Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

[ratdude747]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

the days of building kickass desktops is about done.

Not unless you buy newer used workstation parts... Heck, even my Twin Xeon rig as plenty of kick (its a 2003/2004 era machine, mostly)... if it was a gen newer and had x64 and PCI-E, then with a massive GPU upgrade, it would be killing some of the new desktops on the market...

[Psycho0124]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Not unless you buy newer used workstation parts... Heck, even my Twin Xeon rig as plenty of kick (its a 2003/2004 era machine, mostly)... if it was a gen newer and had x64 and PCI-E, then with a massive GPU upgrade, it would be killing some of the new desktops on the market...

Haha! Did you do one of those dual 5148 builds too? I got a pair of those little gems for 11 bucks each! Grabbed a used S5000PAL for cheap on Ebay. The heat sinks were too expensive so I modified a couple of old ones to fit (ugly but they work great).


It's a power house for server tasks but it'd be useless for most desktop kind of applications/games. Without a PCIe 16x port, none of the high-end GPUs will even fit. 8x PCIe is about the best most of these boards offer for a graphics card port (and the S5000 only offers it on a riser card). I've seen articles about folks using a Dremel to open the end of the 8x port or even chopping off some of the GFX cards PCB at the contacts to cram them into the slots. PCIe cards are capable of stepping down and running at lower bandwidth like this but the performance hit can be pretty serious for gaming and the modding required is a little hairy.

It's fun as a side project but I think it would be a pretty dark day for the PC enthusiast if workstation/server parts were the only route to a high-end desktop PC. Maybe it's time to start drafting up some long-winded hate-mail for Intel.

[ratdude747]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Haha! Did you do one of those dual 5148 builds too? I got a pair of those little gems for 11 bucks each! Grabbed a used S5000PAL for cheap on Ebay. The heat sinks were too expensive so I modified a couple of old ones to fit (ugly but they work great).


It's a power house for server tasks but it'd be useless for most desktop kind of applications/games. Without a PCIe 16x port, none of the high-end GPUs will even fit. 8x PCIe is about the best most of these boards offer for a graphics card port (and the S5000 only offers it on a riser card). I've seen articles about folks using a Dremel to open the end of the 8x port or even chopping off some of the GFX cards PCB at the contacts to cram them into the slots. PCIe cards are capable of stepping down and running at lower bandwidth like this but the performance hit can be pretty serious for gaming and the modding required is a little hairy.

It's fun as a side project but I think it would be a pretty dark day for the PC enthusiast if workstation/server parts were the only route to a high-end desktop PC. Maybe it's time to start drafting up some long-winded hate-mail for Intel.

Workstation boards have x16... some of the opteron ones even could SLI.

Mine is based off a supermicro X5DAL-TG2 (Used to be Topcat's board that was BCN's first web server). It runs twin 1M Xeon Gallatins, 3.2GHZ. GPU wise, it has a AGP pro 8x slot (which I put a 512mb ATi radeon HD 2400 pro into). Not so hot for gaming, but for twin displays and productivity, it kicks ass.

There is a thread about it somewhere... when I find it I'll link it. I need to take fresh pics anyway since I made a few changes.

edit: here's the thread:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=19538

It does have some "hacked" heatsinks as well. See the thread.

[Psycho0124]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Nice project! Lookin' forward to the pics when you get a chance!

If you're looking for an ultra-cheap upgrade, the Xeon 5148LVs are still (amazingly) cheap! Don't be fooled by the lower clock speed (2.33Ghz). They're based on Intels newer Core architecture (a huge improvement over the old NetBurst architecture), run a higher bus speed, dual cores, and have a 4M L2 cache. The low power consumption is nice too. The chip was ranked #1 on Passmarks Performance/Price CPU category for most of the last year and a half. Total price on my build was just under $100! It's been happily hosting web/file/game/voice servers under my desk ever since (hence all the dust in the pics, sorry about that ).

[ratdude747]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Nice project! Lookin' forward to the pics when you get a chance!

If you're looking for an ultra-cheap upgrade, the Xeon 5148LVs are still (amazingly) cheap! Don't be fooled by the lower clock speed (2.33Ghz). They're based on Intels newer Core architecture (a huge improvement over the old NetBurst architecture), run a higher bus speed, dual cores, and have a 4M L2 cache. The low power consumption is nice too. The chip was ranked #1 on Passmarks Performance/Price CPU category for most of the last year and a half. Total price on my build was just under $100! It's been happily hosting web/file/game/voice servers under my desk ever since (hence all the dust in the pics, sorry about that ).

I'd need a fresh Mobo as well... The 3.2GHZ gallatin 1M is the best mine can do.

[Rulycat]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Well it depends on competition here... Intel used to price gouge a lot and I expect ASUS and ECS and so in pressured them to not increase prices as much as maybe they could because it would hurt their motherboard sales. but if Intel is going to be the sole provider of boards now... ASUS may turn around and say "Well, we make laptops, but now we don't make their boards and that's a loss to us. But wait.. if we buy Nvidia Tegra chips, or a Qualcomm ARM chip we can still build our own boards, and still stick Windows 8 on it or easily support Ubuntu!" and bang, Intel will have no customers...

Intel don't seem to realise they're NOT NEEDED any more. Apple will eventually extend their custom ARM chips to include laptops and desktops, Microsoft have ARM and cloud stuff available, AMD still produce x86 chips for those who need upgrades and some chinese firms are producing cheap ARM or MIPS chips. As software is more open than ever, stuff can be ported easily.

Intel is a dinosaur. And the "climate" is "changing"! < pun intended.

[TELVM]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

... I've seen articles about folks using a Dremel to open the end of the 8x port or even chopping off some of the GFX cards PCB at the contacts to cram them into the slots. PCIe cards are capable of stepping down and running at lower bandwidth like this but the performance hit can be pretty serious for gaming ...

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, the real world hit is just 2~4% :

Uncle Tom's - PCIe Scaling Explored

[Psycho0124]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

I'd need a fresh Mobo as well... The 3.2GHZ gallatin 1M is the best mine can do.

Ahh, no worries, the boards go for peanuts right now!
The dual LGA 771 S5000PAL board I grabbed on ebay only set me back $20 after a week or two of watching for deals! They're a few bucks more at the moment but you could easily nab one for 30 if you were in a hurry. The server grade hardware is built so robust, even going with a used board, you can probably expect many years of life out of it.

The DDR2 ECC memory is cheap too.

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, the real world hit is just 2~4% :

Wow, nice! Who'd have thought?

[ratdude747]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Ahh, no worries, the boards go for peanuts right now!
The dual LGA 771 S5000PAL board I grabbed on ebay only set me back $20 after a week or two of watching for deals! They're a few bucks more at the moment but you could easily nab one for 30 if you were in a hurry. The server grade hardware is built so robust, even going with a used board, you can probably expect many years of life out of it.

The DDR2 ECC memory is cheap too.


Wow, nice! Who'd have thought?

After all the $ (not too much really) and effort (a lot) I put into the system, I'll pass. Besides, why waste such good parts?

[Topcat]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Ahh, no worries, the boards go for peanuts right now!
The dual LGA 771 S5000PAL board I grabbed on ebay only set me back $20 after a week or two of watching for deals! They're a few bucks more at the moment but you could easily nab one for 30 if you were in a hurry. The server grade hardware is built so robust, even going with a used board, you can probably expect many years of life out of it.

The DDR2 ECC memory is cheap too.

Like this one?

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=19940

[ratdude747]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Like this one?

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=19940

If you have the right case... That's what will bite you in the ass. That's what I like about my current setup... it fits my case very well... if it weren't for the missing I/O shield* you could say it was a perfect fit.

*- (edit) I snared a replacement shield for $5.50 on ebay... so once I have that, it will be a perfect match. All it needs now is a 2 or 3 drive raid array... the solo drive on a
nice 3ware card is lame.

[Topcat]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

^
The above mentioned system has 6 HDD's (of 8 ports) on my 3ware. 4x 1TB WD Blacks (2 mirrors @ 1tb ea) and 2x velociraptors (mirror for OS/boot).

Glad you scored an IO shield for it. Its been a good system.

[ratdude747]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

^
The above mentioned system has 6 HDD's (of 8 ports) on my 3ware. 4x 1TB WD Blacks (2 mirrors @ 1tb ea) and 2x velociraptors (mirror for OS/boot).

Glad you scored an IO shield for it. Its been a good system.

I'm working on the HDDs. Somebody (you know who you are) happens to have a 320gb drive for sale just like the one I already have (same model) so I may try to work on getting that to do some raid 0. Since I ended up not spending as much on the GPU as I had set aside for an eventual upgrade, I now have a bit of $ to go into it (plus some tradebait I've had sitting w/o a use).

[pickerr33]

hi

All the more reason never to buy Celeron and Pentium CPUs

[TELVM]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

... (AMD) is shit...

Far from it.

A year ago I got a Phenom II 960T. After some easy fiddling it unlocked to six cores and OCed to 4.1GHz. Look what 'the shit' can do.

-> LARGE
63 GFLOPS (32-bit Se7en, ~78 GFLOPS with 64-bit)

-> LARGE
1M SuperPI in 16.8 s

-> LARGE
More than 10GB/s memory read speed

-> LARGE
Undervolts to 0.78V @ 800MHz at idle, just 80W from the wall, using K10Stat software

Good shit for just 106€. There are (much more expensive) Intel CPus that trounce it, but the performance/price from AMD is superb. As always.

[Agent24]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

They keep saying PC gaming is dead but I am not buying it. I think they are trying to push that message to get more people on consoles for some reason (try to reduce piracy and increase their already ridiculous profits?)

The thing is, the PC is far the superior platform for gaming. More reliable hardware. Faster hardware. Upgradeable. Overclockable. Customisable.

Not to mention the PC can easily do just about anything else with the right software and readily available hardware. Want to turn your Xbox 360 into an HTPC with 6 digital HDTV tuners and 8TB of RAID storage? Good luck with that!

Oh and for gaming the PC has one other thing that really rounds out the whole deal:

The mouse.

[severach]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Maybe this is Intel's way of saying they've hit the performance wall making the CPU another cog instead of something special.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

only good things about intel: Raid. AMD raid blows chunks, and intel is not near the best but for fakeraid, its better than AMD

if AMD were to get rid of the current raid system, and have seperate application instead of a puny webserver that does not support breaking raid 1 into non-raid drives, I would choose amd all the way, all the time

I'll miss upgrading. Years ago I build a guys sons computer with a new gigabyte board with a Pentium 4 3.0 I had lying around, for the chance of upgrading. He bought a new C2 Q6600 on ebay for $50 and 4gb of ram. thing kicks ass, and he only spent a small amount of money

hell the laptop i'm on now was given to me free with a pdc 2310, was able to spend $10 on ebay for a T7300 and boy does it fly

of course, this does give us an opportunity to perfect a niche service. Doing BGA Upgrades, from hacking bios's too

[Agent24]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

of course, this does give us an opportunity to perfect a niche service. Doing BGA Upgrades, from hacking bios's too

And think of all the reballs needed when the stupid things break too...

[ben7]

Re: Intel to kill CPU upgrade options from 2013, BGA only CPUs

Far from it.

A year ago I got a Phenom II 960T. After some easy fiddling it unlocked to six cores and OCed to 4.1GHz. Look what 'the shit' can do.

-> LARGE
63 GFLOPS (32-bit Se7en, ~78 GFLOPS with 64-bit)

-> LARGE
1M SuperPI in 16.8 s

-> LARGE
More than 10GB/s memory read speed

-> LARGE
Undervolts to 0.78V @ 800MHz at idle, just 80W from the wall, using K10Stat software

Good shit for just 106€. There are (much more expensive) Intel CPus that trounce it, but the performance/price from AMD is superb. As always.

Sweet!

My laptop has a three-core Phenom II (2.1GHz), it rocks!!! 4GB of memory, and about 300gig of storage. The only thing about the computer is that the battery only lasts about an hour and a half xD

I'm guessing that beside a few of the Macbooks at school, my computer is the fastest :P

A friend has an intel i5 processor in his laptop, and its like using windows 95 on a pentium with only 256Mb of memory :P

Shame on Intel, why would they do such a thing!?!?!?
I can imagine so many cracked solder balls ruining perfect equipment! And wasting money!