Most LGA1366 CPUs were used in servers, so motherboards will be server-type, without bells and whistles. Many will require proprietary risers etc. But if you spend some time on ebay, you'll find some usable stuff for <$100. Avoid Dell (many require daughterboards which are usually not sold with the motherboard, so you'd have to do some hunting around). HP server boards seem to be pretty standard-compliant. I was actually on the verge of buying a dual 1366 board a few weeks ago but someone snagged it before me. IIRC it was about $60 or so.

My main system is based off this motherboard: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboar … 00/X8DAH_-F.cfm

But i'm using X5690's. I got mine for $200 shipped, but it also included ram and some similar chips to the 5520's. There are many other dual 1366 server boards on supermicro's website, all will cost differently on ebay. I got mine for the 3-16x pci-e slots. 😀 That said this particular board is OMGWTFBBQ big. Check your case before buying.

Workstation version of a R710 is the Precision T5500. Nice machines, got one myself running ESX for sandbox VM's with ram/CPU pulled from a R710.
But as stamasd said the 2nd CPU does need a raiser that I ended up having to get from the USA for even a 1/2 decent price.

Here is 1 in the UK that's about to end to give you a rough idea on price, although Dell stuff is more common/cheaper in the US then here.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Precision-T550 … fgAAOSww4NXqOBR

stamasd wrote:

Most LGA1366 CPUs were used in servers, so motherboards will be server-type, without bells and whistles.

a lot of high end x58 boards can use xeons. but your only get one cpu. The sr-2 can use dual xeons, but its way over priced.

Well, this little project has died an early death. The people at work have decided to reuse the R710 so I have to bring the parts back.

I learned a bunch about 1366 socket stuff from you guys though. Thanks anyway!

Don't let that deter you. You can find LGA1366 Xeons for peanuts these days. I recently got a few for about $3 each.

stamasd wrote:

Don't let that deter you. You can find LGA1366 Xeons for peanuts these days. I recently got a few for about $3 each.

LGA1366 are not cheap tough. If you are lucky you might find complete systems for less then the parts themselves - like the HP Z800 series. I got mine for 500$ and it has 48GB of ram, twin Xeon X5687 hexa-core CPUs running at 3.6GHz and a Radeon RX 470 (bought the video card, HDD and SSD separately). It makes an awesome render machine for 3dsmax, and I use it almost exclusively for that purpose.

Why not just take the whole server next time? 😀