Xeon L5639 Overclocking on X58

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scannall

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2012
1,944
1,638
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X58 days are numbered. I switched out my old rig a couple weeks ago for a Gateway tower with I5 & promptly dropped in an E3 1280v2 Xeon I got for cheap, and this is how it runs stock (compared to your score in pic). It sips about 46watts under load & I'm using stock Gateway HSF.
X58compare.jpg


No heat build up in corner of my desk anymore & PC cost me less than a 6600k.. :)
X58 stuff for sale.
My x5660 rig goes into retirement this summer when I build a R7 rig. It's been a faithful beast for a long time now. Too long really.
 

Burpo

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2013
4,223
473
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Yeah, after I sell off pieces & parts, I'll prolly go with cheaper R5.. Would be all I ever need.
 

scannall

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2012
1,944
1,638
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Yeah, after I sell off pieces & parts, I'll prolly go with cheaper R5.. Would be all I ever need.
My guest bedroom could use a computer. So I'll return it to stock clocks, toss a 1050 ti in it and call it a day.
 

ClockHound

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
1,108
214
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X58 days are numbered. I switched out my old rig a couple weeks ago for a Gateway tower with I5 & promptly dropped in an E3 1280v2 Xeon I got for cheap, and this is how it runs stock (compared to your score in pic). It sips about 46watts under load & I'm using stock Gateway HSF.
X58compare.jpg


No heat build up in corner of my desk anymore & PC cost me less than a 6600k.. :)
X58 stuff for sale.

Oh noooes.... what about your X58 FOREVER Campaign? Oh...man, gonna have a closet full of bumper stickers now.

Burpo, you were the one who told me the more heat generated, the better the render. ;-)

When the 16 core Zen+ chip arrive my X58 render systems may go into semi-retirement as dev servers. The 56xx/X58 combos have been the best computing value for cheapskates like me.
 
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Makaveli

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2002
4,715
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I'm looking to see how the Skylake X turns out and the 4 channel ryzen system coming out one of those will by my next upgrade I think.

X58 has had a fantastic run.

I may shift it into HTPC and retire the socket 939 opteron that is currently in that box. Or a PFsense box..
 

JWade

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
3,273
197
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www.heatware.com
I just picked up a complete i7 920 system with 24" monitor for $200 (12gb ram, 500gb hard drive, older NVidia 1gb card in it), threw in an x5660 xeon and 6gb more ram to fill the slots, went into the bios and selected easy OC of 3.6ghz, and it of course is running it no problems, total investment into this machine is $230 and WOW, I now see why so many people like the x58's.
 

jforce321

Member
Feb 18, 2015
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I had a feeling that ryzen would mark the end of x58 considering you can get a 6c/12t chip with 6800k performance for 210-220 bucks retail basically. It'll be sad to see this place die down more than it already had.

I came here about 2 and a half years ago and got burpo's help with my horrible es sample x5650 that required like 1.4v to hit 4.2ghz lol. He also sold me one of his x58 ud3r boards back when my p6t deluxe died out.

I just sold off my girlfriends x5660 system (110$ cpu/mobo combo) earlier in the year for 210 bucks after fees and threw the ram in a ddr3 b150 board with a i5 6500 since I got the board for 5 bucks from a pricing error + rebate thing.

Obviously she didnt need the power that a x5660 offered in terms of multicore so this was a good oppertunity to make some money off selling the platform and downsizing her to matx in the process.
 

kelk_welly

Junior Member
Jan 20, 2017
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Not too long ago I purchased an X5650 because of Burpo. I'm actually looking to upgrade my CPU once more, but perhaps I might be pushing it.

So far I've looked at the W3680, X5680, and the 980X, but I'm unsure of what to choose. Any insight?

Or I could buy a water cooler instead and push the X5650 further...:rolleyes:
 

Burpo

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2013
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When running X5650 @ 4+ghz, there's not much difference going with the higher binned chips, accept you don't have to push them as hard. I'd keep running the X5650 & save up for a new system soon..
 

Gonzo38

Junior Member
Dec 3, 2017
4
0
1
Hello everyone !
Don't know if this is the best place to come for my problem, but I'll give it a shot as I feel experience is flowing around here ;-)

TL,DR version : is that normal for a X5650 to have 10°C difference between cores at idle, and almost 20°C when stressed (one goes 69°C, another one 86°C) ?

Longer version :
I've been shadowing this thread for almost a year now and finally got myself a X5650 to cope with my sabertooth x58 a few months ago.
I've had a Corsair H60 for a few years and this completes the rig. With Burpo's config here (modified like he said to 20 coeff, dropped cpu voltage and all) (huge thanks again for sharing your settings) :
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/xeon-l5639-overclocking-on-x58.2335636/page-64#post-36707876
I managed to get an efficient 3.9 GHz that was suiting my needs very well. OCCT tests maxed the temperature to ~60 °C on the 'worst' core, some of them were like ~50°C, everything was running smoothly, with idle at ~30 °C.

BUT (yeah because though I'm very grateful to you guys, I'm also here because I've had a little bit of a problem :-( ).

I needed to change my case to a bigger one and during the Mobo/stuff transfer to the new case looks like something went wrong. Only thing I had changed was the CH60 fan at the top of the case instead of the back.
At boot, idle was like 50°C. Started OCCT and bang, test stopped after like 30 seconds (I had set a 85°C max and one of the cores hit it fairly quickly). When just surfing the web, the temperature was rising regularly, and after 20 minutes of browsing I was at 95 °C !! So well, I figured out there was a problem. Here are the steps I made :
- reput the CH60 at the back of the case instead of the top of the case (maybe the liquid flow was working better this way ? Or the pump not strong enough ?)
- moving around the alim stuff, like connectors to others pins etc
- move a case fan
- then figured such a big diff was a CPU problem, I removed the cooler, cleant the CPU and reput thermal paste.

I had other problems because in the way I f***ed-up my BIOS but well, here is now the situation, with the same BIOS config than Burpo's :
Run idle is 32°C to 40°C depending on the cores
Going OCCT stressing makes some cores jump to 85°C after 3 minutes, while some others are at 68°C...

My concern now is that I have a difference of almost ~20°C between cores. Core #8 is 68°C max, and Core #10 and Core #0 are going crazy to 86°C. Even at idle they have like 5°C peaks every 10 seconds. Is that normal ?
Another concern of course is the ~40°C idle versus the ~30°C idle. What did I do wrong ?
- bad thermal pasting, should do it again ? How ?
- cooler is f***ed up, need to change it ?
- CPU is f***ed, need to change it ?

Thanks a lot if you read it all and for any advice because I'm a bit lost right now :-(
 

XavierMace

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2013
4,307
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First return it to stock clocks and test. Assuming CH60 is referring to a Corsair H60, is the pump running? Is the software installed for it?
 

ClockHound

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
1,108
214
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Intel does state a 10 degree +/- gradient in the sensor specs. What is the temp spread between coolest and hottest cores when running stock?

The real problem sounds like the cooler to me. The H60 does not have enough rad area to cool an overclocked Xeon - with a perfect mount - and it sounds like the H60 surface contact to the IHS is not close to a perfect. You could lap the IHS and H60, but still have the small area.

Liquid cooling depends on large rad area to be effective. A 240mm rad is the minimum ime.

A low cost air cooler will offer better performance than that little AIO. At under $50 the Scythe Fuma, Thermalright Macho or Cryorig H5 provide much cooler temps and lower noise than the H60. I would even take a Hyper 212 or Cryorig H7 over the H60.

My 5675 at 4.4Ghz with a D15 tops out at 60c on full load in IBT. Hottest to coolest core gradient is about 3 degrees.
 

Gonzo38

Junior Member
Dec 3, 2017
4
0
1
OK, based on your suggestions, I'll first downgrade back to the stock clock, launch tests and come back to you.
Maybe the cooling has gone crazy, but I can't hear if the pump is working because it used to be quite silent, and even my fan is making more noise. One liquid tube is hot and the other one feels 'fresh' so I guess it's working ? RPM monitoring shows goods figures.

@XavierMace yes you got it right. No software needed at all.
@ClockHound The thing that bothers me here is that, despite having a not-that-good-cooling, during 9 months I got a perfect rig with top 60°C when running at full speed with OCCT testing. And bam all of a sudden, shi**y perfs.
 

Gonzo38

Junior Member
Dec 3, 2017
4
0
1
So, switched back to "stock" stuff in BIOS (2666 MHz, FSB 133 MHz).
- Idle : coolest core is 26°C, hottest is 34°C.
- 3 minutes OCCT stress test : coolest 39°C, hottest 48°C.

Does that help, doc ?

Did again a stress test with Overclocking switched on, noticed that the air coming out the cooling fan is not that hot, is that "normal" ?
 

ClockHound

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
1,108
214
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Maybe the pump is failing in the H60 or some impurity is clogging the loop after the move. As a sealed AIO it's tough to drain and refill.

This is why I prefer good air cooling. If the air gets clogged, I just add more.

Do you have another cooler to swap in?
 

Gonzo38

Junior Member
Dec 3, 2017
4
0
1
I used to have air cooling, something like a Scythe Mugen 2, but it was so huge that it took all the case and I threw it away when I had to change my Mobo because I was sick of it... I chose the H60 because it was light and my case looked more airy.

Anyway the only cooler I still have it the i7 920 stock cooler that might be somewhere in my basement.
 

PontiacGTX

Senior member
Oct 16, 2013
383
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91
I was looking through ebay and saw some cheap dual LGA1366 mobo so I got some OEM mobo I wonder if anyone here owns one?
Xyratex HS-1235
 

Burpo

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2013
4,223
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Bad choice for an LGA1366 board. It has proprietary modules for everything, including SATA, SAS & Raid controllers. It supports 7 PCI lanes, but they're limited to PCIe x8, and require adapters. The Board is completely obsolete as far as support goes, and it will NOT fit in a traditional desktop case. There's no manual available & I see only 2 SATA connections. There are reasons why these are so cheap..

You can look thru the users guide here if you scroll down..
https://www.scribd.com/doc/93096468...2E-RS-1220-E3-XPN-Installation-and-User-Guide
$_57.jpg
 
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SolarAxix

Junior Member
Jun 16, 2014
12
0
61
Anyone know if if's possible to run 16 GB ECC DIMMs in an X58 w/ a Xeon X5650? Has anyone tried it or is running it? I've search around, but other than a few post saying it should work, I've not been able to find anything specific.

The Intel X5600 datasheet on page 57 seems to say that the CPU will support up to 16 GB RDIMMs: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/w...ents/datasheets/xeon-5600-vol-2-datasheet.pdf
This page from Kingston seems to say that X5600 series CPUs support 16 GB DIMMs: https://www.kingston.com/en/business/server_solutions/best_practices/maximizing_performance

If so, I could put 6x16 GB DIMMs for a total of 96 GB.

One thing I notice is that most (all?) 16 GB RDIMMs are 2Rx4. Would that be an issue?

Thanks in advance!
 

Shippy

Golden Member
Oct 15, 1999
1,830
2
81
I want to say no re: 2Rx4. I tested this a couple of years ago and found that only 2Rx8 sticks would work.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/xeon-l5639-overclocking-on-x58.2335636/page-33#post-35716726
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/xeon-l5639-overclocking-on-x58.2335636/page-111#post-38681439


Anyone know if if's possible to run 16 GB ECC DIMMs in an X58 w/ a Xeon X5650? Has anyone tried it or is running it? I've search around, but other than a few post saying it should work, I've not been able to find anything specific.

The Intel X5600 datasheet on page 57 seems to say that the CPU will support up to 16 GB RDIMMs: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/w...ents/datasheets/xeon-5600-vol-2-datasheet.pdf
This page from Kingston seems to say that X5600 series CPUs support 16 GB DIMMs: https://www.kingston.com/en/business/server_solutions/best_practices/maximizing_performance
https://www.kingston.com/en/business/server_solutions/best_practices/maximizing_performance
If so, I could put 6x16 GB DIMMs for a total of 96 GB.

One thing I notice is that most (all?) 16 GB RDIMMs are 2Rx4. Would that be an issue?

Thanks in advance!
 
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yhelothar

Lifer
Dec 11, 2002
18,408
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I fixed the missing ram issue several times now. The trick is to load them in iteratively starting with one stick. Boot up, post, let it recognize it, then iteratively add in the next configuration as stated in the manual. Do this until all 6 slots are filled. Got all 24GB back.
 

rchunter

Senior member
Feb 26, 2015
933
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I'll probably still keep this X58 rig for a few more years. It's still plenty fast and I have an X5690 in it (not overclocked).
I provisioned it as a secondary computer though that I use to run Linux Mint 19 on.
I have other faster, newer computers but I can't bring myself to get rid of it because it's still an awesome machine.
 

ClockHound

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
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I'll probably still keep this X58 rig for a few more years. It's still plenty fast and I have an X5690 in it (not overclocked).
I provisioned it as a secondary computer though that I use to run Linux Mint 19 on.
I have other faster, newer computers but I can't bring myself to get rid of it because it's still an awesome machine.

Good for you!

Would you like 10,000 'X58 FOREVER' bumper stickers to cover your case/walls/upholstery? @Burpo backed out of the group sticker buy... ;-)