Today I gave up waiting for a hardware to show up and called them on my day off. After 38 minutes of hold music I finally got to speak with someone in customer service. The first thing they told me was that one screen in there computer said I had received the hardware, and another screen said I hadn’t. Then she said she would get the hardware right out to me. I told her NO THANK YOU!  So in two days the DSL service I never got to use will get disconnected.

The confusing part (at least for me) is that the new 54XX Xeons are cheaper than the similar, older 53XX Xeons. For example:

a. Intel Xeon E5335 Clovertown 2.0GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core 2U Passive Processor Model BX80563E5335P – Retail $349.  

b. Intel Xeon E5405 2.0 GHz 12M L2 Cache 1333MHz FSB LGA771 Active Quad-Core Processor $230

These processors have the same 2.0Ghz clock speed, same 1333Mhz front side bus, but the 5405 has 50% more cache than the 5335.  So it’s better and $120 cheaper.  So that begs the question:  Can I use the 54XX Xeons in a dual socket 771 system that supports 53XXs?

Suprisingly the answer is YES, mostly.  The Intel 5000 chipset motherboards claim to support most Xeons from 51XX to 54XX.  You would hope that 3rd party Intel 5000 chipset motherboards would behave the same.   This article  discusses swapping 53XX and 54XX CPUs out in the same motherboard and doing benchmarks. So its definately doable.

There are a few exceptions.  The very fast and expensive E5472 has a 1600 MHz FSB that is too quick for older motherboards that max at 1333 MHz.    The Dell Precision 490 that I like so much has some versions that don’t support any quad-core processors at all. Obviously that old version isn’t going to work with the 5400s.  The newer Dell precision 490′s that support 53XX’s should work fine with 54XXs.

For compatibility with older servers and for exact replacement purposes you will see 53XX Xeons around for some time. But if you have a capable motherboard, I would definately recommend saving some money and using a Harpertown Xeons. Good Luck!

Dell Precision 490

In my last post I wrote about trying to obtain a dual quad-core workstation on the cheap, I wrote that buying a new bare-bones dual Xeon setup (case, power supply and empty motherboard)  would run $500-$700.

Well the reason I started this article is that I found Dell Precision 490 bare bones systems on E-Bay for as cheap as $150.  Add in two Xeon E53XX or E54XX quad-core CPUs for as cheap as $229 ,  4GB memory kit for $120,  $100 for a decent video card, $100 for a decent SATA/300 HDD and your done.

Let me add all that up for you:

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$150 Dell 490 Bare Bones

$229: Intel Xeon E5405 Harpertown 2.0GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80574E5405P – Retail

$229: Intel Xeon E5405 Harpertown 2.0GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80574E5405P – Retail

$120: 2 X 2GB DDR2 ECC Buffered RAM DDR2-533 RAM

$100:  Your budget for a video card

$100:   SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive – OEM

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TOTAL $928 — not including shipping.  That’s a deal.   Now for the caveats…

When Dell first made the precision 490, the motherboard only supported dual core Xeons.  Some time later, Dell started shipping 490′s with a new motherboard that could support Dual or Quad core.

So when your shopping for bare bone 490′s your going to have to ask the seller. I don’t have motherboard part numbers for each version,  if anyone knows please comment.

I have purchased one of these the bare bones systems already, but I didnt know about the motherboard differences, so I probably ended up with the wrong version. I’ll post some pictures later on.