Old Server CPUs For Budget Gaming Or Workstation PCs

While there are plenty of cheap old Xeon and Epyc CPUs on the market, they might not be the best for building a gaming or workstation rig on a budget. In this video Adam talks to Jeff from @CraftComputing whether or not it's worth it to get in on these old server parts.

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[Subdubbin]

I would love to see a "Scrapyard Wars" type series between PC World and some of the channels they have been collaborating with recently!

[Anton]

One thing to watch out for with older Xeon chips pre-Haswell is the lack of FMA3 & AVX2 support. Adobe's Creative Cloud applications and many new games (like Alan Wake 2, for example) are starting to require AVX2, and it's only going to become more commonplace.

[chincemagnet]

I grabbed an “x99” Xeon RAM combo off Aliexpress for around $100 and was very impressed by it. For simple gaming it does just fine. Minimum frame rates could be better, but I played games at 4K on it with a 2080 I got off eBay and the whole build is really cheap and performs as good or better than a PS5/XSX. I think it was a 2670 v3. I built it for my nephew.

[TheHangarHobbit]

One of my grandson's friends has it pretty hard right now and asked me to help him build his first PC on the uber cheap, managed to grab an Aliexpress special that had a E5 2650V2 with 16GB of RAM, mobo, and a cooler for just $66, slapped another 8GB for $4, a $37 nice looking white case, $40 500w Thermaltake, a 1TB NVME on sale for $37, an RX580 2048 for $50 and a Win10 Pro key and he managed to end up with a sub $260 PC that plays all his eSports titles above 60FPS.

So for super duper uber budget builds ya can't go wrong with the Aliexpress Xeon kits.

[scottstamm]

X99 is the platform that will continue to live on. I still use on with a E5 2696v3 and 128GB for my home file/game/streaming server (yes, it does all 3 simultaneously, with NO issue).

[Fractal_]

CraftComputing is a great channel for people of all budgets whether it’s $300 power efficient servers or powerful AMD EPYC powered systems.

My personal favorite episodes are covering topics such as enterprise SLC cache cards (SUN F80) and PCIE passthrough on older Nvidia Tesla cards or newer ones like the Tesla P4.

[scottstamm]

E5 2696v3 18C/36T w/ boost clock of 3.8GHz and using X99 BIOS Mod, can get a blend of 3.4GHz and 3.6GHz across the board with some threads hitting 3.8GHz.
E5 2697v3 14C/24T w/ boost clock of 3.6GHz using same X99 BIOS Mod, can run all cores at 3.6GHz.
Both CPU's are dirt cheap.

[dragonsystems]

X99 is the ultimate budget platform at the right price

[greenprotag]

Big personal fan of Jeff's work over at Craft Computing. Nice to see him featured here. Used/New enterprise gear is pretty fun, and Jeff's channel dives deep into Gaming, Workloads, and self hosted home services. Join us over there for his content AND his reoccurring live show wednesday to see what kind of shenanigans we all find ourselves in. Jeff ALSO regularly reviews gaming handhelds, head mounted displays, monitors, trackball mice... and much more. See ya'll around ^_^

[noenken]

I don't know ... AM4 boards are cheap, used Ryzen is cheap, DDR4 3200 CL16 is cheap... Here in Germany you can get a B450 board and 16GB of said memory for under 100, - Euros new including tax. And for games a Ryzen 5600 or even 3600 will stomp all over those Xeons. Don't get me wrong, I have a 2680 v4 sitting in an ASRock X99 Taichi with 128GB of registered DDR4 and it's great as a homeserver. But I don't see the Xeon route to be viable (specifically) for a gaming system anymore.

[HenriqueStz]

In Brazil, "xeon kits" are the only thing that allows you to build a computer, at an affordable price, and have decent entry-level performance. Typically in conjunction with an RX 480 2048SP. A computer like this can be assembled for less than R$2000.

[Alpha-msnj]

I was an auto tech for 34 years and can't do it anymore because of medical problems so in order to stay busy I got into the PC world as a hobby. I sourced some very cheap parts to do my first build based around inexpensive Asus LGA 1150, 32gb of DDR3 and an old Thermaltake case. I have a Xeon 1270v3 (3.50 - 3.90 GHZ) or a I7-4790 (3.60 - 4.0 GHZ) both under 85W, and a Corsair 750W PSU that I can use with an EVGA GTX 1060. These cheap parts that are hitting the market are right in my ballpark for budget and my expectations. The cost of the parts came out to $125 US. I'm learning alot from so many channels like this one and Craft computing and having alot of fun doing it.

[LemmingOverlord]

Bought a Lenovo P520 recently, with 64GB of ECC DDR4 and a Xeon W2235. It's a little power hungry, but it keeps up with my Ryzen 5800X... Threw in a 2nd hand RTX2070 and it's a really capable gaming machine.

[cenewton]

I'm writing this comment on my ancient 2010 Mac Pro 5, 1 w/ dual Xeon X5690 CPUs (3.5Ghz, 12 cores, 24 threads total) w/128GB RAM, internal RAID5 storage, PCIE NVME SSD system drive (I added this and the RAID5 drives), with Radeon RX580 GPU, that I bought on ebay about 2 years ago for $275 (including shipping). Yes, I virtually stole it with my winning auction bid - it should have been a few hundred more to be honest. I'm running Garuda Linux (Arch base) and occasionally boot up macOS Monterey. Even 14 years later it's solid as hell. It won't win any speed contests anymore but she never crashes, and needs to reboot only after an occasional kernel upgrade. It does video editing, plays a ton of games (yes, Linux can really game now) brilliantly @ 1440p and has been amazing overall. Highly recommended! EDIT: I will say, it has a 1000w power supply because it's really thirsty for energy. Probably drawing 500-750 at any given moment. There's always a cost for a machine that does so much.

[paul-ti]

For people like me, on a tight budget and living in a country with limited access to new technologies, old Xeons are truly a godsend! I'm grateful some YouTubers are shedding light on this because the level of elitism among many American YouTubers is unfortunately quite astounding

[retrosean]

I used to have a crazy idea of harvesting the CPUs and memory from old workstation PCs (not servers) and salvaging motherboards that aren't proprietary junk. I think the challenge would be sourcing motherboards to replace them. But the scrappy budget PC could live on.

[danwat]

I havea BOINC farm of i5-8500 little SFF boxes. Desktop 65w CPUs from popular auction site over 100 of them. In the years I've had them, only a few fans have failed they really all work. It is fans that wear out that's it.

[gerardot]

I’ve managed to build a Dell precision t5810
2690v4
16gb ram
1tb m.2ssd
1080ti for 250 dollars.
4K hdr 80fps average on most modern games. The only downside is the loud fans but it works well as a heater in the winter haha. Love your content @craftcomputing.

[yearninetyseven]

the other reason why some people may find old xeon builds attractive is because they run on DDR3 ram, which is really really cheap nowadays. Not saying that DDR4 is expensive, but for people who have a very tight budget, every cent counts.

another good budget option is to buy an old office pc and upgrade it. I have a dell precision t3500 which I use almost daily. Takes a standard ATX power supply and the motherboard has 6x4gb ddr3 ram slots for a max 24gb ram. the fan headers on the mobo are propietary but you can buy adapters to run standard 4-pin fans. chucked out the old dual-core W3503 and put in a 6-core 12-thread xeon X5675 (have to update bios first). The unit originally came with a low-spec quadro gpu, took it out and replaced it with a gtx 1060 3gb. So far it's been fairly good for most average-spec 1080p games, I don't play the latest AAA games so it's sufficient for me.

if you go for the used office pc route, just watch out for the ones that use proprietary power supply form factors or motherboard pins, make sure you can still buy replacements or pin converters, otherwise you'll have a big problem if your power supply dies.

[michaelmcconnell]

nobody is paying $25 for an 8gb stick of anything in 2024 jeff