Upgrade Recommendation

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Stugots

Supreme [H]ardness
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Back in 2016, I built a personal/gaming PC with some scraps that I got from work.
  • SuperMicro X8DTI Motherboard
  • 2x Xeon 5670's (6x core, 2.93ghz)
  • 64GB of ECC DDR3 (I have alot more, but if I put more in it will start to clock the RAM down).
  • Radeon R9 290
  • 120GB SSD and 1TB HDD, both SATA
This system has worked remarkably well considering it's age, but it's time for something a little less and more at the same time...

I've been looking at replacing this combo with something like a used Dell Optiplex 7060. The ones I'm looking at come with an Intel i7 8700. Trying to find a bare bones one so I can drop in ~32GB of RAM and an NVMe drive.

My question is, is an Intel i7 8700 a good enough replacement for my 2x Xeon 5670's? I'm looking to keep a bare bones replacement for this under $200.

My system now has a good number of significant bottlenecks:
  1. PCIe 2.0
  2. SATA
  3. Power consumption...
  4. DDR3 ECC
I already bought an old RX 5600XT to replace my R9 290, so a new GPU is already on it's way.
 
You previously have r9 290, so I assume you have a good power supply.
What PSU is that? So you plan to buy the barebone but will use existing case and PSU?
I think 8700 will suffice but if you can find ryzen 5600 + B450 chipset + 32gb kit ram with that budget, I will go this route.
 
I do have a good PSU as well as a case that I could re-use too.

I’ll do some research into B450 combo’s. I’ve been out of the PC building game for a long time. This dual Xeon monster is the first PC I’ve built since like 2004ish.
 
An i7-8700 will usually whip a couple of old Westmeres in gaming. There might be a few exceptions, but they will be few and far between, and the cases where the old 2x6 core wins will probably be stuff like strategy games. That said it may not be the best option. An 8700 is 6 cores, 12 threads. So it's pretty close to the same as an i5 from a newer generation and slower than the latest and greatest 6 core/12 thread chips. In other words you should cross shop newer i5 and Ryzen 5 chips at the very least. Newer gen chips are likely to be a little faster.
 
Now that I've done a bit more research, I'm thinking spending a little bit more on an X570/CPU combo might be a better direction.
 
a x5670 is an 1392/6086 passmark cpu
a 8700 is around 2650/13000,
a 12600k is 3975/28000 or a 5800x 3447/28000

A 8700 would be quite a nice boost over what you have, 90% on single thread, double multithread for stuff that does not really like being on 2 different cpu or does not fully scale on 24 thread like games
But an couple of years old corei5 or 5xxxx AMD cpu is another 2 full tier above that again, so as going into the upgrade trouble, if it is not that crazy more expensive certainly something to consider.
 
LukeTbk said:
a x5670 is an 1392/6086 passmark cpu
a 8700 is around 2650/13000,
a 12600k is 3975/28000 or a 5800x 3447/28000

A 8700 would be quite a nice boost over what you have, 90% on single thread, double multithread for stuff that does not really like being on 2 different cpu or does not fully scale on 24 thread like games
But an couple of years old corei5 or 5xxxx AMD cpu is another 2 full tier above that again, so as going into the upgrade trouble, if it is not that crazy more expensive certainly something to consider.
Click to expand...

I have 2x 5670's, so it's 1416/11008. But still, doesn't take much to significantly outpace these two old Xeon's at significanlty less power consumption and complexity.
 
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