Just bought 4x4GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1866 (1.5v, CAS9) for $37 shipped on Mercari. Still trying to pinch myself... that's an incredible price. 😀

Today was a pretty lucky day at the thrift store. I bought these two modern computing items at cheap prices:

Samsung SyncMaster 940BW 19-inch LCD Monitor - I bought this because I was slowly needing a new main monitor since my previous one was VGA only and you all know that VGA is slowly being dropped on newer GPUs, this has both VGA and DVI-D so it looks like I'm set for a while.

Seagate 500GB 2.5" 7mm SATA hard drive - Before you think I got fooled by the Samsung SSD box, I was fully aware that this was likely not going to be an SSD, so I opened the box and saw that this was in it, which is still good because it doesn't hurt to have a spare SATA hard drive for future data storage or something, I tested it when I got home and it actually works great. This was only $3.99 (price not pictured) which is a really good deal even for a hard drive of any capacity. 😀

Because this is much better suited topic, then retro one for parts like this, I will re-post it here.

My first (Veloci)Raptor!

It will end up in my "retro" PC, with Windows XP on it.

I took advantage of a black Friday sale and picked up a new Macbook Pro for $200 off. I've been a DOS/Windows user since getting my first PC when I was a kid in the late 80s, but my wife has had Macs all of her adult life. Recently I've been finding myself opting to use her MacBook instead of my Windows laptop, so I figured the $200 discount meant it was a good time to finally get my own.

My only complaint is the fact that Apple insists on providing only USB-C ports on their newest laptops...which i find especially confusing considering they haven't even adopted USB-C on their iPad Pro or latest iPhones...yet the cables they include with those are in-fact still USB-A. So you can't even plug them into a new MacBook without an adapter or additional cable. Jobs is probably turning in his grave. Fortunately there was also a sale on the handy little 3rd party "HyperDrive" USB-C hub that docks right to the side of the MBP and offers 2x USB-C, 2x USB 3.1, SD, Micro-SD, and HDMI.

Otherwise, I'm absolutely delighted with the computer so far.

Srandista wrote:

Because this is much better suited topic, then retro one for parts like this, I will re-post it here. […]
Show full quote

Because this is much better suited topic, then retro one for parts like this, I will re-post it here.

My first (Veloci)Raptor!

<snip>

It will end up in my "retro" PC, with Windows XP on it.

Old raptors are really only useful if you pair a bunch together, single-drive they're kinda "Meh" vs modern drives today. I picked up a bunch recently but running 8 of em in raid-5 in my x99 gaming machine. They're great drives, with enough of em paired together to be useful. 😄

A single raptor is capable of what...maybe 175-200 IOPS tops? Where any decent SSD is capable of at least 40,000+ IOPS, usually much more.

Magnetic media is certainly becoming an endangered species, but it can be far more interesting than boring and silent solid state storage.

magnetic drives are going nowhere for now.

ssd is great to boot from, run some games. Past that if you actually want to STORE all of the things... https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?I … =1Z4-002P-006N4

kithylin wrote:

Old raptors are really only useful if you pair a bunch together, single-drive they're kinda "Meh" vs modern drives today. I picked up a bunch recently but running 8 of em in raid-5 in my x99 gaming machine. They're great drives, with enough of em paired together to be useful. 😄

Well, this is something, which really don't apply to me. In my main rig, I have only 2 drives, one 180GB SSD for system and one 1TB drive for games and programs. Everything else is on my 4TB NAS, and I'm quite happy, that I have only one mechanical drive in PC.

Regarding Raptor drive, it will go to XP rig, and honestly, I bought it only just out of curiosity, because I never see (and hear) one in person, let alone own one my self. We'll see, there is still second SATA port on motherboard with RAID support, so who knows, what will happen in the future 😀

luckybob wrote:

magnetic drives are going nowhere for now.

ssd is great to boot from, run some games. Past that if you actually want to STORE all of the things... https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?I … =1Z4-002P-006N4

Pfft. The real datahoarders buy the BestBuy EasyBook 8TB. They are actually Red 8TB, which are actually HGST Helium 8TB drives.

Srandista wrote:

Regarding Raptor drive, it will go to XP rig, and honestly, I bought it only just out of curiosity, because I never see (and hear) one in person, let alone own one my self. We'll see, there is still second SATA port on motherboard with RAID support, so who knows, what will happen in the future 😀

The original Raptor, IMO, was just confusing. In the early to mid 2000's, I bought last gen Adaptec SCSI devices (e.g. 2940U2W when 29160 was out, and a 29160 when 29320 were out) for pennies on the dollar. Couple that with last gen U320 15K drives, and you had pretty good performance for the value.

dexvx wrote:

Pfft. The real datahoarders buy the BestBuy EasyBook 8TB. They are actually Red 8TB, which are actually HGST Helium 8TB drives.

Apparently the 4tb WDC My Books were Reds but have since switched over to Blues. I'm curious if the 6tb My Books are still Reds as they're a little closer to the sweet spot.

FesterBlatz wrote:

A single raptor is capable of what...maybe 175-200 IOPS tops? Where any decent SSD is capable of at least 40,000+ IOPS, usually much more.

Magnetic media is certainly becoming an endangered species, but it can be far more interesting than boring and silent solid state storage.

For XP rig single Raptor is more than enough. I have the 300 GB version for this very reason and I'm sure it will work well enough. Late 15k SCSI or SAS drives are even better - 4.9 ms latency vs 7 ms of the Raptor... and 12 ms on regular 7k2 rpm HDD. But who wants to bother with SCSI/SAS controllers, right. 🤣

SSD is for sure much faster still... but is it suitable for winXP without TRIM support?

For modern system as an OS drive SSD is a must have but price is still way to high to use it as a general purpose storage. For example I have in my main rig 3TB 7200rpm HDD for working data which I want to access locally (not over LAN). And 3TB is just enough to fit everything + have some free space left. 4TB SSD costs >10 times more than 4 TB HDD, so not very affordable. Also SSDs tends to die without warning and once this happens good luck trying to get the data back. My HDD has 20 realocated sectors at the moment, which is far from ideal... but still working with surface scan all green, probably will hold no problem till new year when I'll have the time to get a new one, move all data and decide how to deal with the old one - either RMA or use it in some noncritical project.

I think this belongs here.. Well today's the day. I finally happened to find a pair of GTX-295's at a decent price like I was looking to pay for em.

Two matching cards for an SLI pair. $66.56 total (shipped), or $33.28 each.

Seller's picture:

Since apparently the Rampage (original) Extreme is going for $200+, I figured getting the IV and V edition for around $150 was worth it. I got the Rampage V Extreme off eBay for suspiciously cheap, and low and behold it doesn't work. Would've raised issue with seller, but it was under warranty, so I just went that route. Asus sent me back what seems like a brand new one (still has the stickers on the board heatsinks). So despite the increased cost, I feel I made good progress.

I still quite upset at the fact that the new Intel HEDT platform (Skylake-X) is not compatible with the Xeon equivalents. Always nice to stick high end Xeons in these prosumer boards and get tons of cores at decent clock speeds. Had to use the E5-2695 v3 because I needed to flash the BIOS for the E5 v4's. Oh well, into the closet it goes.

Xeon Powah!

IMHO, Intel doesn't like to see xeon chips in "consumer" motherboards. They like to sell premium chipsets for those boards. This is because of the 771/775 era. Those boards are STILL useful as long as you aren't gaming. That means people upgrade their old systems with cheap xeons and don't buy new setups.

My heavy gaming is FO4 and Civ6. (new xpack for coming! WOOT!) Civ love my xeons.

dexvx wrote:

Since apparently the Rampage (original) Extreme is going for $200+, I figured getting the IV and V edition for around $150 was worth it. I got the Rampage V Extreme off eBay for suspiciously cheap, and low and behold it doesn't work. Would've raised issue with seller, but it was under warranty, so I just went that route. Asus sent me back what seems like a brand new one (still has the stickers on the board heatsinks). So despite the increased cost, I feel I made good progress.

I still quite upset at the fact that the new Intel HEDT platform (Skylake-X) is not compatible with the Xeon equivalents. Always nice to stick high end Xeons in these prosumer boards and get tons of cores at decent clock speeds. Had to use the E5-2695 v3 because I needed to flash the BIOS for the E5 v4's. Oh well, into the closet it goes.

Xeon Powah!

The only sad part about using xeons in these newer systems.. no overclocking 😢 😒 😠

And it's been proven that all games benefit more from raw clock speed than actual cores. I mean, if you're doing heavy cpu-Intensive work loads, then.. sure cores make sense. But they're very poor for actual gaming due to their low clock speeds. And Intel does this on purpose too.

luckybob wrote:

IMHO, Intel doesn't like to see xeon chips in "consumer" motherboards. They like to sell premium chipsets for those boards. This is because of the 771/775 era. Those boards are STILL useful as long as you aren't gaming. That means people upgrade their old systems with cheap xeons and don't buy new setups.

Not really. S771 is technically physically incompatible (requires dremel on CPU or exacto on Motherboard) to work with S775.

The follow up X58 has drop in support for Xeon's. In fact, many people upgraded their X58 with the 6 core Westmere X5680/90 for relatively cheap ($100). The follow up X79 LGA2011 was also compatible with Xeon E5 v1, v2. The follow up X99 LGA2011-3 was compatible with Xeon E5 v3, v4.

What happened with the X299 LGA2066 was that Intel decided to split the Xeon 1S from the 2S+ lineup compared to previous Xeon E5's that shared the same socket for 1S/2S/4S. You can still get Xeons on LGA2066, but they are specifically targeted for 1S (denoted as Xeon W-series). The downside is that 2S Xeons are the bulk of the market, so when server farms retire them, you can get them for cheap. I just don't see the same effect with 1S Xeons.

TLDR, Moar SKU's.

it is REALLY easy to drop a 771 xeon into a 775 socket.

http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/

I've done it for 2 friends.

dexvx wrote:

Not really. S771 is technically physically incompatible (requires dremel on CPU or exacto on Motherboard) to work with S775. […]
Show full quote

luckybob wrote:

IMHO, Intel doesn't like to see xeon chips in "consumer" motherboards. They like to sell premium chipsets for those boards. This is because of the 771/775 era. Those boards are STILL useful as long as you aren't gaming. That means people upgrade their old systems with cheap xeons and don't buy new setups.

Not really. S771 is technically physically incompatible (requires dremel on CPU or exacto on Motherboard) to work with S775.

The follow up X58 has drop in support for Xeon's. In fact, many people upgraded their X58 with the 6 core Westmere X5680/90 for relatively cheap ($100). The follow up X79 LGA2011 was also compatible with Xeon E5 v1, v2. The follow up X99 LGA2011-3 was compatible with Xeon E5 v3, v4.

What happened with the X299 LGA2066 was that Intel decided to split the Xeon 1S from the 2S+ lineup compared to previous Xeon E5's that shared the same socket for 1S/2S/4S. You can still get Xeons on LGA2066, but they are specifically targeted for 1S (denoted as Xeon W-series). The downside is that 2S Xeons are the bulk of the market, so when server farms retire them, you can get them for cheap. I just don't see the same effect with 1S Xeons.

TLDR, Moar SKU's.

The really big difference I think you're not mentioning is not only is x58 the first platform where xeon equivalents were drop-in compatible, but it was also the last platform where we could overclock xeons in it. For every other platform after x58 (starting with sandy bridge), we get zero overclocking what so ever on all HEDT platforms if we use xeons in them. Which, at least in my opinion, owning an Intel HEDT platform and not being able to overclock anything in it, is a terrible waste of money.

luckybob wrote:

it is REALLY easy to drop a 771 xeon into a 775 socket.

http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/

I'm not arguing that it's a hard task. I'm stating the fact that it is not physically compatible by default. Some people are reluctant to take a knife to their motherboard. Someone here posted asking for a PCIe adapter for 1x to 16x. I suggested exacto knifing the 1x slot and several people were up in arms.

kithylin wrote:

The really big difference I think you're not mentioning is not only is x58 the first platform where xeon equivalents were drop-in compatible, but it was also the last platform where we could overclock xeons in it. For every other platform after x58 (starting with sandy bridge), we get zero overclocking what so ever on all HEDT platforms if we use xeons in them. Which, at least in my opinion, owning an Intel HEDT platform and not being able to overclock anything in it, is a terrible waste of money.

Not really. You can overclock Xeon E5-1600 v1, v2, v3 (not sure about v4) 6C/8C variants. They come multiplier unlocked. The 2S variants are hard-locked.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1522858/x99-xeon-overclock/30
http://valid.x86.fr/s4qjuc

Also having issues understanding why not overclocking a HEDT is somehow wasted potential.

Edit: Tempted to try it with my Rampage now. Checked the E5-1650 v2 is only around $100 US. The v3 still way too expensive.

dexvx wrote:

Also having issues understanding why not overclocking a HEDT is somehow wasted potential.

Because you're paying more money for "The ultimate Intel overclocking platform", motherboards with dual power connectors for extra overclocking stability (even single socket), when "normal server motherboards" like from supermicro only have 1 for single-socket, because more isn't needed. Most aftermarket HEDT motherboards also come with multiple power phases well beyond what's necessary.. again for overclocking stability, more traditional motherboards just have what's needed.. and expensive japanese low-ESR capacitors rated for like 150c @ 100,000 hours or more, again.. not necessary, but good for overclocking.. And I don't know about Intel 2066, but many Intel HEDT aftermarket motherboards (like for x58 definitely) also don't support ecc-registered memory. Which most xeons and "server motherboards" do support. It's just, sometimes (I don't know if it's true today) but if you're just going to run a xeon chip you're usually can get a server-class board for half the price vs aftermarket ones. That's why using Intel Consumer HEDT boards for xeons is really a huge waste of money. Using xeons on these types of motherboards, you wouldn't even need nor use more than half of the design / reason for having HEDT boards.

At least with x58 (and apparently ivy bridge xeons) it all made sense because we could overclock the xeon chips. Even if you can overclock the xeon chips on ivy bridge... the cpu alone would cost more than double the cost of a "Consumer" i7 cpu chip with the same core count, same process and same cache. There may be a few xeon chips for ivy bridge era HEDT that come unlocked with more cores than i7's come with.. I'd have to do research into it. This is the first news I've ever heard of xeons on anything after x58 ever being overclockable.

EDIT: There's nothing on the Intel ARK, or cpu-world.com confirming any of the xeons for these platforms, even "E5-1650 v2" having an unlocked multiplier out of the box... I don't know what these people are doing to "Enable" that, custom modified bios on the boards? I'll have to research into it further.