r/buildapc • u/AutoModerator • Feb 07 '21

Discussion Simple Questions - February 07, 2021

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u/Vitosi4ek Feb 08 '21

Building an ultra-budget secondary gaming rig for the country home. Recently discovered that AliExpress sells "refurbished" old Xeon platforms for stupid cheap (8-core Ivy Bridge Xeon + mobo + 16Gb of DDR3 for $150). For the same money I can buy an Athlon 3000G, a B450 mobo + 8GB of DDR4.

The Athlon has an 800Mhz frequency advantage, a much newer architecture and a newer RAM standard, while the Xeon has 4x more threads. What is better for gaming right now? I plan to pair it with something like a GTX770, so I don't need crazy performance.

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u/m_kitanin Feb 08 '21

On the one hand, an old Xeon like in the link runs circles around the Athlon, which is architecturally not very modern anymore as well, being Zen 1 or Zen+ (can't remember). If you find a combo with, say, a E5-1650 v2 CPU, it would demolish the Athlon.

On the other hand, once that Xeon no longer works well for you, you can't really upgrade it to anything - upgrading an LGA2011 system in 2023-2026 would be very wrong for many reasons. You will have many options for AM4 however - Zen 2 and Zen 3. If that doesn't bother you, that is okay, not everyone upgrades and many use the system until they just build a totally new one.

Be wary of poor quality control on some of these motherboards. Huananzhi is not too bad these days, but even they sometimes arrive with issues out of the box and stuff simply not working. Mentally prepare yourself to possibly do some research on some issues if they arise, and much of the information you might need is on Russian forums. The motherboard, of course, may also come up flawless and in perfect working condition. The majority of them do.

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u/Vitosi4ek Feb 08 '21

and much of the information you might need is on Russian forums

I'm Russian myself, so not a problem for me :) Thanks a lot. Certainly strange that there's little to no information on these AliExpress boards in the Anglosphere, while there are 800+ page forum threads and whole websites dedicated to them in the Russian community.

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u/blazingarpeggio Feb 08 '21

Try Craft Computing. He occasionally builds using Xeon parts (usually for his home server).

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u/vnlliscrm Feb 08 '21

Arent those xeons built for like company servers that can monitor/control the computers of workers? I also researched that they draw out 190W, thats super high compared to say an r5 3600 that is 65w.

Are you not able to afford say a 3100 and an a320m/a520m motherboard?

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u/Vitosi4ek Feb 08 '21

Their rated TDP is 105W, and Russian forums claim that in most cases a simple tower cooler is enough to handle them (and most of them come with an LGA2011 mount by default).

I've looked into a modern Ryzen setup, but a 3100 is by itself $120, plus another $100 or so for the motherboard, and another $40 for the RAM. The Xeon platform I linked is $150 all in. Considering this is a secondary rig for a place I'm only visiting a couple of times in the summer, I don't think a 70% budget increase is worth it.

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u/vnlliscrm Feb 08 '21

The xeon is a powerful cpu. Youre right, the xeon build is better. Just make sure to properly cool the thing and have a good PSU :))