12 Cores & 24 Threads For $30 - "Maxing Out" an HP Workstation PC For Gaming 

it's so weird seeing once high-end hardware cost so little.

I daily drive something similar! I'm running the newer Z840 one, but I got the Case, CPU, RAM, and even a free GPU thrown in for 50 bucks. I upgraded to a E5-2660 v4 (14 cores) and a 3060 Ti, and it's honestly great! As multithreading becomes more accessible in games, it's actually my graphics card that's holding everything back now with the 8gb of VRAM...

We have a Z620 in our home office, still cuts 4K footage no problem with effects and color grading included. It features e5-2696v2, 48GB of ram and a RX 480 8gb, literally can render and run on all 100% for days.

You might get better results if you turn hyper-threading off on these old high core count CPUs, since it slightly decreases single-threaded performance when on and they can use every ounce of it they can get

Love the X79 platform. I got mine around 2018 as I wanted to test out what it could do. Got a 1680v2 for it, runs at 4.3ghz at just 1.19v with max temps around 70 degrees in stress tests. Very good performance too. it has made an excellent 24/7 htpc/storage server/occasional gaming pc. I always install the latest games on it just to see how it runs compared to my newer stuff and it continues to impress me.

Back in 2018 I ran a system with the 2695v2. It was a proud little machine and I had it in an x79 board that let me force turbo speeds, which helped quite a bit. Matched it with a 1070 and had a pretty solid experience.

At a placed I worked they had the Z640 models assigned to architechts and I can confirm they were super-solid systems, we did maintenance on them once a year and even right before the cleaning they performed perfectly while caked in dust.

Nice video! I like that you pointed out some core facts like the v1/v2 cpu´s and matching motherboards. I don't know if you saw, but on the last video featuring this HP z420 I commented about pretty much all the things you said at the start. If it inspired you to add it in, I'm honored :D

Your conclusion is absolutely spot on. If you end up with one of these machines then there is a point in adding such a CPU. If someone is building a PC from scratch then a 6c/12th from AM4 or Intel's 10th gen and after is a much more sensible choice

Just undertaken a smiler project with a P510 Lenovo but I went with a 14core flavour with a lower base clock! Really impressed with the outcome, paired it with an RX5700 and it all come to under £300! Awesome video as usual ❤️🙏🏼

Man, that Z420 brings back some good memories. Back in 2015 we had those as our systems at my old Workplace with 32 Gigs of Ram, a Quadro M4000 Gpu and four 22" Monitors. Plenty powerful for what we did, which usually was running between two to four local VMs for Softwarepackaging, Softwaretesting, Test Installation and scripting.

love seeing a review on the Z series from my favorite Gaming RU-vidr :) as an HP Z440 owner with an 18 core 2697 V4, RX 570 8GB with 32GB of RAM, it can run pretty much everything, huge jump for me coming from an Elitebook with an AMD A10 APU

I have this CPU installed in a chineseum motherboard. I can set the all-core turbo time to "0" (infinite) and I have a good air cooler on top, so it runs much faster than you think it would.

Thanks for sharing an older X79 Xeon. Love these old things and the prices now. Same with X99.

Quite surprised at this, nice video. I found a Z400 with a Quadro 4000 built in in our e-waste bin at work. Certainly not powerful but the nostalgia from back in the day is great from when these components were extremely expensive and exclusive in a way.

I started my X79 journey with a 3930K build, with 32Gb ram & GTX Titan, nowadays i run a E5-2667v2 which i brought in 2018. I personally felt the 2697v2 was a little too low on clock speeds and picked this 8c16t to as it will turbo 3.6 on all cores without overclocking. It's an ultra reliable CPU that has served me well as my 2nd/backup PC that always seems to just get on with things.

Still a great gaming performance for this age! In Spiderman the game only uses the 12 cores and the other 12 Threads are not used at all. :D

I like this channel. Your style is unassuming.

You are making a lot of great videos on youtube. Thanks!

Just bought an e5 2680 v4 for £13.. And I've ordered a cheap mb of aliexpress to pair it with. I've got the rest of the parts in my spares, thought it would be a laugh to throw together!

My boy don't came along way. I been following you since you first started out. Watching those q6600 videos. Lol. Keep up the good work.

Interesting video. I have several old z400's I upgraded long ago and they are still alive and kicking. Always wanted to get a z420 but alas never have ...yet. The first two Z400's I had back in like 2014 I put x5675's in each and called them good. Optimized the best settings in bios for most power and they were quick enough and for the time still pretty awesome. I sold one to a friend and kept the other one as my wifes office pc. I ended up picking up a couple more for real cheap soon afterword and did more research and learned that the w3670 w3680 w3690 of course were the overclockers that would work... at the time I could find no information that a z400 could even run a w3690 but given there were some with w3680's I had hopes it would work. I ended up putting a w3680 in one and trying to figure out setfsb and throttlestop with it. I was successful with figuring out the pll that worked with setfsb but it was never 100% stable or reliable so gave up with that option. Throttlestop was the answer though. Was able to set a real good stable overclock around 3.8Ghz across all cores and a turbo on up to 4 cores at 4.1Ghz I was real happy with. Learned about the proprietary power supply fairly early on with those as well. I only had the 475w PSU's and knew I needed at least the 600w units that seemed way to pricey compared to the average consumer grade models I could find at the time even then. I had an hd7850(single pcie 6pin plug needed) in one which ran just fine but I put a gtx670(dual pcie 6pin needed) in the other one and was using a dual molex to 6pin connector and kept having problems with the 475w psu. Bought a 600w z400 power supply and was not happy witht the fact it only had two pcie 6pin power connectors but still much better then the single and ran the gtx670 just fine but I wanted to try sli with 2 670's and that wouldn't cut it. Explored forums did some studying learned the difference in pinouts for the HP Z400 pSU's vs standard consumer PSU's and went to work modding a decent 800w standard ATX PSU to work. Did the mod to all the Z400's instead of wasting any more money on another trash 600w Proprietary HP PSU that costed more then the old z400's themselves. Then I was running dual GTX 670's and then GTX680's. A huge HIS IceQ Turbo HD 7950 3GB went into my wifes PC. My wifes PC had the 600w HP PSU. That PSU ate that HD7950 as well as an rx480 and lastly a gtx970 before I realized it was the problem child. Each of those cards just black screened out of the blue randomly and never worked again. Changed that power supply out to a regular 750w unit and never had an issue with another dead gpu ever again out of any of the Z's. Finally after some years I believe it was in late 2017 I got hold of a w3690 and threw it in the last box needing the upgraded cpu (still running w3530). Fingers crossed because I still couldn't find anything about it working in a z400 but it worked great. Throttlestop... that's the point of all of this message. Use Throttlestop because you should be able to get that chip to OC even in that HP motherboard. There's some tips and tricks in order to get it right. But it is easily doable. So yeh... that's what I was trying to tell you. OC that beast and try a few more tests using that 3060 in it to compare against. LOL I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised with the performance increase. I'll gladly try and help with the technicalities of getting throttlestop dialed in and setting up a Task to run it on startup properly so it works like it should every time you boot the machine etc. A few little tricks but overall it's quite simple. Try it out! 😁👍

I use the 2690v2 10 core as it has slightly higher clocks which make it slightly better for gaming. I have actually never encountered a game that wouldn't play with it. I run it with a 6900xt at 4k60 and its great.

I really like this type of content. I have an old HP ProLiant DL380p with two E5 2696v2. (I bought those cpus for 35€ on aliexpress).

5:52 Pißwasser Pils ... Old but gold (in several senses) 😀

Great vid. There is a lot of older hardware out there that's very capable with the right video card paring. I have a Phenom II 6 core system (vmware whitebox) with a 1650 in it that I used as a backup to my outgoing 10 year old I5 4690K gaming box. That Phenom holds its own, as did most iterations of that processor. Quite astounding for a 13 year old processor built on 15 year old architecture. I'm moving to an I5 13 gen today, so I'm going to compare the phenom and I5 4th gen with the 1650 to see which one is actually better.

I still have my "highend" pc that I have built like 2-3 years ago, but these type of build seems to be so much fun to thinker with. A old Beast of the past, plus the notoriety of a sleeper pc is pretty nice. It's like a old Muscle Car, energy efficiency is not the point

Great video - Have a Z440 I've done similar!!!

The Z420 with the 1620v2 was my gaming PC for a looong time, and I loved it

Will be also interesting testing the cyberpunk update requirements in old hardware and the actual rigs , for example if it's still works on a hdd

That HP liquid cooler is actually kinda awesome! I've never seen an AIO quite like it before!

Looks like the games are unable to fully utilize the CPU. For example, farcry 6 has one CPU core near 100% and that's why you are CPU limited. You might get a boost in gaming performance by disabling hyperthreading in BIOS. This will reduce the slight overhead of hyperthreading and reduce the power consumption which should increase the turbo ratio.

That benchmark for Spider-Man is very perplexing. It seems that a lot of the threads were parked during gameplay.

the problem comes from the lower single thread performance. if a game is only utilizing 1 or 2 cores, then it doesnt matter that you have 12. I love these old xeon processors because the v3 and up have great STR and still tons of cores. You can divide them up and use them for server hosting

I'm using this exact CPU in a server setup i.e. its intended use. My home-made NAS/server, paired with a Chinese "x79" motherboard, 64GB DDR3, a HP H240 SAS card and 8x3TB SAS drives in ZFS (yes I have it in a case where they all fit). It's perfectly adequate for the ZFS storage role as well as heavy compiling of software occasionally. I actually don't have a graphics card in it at all. :)

I ran my VMs on one of these. Did me well. Loud and eats a ton of watts but damn, best home "servers" which are also affordable.

Interesting CPU, like!

X79 and X99 content. We ❤ it!!!

I think what led to the strange results was how well (or not) games made use of that many cores. Cyberpunk for example had an extremely even use on all available threads, meaning it can multithread amazingly well, while Hogwarts Legacy was mainly sitting on three threads, which can be a huge detriment if the CPU has mediocre performance per core due to the lower clockspeed. GTA V also hogged mostly one thread it seems. Single threads on the CPU maxing out due to bad optimization for multi-core CPUs is always going to be the achilles heel of these server/workstation CPUs with insane core counts as clocks will always be getting the short end of the stick on those.

Got one of these I bought for my daughter for video work a few years ago. Might have to check out better CPU options for it.

I got a dual socket 2680 v1 system paired with a 6700xt.. love it

I have a 1650 v2 (all core overclock to 4.2ghz) paired with a Vega 64 for living room sofa gaming. Works well. Quite a balanced system for 1080p, even 1440p.

0:43 This is the first time I recall seeing a CPU with inverted/ clipped corners. I've only ever seen x58, x79, x99 chips online, not in person.

Really appreciated Work , i have some questions, For pubg mobile on gameloop, This 2697v2 is a good choice? If yes Than which Budget Gpu is best for 1080p gaming with this Processor with minimum bottleneck?

this man said 12 cores 24 threads running at base speed of 2.7 and 3.5 turbo dude thats crazy for that board you just blew my mind

Its literally so underrated what we can do to achieve a nice gaming experience overall with "old" builds. Thats crazy😆😆

Thanks for this video I'm actually want to build hi end gaming PC with Xeon E5 2696 v3 😊

Really enjoying these lga2011 videos

These old Xeon systems are often incredible value for money, I have some of the Dell Precision series running Xeon V4s at work and have no need to change them out. Not to mention, despite the age, the chassis/cases are super durable (but heavy) and can withstand being moved around without damage - makes modern cases look like tin cans.

you may find that some newer titles look for arch extensions that the older CPUs dont support. thats what ran me out with one of the last older core CPUs i was using.

I ran a couple different early i7 boxes as my main boxes for a long time. First one was a original I7 980 that I was surprised when buddy gave me the board complete for helping him scrap old trade in pc's from his business. It had 6 CORES, it was a very fast beast compared to my old AMD quad core. Later I upgraded to newer I7 board and plunked the fastest 4960x cpu it could take, still 6 core, but even faster and newer memory. Both were very cheap to build up and the big thing is they used a lot of power between the cpu and the 1070gtx video card I run. I finally upgraded to a Ryzen 3900x 12 core but those old cpu's were very fast for how ancient they were and I still use the 980 as a win7 box to run Windows Media Center with my old HD HomeRun prime 3 tuner cable card setup that is only fully supported by WMC because of the cable card needs special support for the encryption it uses. The new monster does the video editing and recoding, plus playing games if I want. Those old cpu's are still a cheap way to build a still fast box as long as you don't need support for the latest goodies and games.

I have 2 e5 v1/v2 workstations and they have been great for my needs. Im needing another one so im looking at newer workstations as they are a great price vs building depending on your needs.

I recently moved to Canada and I plan to do the same thing get an old workstation and throw my gtx 1650 super for low end gaming PC which can be a light workstation as well :)

Can you redo a test with the exact settings in games after the upgrade so we can compare please? I see you changed the settings higher after the upgrade. Thank you

Xeon 1230v2 in my friend's Apex machine, was a fun build

What did you use for replacement PSU and what was the part number for the adapter? That has been my stutter so far. I think this would be an incredible LINUX box.

I would be curious on how this compares to other systems in terms of performance? As well, I am not sure the total you have dropped in, not counting the video card, but how would that compare as far as cost with a new built Ryzen 5500 system as an example?

Maybe what's holding back the system in most modern games is the RAM clock? Have you tried overclocking it? (idk if that's possible on that mobo)

i absolutely love builds like these. just taking some random business desktop and slamming a GPU in there.

I think I told you about it, but I have a HP 820 workstation with two of these. I ended up pairing it with an low profile RX 6400, but the performance wasn't as good as I would have expected. Windows seemed kind of sluggish, even with an SSD. I'm wondering if its the Meltdown and Spectre exploit mitigation slowing things down.

I just can't justify the monetary savings getting something like this when I know the power consumption is high. 10 years ago energy here was cheap. It's gone up 50%. I can't justify this when I can buy a Ryzen 5500 for $80 USD, a B550 MB with 2 NVMe ports for about $100 (Gigabyte Ultra Durable line) and 32GB of memory for about $80 USD and have a much better backbone for a gaming system that's also faster. And the power consumption is TINY.

This BLOWS my MIND, i cant believe any of this you can see al the cores % and even cyberpunk all cores WORK !!!

This old xeons are so great. It took me using one to appreciate it. It's not an modern i9 or even i7 equivalent, but they make excellent computers for very cheap. Aliexpress xeons and mobos are saving Latin America rn.

i wonder if he would be better with i7-4960x, with only 6c/12th but it runs on oc 4.5Ghz? i a have x79 mobo and i was thinking if i should get e5 for 30$ or i7 for 70$... i had watched Jayz video explaingng just that, that one core gets on 100% and start to throtle and that core is responsible for pcie? i wonder how would city skyline run on that kind of setup gpu is gtx1080ti for now, but i would like to upgrade gpu first....thanks

what if you dropped a 3070 or 6750 xt in? the cpu was limited my the old board but it would be interesting to see what it could do then.

Sweet build. Right now finishing out a mac pro 5,1(flashed from a 4,1) with dual 5690 that i need to de-lid. Will to that of with a vega 64 or radeon vii for a fun secondary computer with monterrey and windows 10. Also planning a server build with dual e5-2670v2 xeons. So much power for so cheap. Only issue really is the power hungry nature of it all. Almost be better off with an i3 13100 for a home server ha. But that wouldn't be all that fun now would it.

I'd be curious to know how MS Flightsim would work with DLSS 3.0 and an old Xeon. Like the 14-core Xeon I have

I'm impressed that this processor will run on this CPU. I have this very same Z420, with the 1650 processor. it lists the 8-core 2667v2 as the top compatible chip, but I suppose that's because the 2697v2 hadn't been created yet. I'd like to know if the system gave you any troubles when installing this 2697v2?

I recently got a dell precision t3610 from my internship and i was looking to install a ssd, a 3060 12gb and this e6 2697 v2 in it. thats crazy how you made a video like this lol. also can anyone tell mw with these spec would it be good enough to just use as a streaming PC

You should try out xeons e5 v3, especially 2670v3. Not the most expensive, but still one of the best by price-performance value. And unlock all-cores turboboost on them, cuz only v3 has that opportunity. The bundle of CPU+motherboard+16 GB ram costs less than 100 bucks, and performs like i5 10400 in all games. When I bought 10400f myself, the only thing I felt that moment was disappointment, cuz I payed 400% more (it was few years ago when prices when sky high) and almost didn't get any fps gain compared to my 2640v3 on that moment. CS GO and Cyberpunk both performed identical on them. So I just sold 10400f few months later and kept on using xeon

You should try to cap the framerate in the tests as well. It can make a huge difference in some games.

Been using its 'little' brother, the e5-2696 v2 for almost 2 years now and it's worth every penny😊

How I wish all modern games could utilize extra cpu cores like Cyberpunk, look at that, all cores loaded at least 50%, just beautiful.

What is the powerful ,energy efficient and cost low cpu ? Can you give some suggestions?

I have a Dell Inspiron with a 220 watt psu and a 65 watt i5-4460s cpu, will it support the low profile Rx 6400 and will the psu be able to handle it??

You can get a Xeon 2680v4 for less than 30$ shipped nowadays from Chinese markets. It's 14 cores/28 threads and runs close to 3ghz in games. You can pair it with a Chinese x99 motherboard which cost at least 80$ for decent ones. It's a great budget workstation plus gaming machine as long as you don't expect 100+ fps on it for single core heavy games like the newer far cry or assassin's creed games since it has fairly low clock speeds.

Hello I have a hp 420 and an gtx 1080 ti , If possible I want to put an atx 1000 psu, how did you attach the psu to the hp case, the holes don't align?

After watching this and your E5-1650 v2 vid, I decided to do some benchmarking with the various CPU's I've since collected (mine came originally with an E5-1620 v2). HP Z420 (Rev 2 motherboard) Win 10 x64 Pro for Workstations 128 Gb RAM (1866 MHz) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Cinebench R15: Xeon E5-1620 v2 - OpenGL 67.49 fps - CPU 507 cb Xeon E5-1650 v2 - OpenGL 82.97 fps - CPU 948 cb Xeon E5-2667 v2 - OpenGL 73.31 fps - CPU 1275 cb Xeon E5-2697 v2 - OpenGL 57.61 fps - CPU 1558 cb Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0: (Direct3D11 1360 x 768 fullscreen, Custom, High) Xeon E5-1620 v2 - FPS 107.5 - Score 4500 - Min FPS 23.6 - Max FPS 163.9 Xeon E5-1650 v2 - FPS 109.6 - Score 4584 - Min FPS 26.4 - Max FPS 184.8 Xeon E5-2667 v2 - FPS 117.8 - Score 4930 - Min FPS 30.0 - Max FPS 199.6 Xeon E5-2697 v2 - FPS 89.9 - Score 3762 - Min FPS 23.0 - Max FPS 153.6 As @White-Wolf1969 mentioned below, the 2667 does seem to be the pick for gaming, although the 2697 monstered the Cinebench CPU rendering test. I didn't try the 2687W V2 (150W TDP), but do have the optional high performance heat sink to run one, but I guess the results will be similar to the 2667. I do also occasionally run Proxmox VE on it, and in that case for running multiple VM's, the 2697 is probably better Keep up the good work!

I don't know much about Xeons but shouldn't the processor be at the 3.5Ghz you stated at the start of the video? Doesn't look to me like it hits a thermal or power limit.

hey matie wanted to point out that for cyberpunk i would disagree with it being more gpu intensive, rather if you check the on screen stats it is using all the cores, so i think its just simply using the cpu more efficiently than other games

Every time I watch your benchmarks, it makes me laugh when a lot of the games you play are displaying a WANTED level, or a warning from police you are involved with some illegal activity. And you come across as a decent chap. Hmmm, I wonder now about that. Another great video. I have a Dell Precision T3620 with i5-6500t and paired it with a GTX 1060 6gb. This machine performs solid with no issues whatsoever. Total cost including gpu was about $120 U.S. dollars.

Please test the 4060ti in this system, i know you're already tested it with cyberpunk but i'm hopping a video about this cpu with that card, thank you

I have the Z420 too, I use the Intel Xeon E5-2690 and an AMD Rx 5700 XT. It runs most of the newer Triple A Games at 1080P Ultra with 60 Fps. Its an abosulute Budget Boomer. The Turbo Boost for the CPU in the bios also helped me too get 3.4 - 3.8 Ghz constant.😄

I have the same Z420 workstation but I have a PROBLEM. When I've tried changing the PSU from stock to a 450W Corsair, it didn't even start. What should I do???

I have one of the overclockable e5s with a chinesium board. I hacked the bios (much easier to do than i thought) and OC'd 6c/12t to 4.2ghz !

not much people know this cpu gem it cost so much less than other cpu making it a budget meal build... i have a x79 paired with 2670 with 64gb ram and gtx750ti coming this week it cost me 90$ hoping it will perform better in light gaming

nice, I have one of these as my home server!

An older gen RX or GTX series would prolly be a good fit, 1070Ti mabey?

Look into the Xeon E5-2667 v2. It's only 8 cores but faster base and turbo speeds makes it great for repurposing these old machines for gaming.

x79 is pretty good imo the low single core is why some of the games you tested did not run good as the others. if you get a chance to get a xeon 1680 v2 its the best cpu on the platform and can do 4.4 to 4.5ghz with a good cooler and board that can overclock it. for gpu the 2080ti is best card you can pair it with but is a beast for 1440p gaming

I can pick up a Z440 with 16GB of ram and 18Cores Xeon E5-2699 V3 for around $150. Would that be a good upgrade over my current system (i5 2500k at 4.5Ghz, 32GB of ram and RX 6650 ti).

I did this years ago. I added another Xeon as it was a dual cpu board and added a GTX 960 and a 850w PSU though some rewiring of the motherboard power connector as it was a HP board it had its own HP PSU different than normal ATX board style. Anyway managed to find a wire diagram and sacrificed a 4 pin power connector to use 2 of the wires to achieve a working connection between the aftermarket PSU and the HP board. Wasn’t easy. Anyway running it on 32gb of DDR2 ECC Ram it played games from around 2012 great but newer ones not so much and Arma 3 worked ok but still stuttered at times. Was a great little project but during Covid I ended up building a more Modern machine. I now game on a laptop lol wish I still had room for a gaming pc though! But finding this video brought back some memories 😁

I recently picked up a Z440 workstation for free, I'm hoping my E5-2690v4 works in it! I'm building it for a Plex/Conan/Satisfactory/Space Engineers dedicated server and a living room VR machine with a 3050, 128GB of RAM, 5x 10TB SAS drives, 2x 1 TB SSDs, and unRAID running off a 64GB flash drive. I love seeing what these old cheap/free office PCs can do, especially with just a little investment.

Making that Z420, blazing fast?

Just wondered with games that are older that can on play on 4cores, can you use cpu like i3-13100 or does it need to be a cu of its era?

If you use the 1650v2 you can overclock it using XTU. I got about 4.0 stable. Didn't have the liquid cooler, it had more if I had the headroom.

Your thoughts on the E5 2667 v2? 8 cores with a higher clock speed should be better for games right? I picked one up for 15 quid off Ebay....but my motherboard is only compatible with v1 CPUs! I'll guess I'll have to wait for a cheap deal on a v2 workstation😂

Does that HP machine actually support a standard ATX power supply? I totally missed that part.

HP workstations are beasts. our 24/7 facility uses them and they very rarely break down

Watching this old bruiser tackling modern games oddly reminded me of your "Can the 3000G run it?" videos. Diametrically opposite approaches, but the same goal - like watching a moped racing a fully loaded truck round a track. 😂