connecting anything other then graphics cards in those slots, so YMMV.

Extra sata card is just not worth it (to slow of an system to benefit from faster speeds), unless you're running out of sata ports. But then again, grabbing a ide dvd solves that.

On any halfway modern system, you need a 3rd party controller to even have a PATA connector.

 

[hhhd1]

@VL

When I had my E2140 1.6GHz, I used to run it at 2.4ghz, but when I gave it to a family member, I set it to 2.1ghz, to avoid any OC'ing issues, while still getting free performance as you say.

I then upgraded to e2160 1.8ghz @2.6ghz.

(all OC'ing done with stock cooler and cheap thermal paste)

I buy cheap stuff too , when i bought the e2140 new, it was the maximum I can afford, and it was good enough for everything.

 

[VirtualLarry]

@VL

When I had my E2140 1.6GHz, I used to run it at 2.4ghz, but when I gave it to a family member, I set it to 2.1ghz, to avoid any OC'ing issues, while still getting free performance as you say.

I then upgraded to e2160 1.8ghz @2.6ghz.

(all OC'ing done with stock cooler and cheap thermal paste)

I buy cheap stuff too , when i bought the e2140 new, it was the maximum I can afford, and it was good enough for everything.

Yeah, my first C2D rigs, my twin gaming rigs, were E2140 CPUs, one clocked at 3.2, the other at 2.8 because it didn't like 3.2. I did distributed-computing on them, they ran around 80-85C constantly for years. Never glitched that I remember (once I downclocked the "problem" chip a little bit).

I had some X1950Pro cards to go in them. Went through several PSUs, mostly because of forum dislike for the ThermalTake TR430 PSUs I had in there. Finally settled on some Antec VP-450 PSUs, when I had upgraded the CPUs to Q9300 chips, overclocked from 2.5 to 3.0. Those soldiered on for a number of years, until finally, one of them hardlocked while overclocked and running DC. They still run OK at stock speeds. I don't know if the problem is the PSUs, CPUs, or mobos. They're all getting older. Didn't feel like throwing money at the issue.