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Reviews (4)
Feb 18, 2016
A fine upgrade for some X58 users.
1 of 1 found this helpful After learning that some Xeon processors are compatible with consumer X58 motherboards, I decided to hit the almighty eBay and look for one at a suitable price. The X5650 fit the bill and it has given my trusty old gaming PC a new lease of life. With plenty of cache and twelve execution threads, the Xeon powers through every single task I throw at it including gaming, 3D renders, Photoshop, Camera Raw, and VirtualBox. Nowadays in 2016, nobody's going to confuse it for a brand-new Xeon, but it's definitely a great upgrade if you have a compatible motherboard. I encourage all X58 owners to investigate Xeon upgrades for their boards if a new build isn't an option -- it's well worth your money.
The primary advantage of this processor over LGA1366 Core i7 processors is that it runs cooler, with a TDP of 90 watts versus 135 or even more in the consumer i7-9xx series. With the stock Intel heatsink and Arctic Silver Ceramique 2, I haven't been able to get the temps over 165 degrees under 100% load as opposed to 175 or 180 with the Core i7-920 it replaces, and it idles at 25-30 above ambient. (All temps quoted in Fahrenheit.)
(For the record: I'm on the wonderful ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 board. The last BIOS update added support for Westmere processors. I can't get a stable overclock with this chip and this board, but your mileage may vary.)
Feb 03, 2018
Yep, it's fast.
9 of 9 found this helpful Dual-socket systems used to be the way to go for the ultimate in performance. I can remember lusting after a dual-processor Power Mac G5 as a teenager, for example, and now, finally, I've gotten my hands on a dual-processor system of my own, centered around the Asus Z8NA-D6C motherboard.
This is an old server board for Intel's Tylersburg system architecture, featuring the excellent 5500 chipset and the LGA1366 socket. LGA1366 is neat because it was the first socket Intel introduced that supported six-core processors. That means that, in 2018, you can build your very own 12-core computer system for a fraction of the price of Ryzen or Coffee Lake, with an appreciable fraction of the performance for most tasks. I spec'ed my 'D6C build with two X5650 processors, 24 GB of DDR3-1333 ECC RDIMMs, and my old GTX 660 Ti graphics card, all of which I bought on eBay. You can drop this board into pretty much any case on the market, and it fits eminently well in my NZXT H440 gaming case.
The 'D6C is an excellent board though not without drawbacks. The biggest drawback is that you will need Xeon-specific coolers for the processors, since the backplate is different to that on consumer boards like Asus's own P6T Deluxe series. You can find stock Xeon coolers here on eBay and any cooler for Socket B (LGA 1366) that uses M3 screws of sufficient length should work. I'm a fan of closed-loop liquid coolers and I use two Corsair H50 coolers, one on each socket. (The Asetek LC550 is equivalent, and you can find those pretty readily here as well.) Supposedly, the tower coolers that Intel sold with their i7-980X processors will also work, but I haven't acquired one of these to test with.
Another drawback is that the 'D6C only supports 95W processors. This is a bummer because the best Socket B processor, the X5690, is a 130W chip. That means you're stuck with the X5675, although at 3.06 GHz across six cores, that processor is no slouch. My X5650s are more than enough processor for my needs (Hyper-V, 3Delight rendering, Photoshop, occasional gaming, Windows/Linux software development) although I do wish you could overclock the memory bus and run DDR3-1600 memory. As this board is a server board, you can forget about overclocking, so if that matters to you (and I hear that, on liquid, Westmere Xeons are excellent overclocking candidates), stick to the consumer boards or look for the (very rare, and very pricey) EVGA SR-2 Classified board for Socket B.
If you go down this road, you'll want a power supply that can keep up. Asus recommends at least 450 W with 18A on the 12V rail. With my three hard drives and my high-wattage video card, I run an 850W power supply in my own rig. I've always used Corsair power supplies and I recommend them without hesitation. You will also want to spend some time with the official documentation if you've never built a dual-socket system before; I can't link it here, but search for "Asus Z8NA-D6C" with your favorite search engine and you should find it.
As far as OS compatibility goes, I've only tested with Windows 10 and Slackware 14.2, though I see no reason why the 'D6C wouldn't work well with Windows 8.1, Windows 7, FreeBSD, or any other modern operating system for a standard PC.
Aug 19, 2019
Great remote, lousy software.
I got this remote to control my TV, DVD, CD player, VCR, hifi amp, PC IR receiver, and (someday) a Minidisc recorder. I was pleasantly surprised that it was able to control most of the features on my Sherwood amp, and it also works great with my RCA DVD player and Samsung TV. I don’t yet have a CD deck that works with a remote, but I have no doubt that I’ll be able to use this remote with it. The software supposedly works with a Mac, but Logitech haven’t updated it for 64-bit despite having at least two years to do so. The Windows version of the software works decently, but it seems slow for no good reason and Windows doesn’t consistently recognise the remote when I plug it in via USB.