Re:AMD Ryzen 5 1600X vs Core i5 Review
by AlphaSite on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @10:11AM
(#14087897)
Isn't the issue with these old Intel CPUs not the CPUs but the motherboards, which can retail for 2-300 as their supplies dwindle.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:AMD Ryzen 5 1600X vs Core i5 Review
by user5994461 on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @10:21AM
(#14088016)
Yes, it is the motherboard.
Get a second hand workstation on ebay, don't get individual components.
It might be an issue, but I still got mine (a Gigabyte x58A-UD3) for 140£. I was specifically looking for a MB with decent overclocking support and working VT-d, which limits the choice. You can get entry level x58 Intel MBs for much less (overclocking these xeons only requires bumping the BCKL to 200Mhz and maybe bumping the core voltage a bit, nothing fancy). The RAM is also still fairly cheap.
If you care more about core counts than single thread clock you can find used x58 dual socket workstation MBs which also have support for large amounts of server ECC ram which is very cheap.