Aliexpress LGA2011 X79 motherboards

[bigbeark]

I have been checking out a YouTube site PhilsComputerLab, he reviews modern and retro computer equipment with a focus on gaming. He's getting very good performance from Chinese motherboards using Xeon E5 CPUs with DDR3 ECC Server Ram. These are sold on Aliexpress but I also see some on Ebay and even some Computer chains in North America are now selling them. The main market for this equipment is Russia, Australia and South America. One attraction is pricing. You can buy a complete kit with CPU, 16 GB Ram and the new motherboard for about $100 USD. The other is cheap or free delivery. Phil himself lives in a remote part of Australia. In areas where there are no computer stores this is a real benefit.

Some sellers are offering new Socket 775 boards with jumpers enabling you to run either socket 771 or socket 775 without any CPU mods for $50. These boards run DDR3 memory.

Name brand Used socket 775 boards that will run Quad Core CPUs are expensive in these markets, and judging from Ebay, they are still expensive in North America too.

Comments?

[BigTroll]

Re: Aliexpress LGA2011 X79 motherboards

I bought a Chinese 1155 motherboard to try out, it had its share of problems it didn't support turbo boost and only had a 10/100 nic and no PWM fan control but other than that its been rock solid stable. If you don't mind risking a bit of cash I would say go for it but have low expectations so that way if you do get a turd your not disappointed.

[bauto601]

Re: Aliexpress LGA2011 X79 motherboards

I have ordered a micro-atx X99 board with 32GB DDR4 ECC memory and an E5-2678V3 CPU. According to the russian youtube reviewers, these boards have vastly improved over time. The early x79 were a bit twitchy but the current X99 boards seem to be a lot better.

Oh well, i'll find out in a couple of weeks i guess.

If you really need a somewhat good performing budget system, i would skip 775. It's just becoming too old now and you can get the boards and cpu's even cheaper on just the second hand market.

Go for a X58 setup with something like a X5650~X5670 Xeon cpu and some ECC DDR3 memory which is dirt cheap. For about €90 you can get a sixcore cpu, 16GB ram and a motherboard which will be twice as fast as a 775 setup. X79 is also indeed getting very cheap and may even be better value than X58 now i think about it.

[SMDFlea]

Re: Aliexpress LGA2011 X79 motherboards

A few members have asked for bios dumps for some of these chinese boards,they`re hard to find. I`d recommend anybody buying one to backup the bios in case it goes tits-up at some point.

[bauto601]

Re: Aliexpress LGA2011 X79 motherboards

A few members have asked for bios dumps for some of these chinese boards,they`re hard to find. I`d recommend anybody buying one to backup the bios in case it goes tits-up at some point.

For the X99 boards, mod biosses are very popular since the use of a specific cpu microcode version unlocks the Xeons turbo boost to make all cores run at the single core turbo boost speed at the same tame without a time limit. With this you usually gain 500MHz all-core, which is pretty much when the all-core turbo speed normally is around 2.6GHz. So all these biosses are (luckily) publicly available. I mean, a 12 core Haswell CPU running at 3.3GHz on all cores with quad channel ecc memory support for €90 was tempting enough for me to give it a go.

I recommend to take a look at this site:
https://xeon-e5450.ru/
Google translate is required unless you master the Russian langauge.

[silentbogo]

Re: Aliexpress LGA2011 X79 motherboards

I hate all of those.
With X99 at least you don't gamble that much on chipset(either x99 or C612), but chinese x79 are a total mess of mismatch-reballed hubs: one person gets X79, next one - B75 or H67 etc.
Had about a dozen of those in my workshop 2 years ago - all with either dead PCH, or blown VRM, or both at the same time.

The best alternative is to get a used HP Z420/Z620, Dell T3600 or Lenovo S30. All of those are as cheap as chinese crap, but they are built to spec with full feature set, and are meant to do actual work 24/7.

Just recently I've built a decent machine on a penny budget: Lenovo S20 chassis(old one from LGA1366 WS), Z620 board, some off-brand tower cooler for sAM4 w/ 2011 bracket and reused some old parts laying around the office. Currently in a process of replacing stock v1 BIOS with modded one (trying to get Ivy EP support and NVME boot at the same time).

Regarding X99 - same thing. HP Z640 boards go for sub $80 used nowadays. All you need is a PSU adapter($2-3, if not bundled w/ board) and a few jumpers to make it work and not spit-out warning messages at boot. It may not offer overclocking, but it's the cheapest and the most reliable option for this socket.
Also, when you go to "hi-end" chinese stuff(e.g. proper quad-channel support and semi-decent VRM), you get into questionable territory of matching the price of a mid-range brand-name x99 board.

[momaka]

Re: Aliexpress LGA2011 X79 motherboards

The best alternative is to get a used HP Z420/Z620, Dell T3600 or Lenovo S30. All of those are as cheap as chinese crap, but they are built to spec with full feature set, and are meant to do actual work 24/7.

+1

Although I have not owner a Chinese no-name board yet, I too am weary of their reliability. Meanwhile, it is truee that Dell and HP workstations are engineered with reliability in mind, and they can be found cheap enough thanks to big companies and research firms retiring them every few years.

I bought a Precision T7500 tower recently, and that thing is a beast. It has dual CPU socket that will actually handle 125W and 140W TDP CPUs without burning the VRMs, proper tripple channel memory support, and came with a 1000 Watt Delta PSU stock. All of that for $40. A Chinese X55 board costs more than that and many don't even support tripple channel memory or would I trust them to handle a high-power LGA1366 CPU.

Also, when you go to "hi-end" chinese stuff(e.g. proper quad-channel support and semi-decent VRM), you get into questionable territory of matching the price of a mid-range brand-name x99 board.

Agreed.

Seems to be the case with many of the Chinese boards I've looked at. In that regard, I've been looking for AMD socket G34 boards. There are a number of them on eBay - both reputable ones like Supermicro and the Chinese variants. The Chinese variants seem more suitable in terms of features, as they are more consumer-oriented. However, their main problem is the pricing, as you noted. For a little more, I can get a dual-socket G34 Supermicro board with 12+ RAM slots. Given the ridiculously price of used G34 CPUs, and the fact that at least the SM boards will surely be reliable, one has to wonder if the Chinese boards are worth it in the end.

[stj]

Re: Aliexpress LGA2011 X79 motherboards

the chinese boards are aimed at internet/gaming cafe's and embeded stuff like vending machines/kiosks
they are intended to run 24/7 but dont expect to just throw a win7 dvd at them - you need to install the drivers properly.