Xeon E5-2670 v3/Gigabyte x99 Phoenix SLI

Hardware
1

Hello:slight_smile:

I’ve been looking for a replacement for my i7 5820k I currently have a Gigabyte x99 Phoenix SLI board the Xeon is compatible according to Gigabyte my only question is I found cheap Xeon E5-2670 v3 processors on Ebay but they are “Confidential” chips meaning they only work on selected boards so I’ve heard? Noob question but if I buy one and pop it into my Phoenix board will it work?

Thankyou

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ES chips are not meant to be sold, might be out of specs when it comes to clocks and, my bet, is that it won’t work.

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Thank you for the response. How do they test them then? The screenshot on one of the postings on Ebay show the motherboard being used as an Asrock x99 killer board so it must work with some boards?

4

Confidential chips are just engineering samples usually. They work just like all other chips of the same type. If gigabyte board supports that specific version then the confidential chip will be fine.

Intel sends those engineering samples to board makers before they release them so board makers can get proper BIOS support and good stability/compatibility on that board.

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I’ve run 3 of those Xeons in Gigabyte & MSi boards without issue. It would be a downgrade though from an i7 5820K as the ES CPUs wil be limited to 2.0 GHz on all 8 cores and up to 2.5 GHz on the fist two cores typically.

Unless you specifically need the 8/16 core/thread count but high clock speed isn’t so important.

I still use one in a Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4 with an RX480 for race sims but keep my i7 5820K + 980 Ti for my main gaming system.

Gigabyte/MSI/Asrock usually work no issues. Asus not so much. The sellers I bought from required your board model anyway before they would ship to confirm compatibility.

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Thanks for the response guys.

I do allot of Video/Audio conversion and I use Davinci Resolve that particular system will be for work, I’ll pull the trigger and order one thanks again.

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Mixed up my E5 numbers as the E5-2670 Xeons are faster but will still be clock limited compared to the full retail version.

Still a lot of processor for the money and a cheaper way of using X99 boards with lots of PCI-E slots which was why I went that route but with E5-2630 v3 (ES) Xeon’s.

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Yea all good it worked fine thanks again.