Built up a monster Xeon gaming system on the cheap

[StartingEarly]

I just finished building up my old xeon board into a relative monster for not a lot of money by buying used parts. GTX 970 was only 140, x5677 quad core at 3.47ghz was under 45, 24 gigs of ram was 30, 240gb ssd was new and that was 60, monitor was a used 23 inch for 40, cpu cooler was free after signing up on Amazon for their cards as was the case fan. All in all not a lot of money and should play all the new titles while still having a future upgrade path to either a 6 core later or 2 quad cores. I could go 2 hex cores, but nothing I do will ever use 12 threads, 4 is good now and I might want a few more later when they are cheaper. As it is now a fast hex core is $200 and I can't overclock the slower ones on this board.

[AlanStache]

Cool, how did you get that much ram that cheap?  16 second hand cards or something?  I think I might be nearing an upgrade point, the 120gig ssd is OK so long as I am careful with what gets put on it and not the hhd.

[orangenotebook]

This makes me sick only because I spent so much more on my rig because I bought new and recently updated items instead of doing what you did. My misery aside, you did awesome! Congratulations on your mustache rig! Attach a picture if you can :)

[orangenotebook]

Would love to know which websites / stores you used to achieve this!

[BTDretire]

 I built my second computer about 5 years ago, it's still going strong. I bought a second harddrive and cloned the original a couple years in, but never have had to swap in that second harddrive, because I haven't had any problems.
 A couple years ago my 18 year old son at that time, decided he wanted to build a computer.
He had a buddy give him (gaming) components advice and the parts were ordered.
 They put the parts on the dining room table one evening and started assembly. They
were about to power up and install the OS when my son ask me "are you nervous",
I said "No, I but I was nervous when I was about to power up MY computer" :-)
 They installed the operating system and it worked flawlessly.
That was nice to see.

[StartingEarly]

Ebay best offer for the processor (if I did it again I would have paid the extra for the x5687 which is 3.6ghz, ark intel was wrong and said it wasn't compatible, but intel said it was, found that out after I put in an offer. I told the guy that the offer I gave (my second offer of 42 was the last offer he was getting since I planned on getting the x5687, he accepted it, grrr, and I ended up with the x5677 for about $45 shipped to my door, an x5687 runs about 75, would have just been more future proofing I guess. Someday I want to use the second socket, but that will require a beefed up power supply, I am already pushing it with the 130w processor and 175w graphics card.

The gtx970 was on craigslist. They tend to go for around 200 at least around here. Kid I got it from was moving for school, I asked the lowest he would take and he said 140 so I took it.

The ram is just six sticks of 4gb ecc memory I got on ebay. I bought six since I have triple channel and it filled all the slots for one processor while also allowing me to spread the ram over both processors if I ever upgrade. 10600 1333mhz ddr3, I did best offer on that, but the going rate for six sticks of 4 is about 40ish. The ssd I just got at Bestbuy I believe on sale. The cooler for it is the only quiet one they make for a xeon board that will fit in my particular tower without modification (Noctua makes awesome stuff), which I need because my sdr file got changed in the bios update and my case isn't compatible, so the pwm is set at 100% and I just use slow rpm fans with inline resistors to get it quiet. Before doing all the fan stuff it was like a jet just with the cpu, I am adding a rear exhaust because I was having ram erros due to heat, I have a Noctua case fan on the way that has two kinds of inline resistors, so I'll use the slowest one for my annoying 80mm stock case fan and the next slowest for the 120mm exhaust fan. Cost 18 bucks, but that was free money as was the 55 for the cpu cooler since I signed up for a bunch of amazon cards.

My board is a little different than most, so your mileage may vary. Be careful getting a big box store motherboard like a dell or hp, they can tend to be proprietary divas and say you can't do certain things just because. The only thing my s5520sc does that I don't like is the fan issues which have work arounds, however it's a very expensive board, I just got it for free because a friend does IT and the company he did work for upgraded. I think they're still like 400 a crack for a good board, ouch, for that price I would get an SR-2 or just get the newer gen consumer equipment.

[RobFIRE]

Good stuff. The old enterprise parts (Xeons, ECC RAM) seem to go very cheaply, I suppose because most people don't know about them, and/or don't have a motherboard that supports them. Only downside is high power draw if used 24/7, but if you're only using it for gaming the power draw doesn't really matter.

[StartingEarly]

The power draw is a bit higher than a current system, but the 32nm 5600 series isn't terrible for the amount of performance they kick out. The 970 puts out a fair bit of heat as well compared to the 1060 which beats it, but that's how she goes.