Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed ok so you've probably seen thumbnails just like the one on this video $24 Eon $18 Eon and so on these videos push cheap Xeon CPUs as the Holy Grail even going as far as to call them rise on alternatives but is using these cheap server CPUs for gaming and Protima T tasks of wires choice are they really all they're cracked up to be well today we're going to find out but before that this video is brought to you by MSI and their new and upgraded workstation laptops the MSI WS 65 in particular is one that caught my attention combining the excellent slim and light aesthetics of their gaming laptops with brand-new NVIDIA Quadro RT X 5000 graphics for professionals on the go that demand top in performance the ws 65 also packs up to Intel Core I nine processors loads of RAM a 4k display and even a fingerprint scanner for added security to learn more click the links in the description below in the past think pre Rison past I myself have on occasion got excited about cheap x79 Xeon CPUs for example back in 2016 I built an entire 16 core 32 threads xeon monster pc for less than the price of a flagship core i7 processor it really was a great value PC back then today though it's rather embarrassing and I certainly wouldn't recommend you waste your time and money on such a build but what about really cheap Zeon's like the e5 2420 v2 or the 2430 v2 these are ivory bridge bass parts packing six cores clocked at a reasonable frequency well above 2 gigahertz anyway the e5 2424 example comes clocked at 2.2 gigahertz for the base and it will clock up to 2.7 gigahertz for the boost it packs a 15 megabyte l3 cache and right now can be had for around $18 u.s. as the thumbnail says or in my local currency about $30 readers so you're getting a 6 quart 12 thread CPU that just about clocks up to three years based on the ivory Bridge arc for $18 us hell yeah sign me up unfortunately the old adage if it sounds too good to be true it probably is very much applies here the catchy being that sandy bridge-e N and Ivybridge e'en xeon processors use the LGA 1356 socket and this really limits the selection of motherboards you have to choose from as the LGA 1356 and LGA 1366 sockets are in no way compatible with one another so essentially what we have here is a budget version of the LGA 2011 socket and it features half as many quickpath interconnect almost half as many PCIe lanes while the memory channels have been cut down from 4 to 3 this means while you can throw on LGA 1366 xeon on a desktop x58 motherboard this isn't an option for these particular Ivy Bridge Xeon CPUs that we'll be looking at today getting back to the LGA 1356 motherboards what are the options in short nothing but junk junk and more junk the board being recommended in this great value Xeon deal is some kind of Chinese hybrid knockoff thing it's called the x79 1356 oh cool you get an ex 79 chipset well you'd think so given the name but yeah no not the case rather it uses Intel's b65 chipset yeah Intel's business class 6 series chipset this means you get just 2 dims you're also limited to the USB 2.0 spec 6 SATA ports though with this board you're only getting 3 and then there's a maximum of 8 pcie 2.0 lanes hanging off the chipset the board packs a horrible looking for phase varium though it should be fine for these lower clocked rather efficient server chips and then finally thrown in as a basic Realtek Gigabit Ethernet controller and a super low-end Realtek ALC 662 audio codec that all sounds pretty ugly but this is meant to be an ultra budget solution so it probably only cost $20 maybe $30 wrong its $54 u.s. and it hurts me to even say that I was stunned $92 Aussie including delivery to the or from the recommended Aliexpress cellar couple that with the xeon e5 2420 v2 and I've now spent 122 dollars Australian I guess for a 6-quart 1200 Ivy Bridge processor that's not too bad but as you're about to see it's far from good next up I needed some ddr3 memory you can get ECC memory pretty cheap I've seen 16 gigabyte kits selling for as little as forty dollars so that brings our total up to one hundred and sixty two dollars Ozzie and that doesn't seem too bad for a CPU motherboard and memory package in fact I'd argue the CPU memory is actually rather good the problem is once again the motherboard it's just bloody awful the BIOS is horrible it's extremely basic and novice builders will have a hard time working out what's what especially if they've only been playing around with PC building for a few years the BIOS really took me back although I couldn't really enjoy the moment of nostalgia as there really wasn't much I could do you can't really overclock anything because you know it's a b65 chipset you can't even chew in the memory timings we're still the first few sticks of ddr3 memory that I tried and I know these memory sticks work completely fine they booted up on the board they loaded into Windows but then the second I hit the log on screen they blue screened and reset it wasn't until I got to my fourth set of ddr3 memory sticks that I was able to find something that worked and it was a 16 gigabyte kit of ddr3 1600 and it was able to run at that 1600 speed on this board so at least there's that before we get into the benchmarks though I thought to myself okay this is clearly a garbage solution but can we do any better without any one-time deals I feel like that's gonna be hard but I feel like for not much more we shoot out against something that's significantly better what I was able to land myself was a Rison v 1400 for 117 dollars the asrock a B 350 M Pro for refurbished for just fifty seven dollars and eight gigabytes a reasonably good ddr4 3000 memory for $52 the total was two hundred and twenty six dollars Aussie and yeah that is $64 ooh do is more about $43 u.s. and that's not a lot really and I'm certain it's going to be worth the extra investment also us-based viewers can do significantly better than what I've done here and we might talk about that towards the end of the video for now let's see how this is Aeon and rise and build compares in a few blue bar graphs there isin five 1,400 and 1,600 were tested using CL 16 memory while the 2600 X is using a lower latency cell 14 memory then for the xeon build I've set the ddr3 memory speed to 1600 and remember I can't change any of the memory timings so I just got testing speaking of which all testing has been conducted with a GeForce r-tx 20 ATT I installed as always we do this to remove any bottlenecks when testing CPU performance and testing will be conducted turn EP and 1440 pay for the gaming benchmarks but we also have a few quick application tests as well so let's get into it okay so first up we have Cinebench our 20s multi-core tests and right away we see the difficult tasks that the lowly clocked 6 core Xeon CPU has ahead scoring just twelve hundred and seventy six points meant that the Rison 5 1400 was 21% faster while the six core Rison cpu of the same generation was 95% faster the big issue here though for the xeon processor is the single core performance you know that thing first and second generation cpu struggle with well relative to the sub 3 gigahertz xeon cpu there's really no issue here with rising at all there are 5 1400 was 73% faster and that's obviously no small difference as i'm sure you are aware anyway moving on to sevens if we see for compression work the r5 1400 and see on processor a quite evenly matched the r5 1400 was just 4% faster while the r5 1600 was 50% faster but when it comes to decompression work the r5 1400 was 14% faster not a massive difference but the higher clocked quad-core SMT enabled rise in process or was clearly faster in this test but what if you want to do some video production work on your budget build well if that's what you're after you'll still be much better off with the rising 5 processor here the r5 1400 was 20% faster than the e5 2420 v2 while the r5 1600 with 71% faster then lastly for the application testing we have blender and here the r5 1400 was 9% faster again not a massive difference but the rising fire processor was still clearly faster then we see once again for a massive performance upgrade you can get the r5 1600 for 77% more performance in this application as you might have expected though the Xeon processor is at least very efficient pushing total system consumption to just 91 watts so this is why the Chinese knockoff motherboard thing can get away with that ugly 4 phase vrm total system assumption is 35 percent higher with the r5 1400 but at well under 150 watts I doubt this will present as an issue out of interest I did some USB 3 benchmarking and this is how the recommended LGA 1356 motherboard compares to budget I am for alternatives USB performance might not be an issue for everyone who's looking at buying a budget PC but I know myself if I was stuck on a system capable of just 30 megabytes per second and it drives me absolutely insane I should just quickly note there is a Chinese knockoff board that does offer some USB 3 ports but it is more expensive again that's that I have seen them on sale for around $75 but even then that's more than what I paid for the be 350 board which natively supports about half a dozen actually more than half a dozen USB 3 spec ports including a USB 3.1 type-c and finally I should note that you can add USB 3.0 to any motherboard with a spare PCIe x 1 slot but you have to spend about another $10 to do so okay time for some gaming benchmarks are first that we have Assassin's Creed Odyssey tested at 1080p using the higher quality preset though we will check out the 1440p results in a moment so here the r5 1400 is 25% faster for the average framerate and 31% faster when comparing the 1% low results that's a pretty big difference really and what's more interesting to note is that the upgrade from the 1400 to the 1600 will net you an additional 33 percent performance in this title moving to 1440p and we're still heavily CPU bound with the r5 1485 2420 v2 so this means the Rison 5 processor was still 25% faster in Assassin's Creed Odyssey that's obviously a significant performance increase and I should just mention that you can still overclock the Rison processor for a reasonable boost in performance but talk more about this towards the end of the video we know battlefield 5 maxes out modern quad-core processors say the r5 1400 does struggle a little in this title that said the six core Xeon was really no better slightly better one percent low performance at 1080p so the smoothness factor was about the same for the r5 1400 though the Rison processor did average 23% more frames and again I should just note for a significant performance upgrade here you do have the option of getting the r5 1600 at 1440p the r5 1400 and xeon processors were pretty similar in terms of their smoothness but again the game was noticeably better on the horizon processor thanks to often much higher for home rates again though for a flawless experience you really need something like the r5 1600 or better moving on we have shut off the Tomb Raider and here the r5 1400 was 17% faster on average and 46% faster for the one percent low result again another massive win here for first generation processor and once again I should just quickly note that the r5 1400 is very slow relative to the r5 1600 so potentially another nice upgrade option there and we see basically the same thing when gaming at 1440p due to the fact that we're so heavily cpu-bound in this title with these lower end processors so you'd see similar margins with something like a gtx 1070 for example here we set the r5 1400 is over 30% faster when playing the division 2 and while the xeon cpu did enable playable performance the experience was significantly better with the rise in processor this was also true at 1440p here the 1% low performance was only improved by 15% with the r5 1400 but that was still enough to make a noticeable difference that and the almost 30% boosts the average framerate farcry new dawn is another game that was perfectly playable in the e5 2420 v2 but for a small price premium the r5 1400 is almost 30% faster and doesn't come with a long list of cons the r5 1400 was also noticeably more powerful at 1440p and was 20% faster we're looking at the 1% low data World War Z really isn't that demanding on the CPU and here the Xeon processor pushed at a very respectable 103 FPS an average with a 1% low of 84 FPS so that really is excellent performance the r5 1400 was still 20% faster on average but here it doesn't really matter too much so when cpu performance isn't at a premium for gaming the old Zeon's do pretty well who would have thought and rage too is another example of this well sort of this is a bit of an odd title because although the average frame rate is almost always around the 140 to 160 FPS mark regardless of the CPU used the one percent low figure can vary quite massively of course this is where the CPU has the most impact but generally you'd expect some kind of drop-off for the average framerate as well something else that's interesting to note at 1080p the r5 1400 was 21% faster for the one percent low but as we move to the more demanding 1440p resolution that margin blows out to 48 percent and I saw this repeatedly when testing you'd normally expect to see the opposite at a higher resolution the game should become more GPU bound but here it creates an additional load that the xeon processor just doesn't seem to be out of handle we know hitman 2 to be a very cpu demanding title and here the e5 2420 v2 tanks pretty heavily at 1080p the r5 1400 was 34% faster and average and 43% faster for the 1% low figure probably enough said there really the margins remained much the same at 1440p as well and again we see the average frame rate of the xeon processor full short of the r5 1400s 1% lower result wrapping up the gaming benchmarks is total war three kingdoms and here the r5 1400 was 21 percent faster now average and 15% faster for the 1% low the margins were fairly similar at 1440p though again we see the Xeon processors struggling with its 1% low performance at the higher resolution so that's pretty interesting but I think at this point you've probably seen enough data so that's gonna do it for the gaming and application benchmarks now I know some will object to me using an RT X 20 atti claiming a lower end GPU makes more sense for these budget builds but I'm not really interested in masking CPU perform it's in an effort to try and make the Xeon look more palatable and frankly performance really isn't the biggest decider here the point is the Xeon 'if I've 2420 v2 isn't more powerful than our eysan v 1400 in fact for the most part it is quite a bit slower and a quick Cinebench run proves this in my opinion it's quite clear that aim B's rise in v is the superior cpu in terms of performance there's really no questioning that at least from my point of view and you can forget about how many cores you think a game requires the Rison v 1400 is superior period it's not a great deal more expensive either sure it does cost a little bit more but given what you get can you really justify saving less than $100 Australian with the outdated Xeon and again I just I really want to highlight that this comparison goes so far beyond just performance the quality of your average be 350 motherboard is head and shoulders above what you get with these cheap Chinese LGA 1356 boards the BIOS alone is worth paying more for but on top of that you get modern features you know USB 3.0 M 2 ports more SATA ports more DIMM slots better quality audio and networking more expansion slots and really the list does just go on then on top of all of that you rise and upgrade options are vast the xeon e5 2420 v2 is really it I mean you can get the xeon e5 2430 v2 for a few hundred extra megahertz but that's it meanwhile the Rison v 1400 can be upgraded to something like the r5 1600 or 2600 that we saw in this video or you can get an 8 core model or even an upcoming Xen 2 processor for who knows how much more performance point is you have options and really a lot of them and for that reason alone the second hammer Eisen built just seems to be like a significantly wiser investment and just because something doesn't cost much money doesn't make it cheap and it certainly doesn't make it good value for something to be defined as cheap it not only has to be low in price but rather low in price relative to similar items or services the Xeon bill just isn't cheap sitting next to the Rison v 1400 it's poor value and I'm shocked anyone would actually wreck if the Zeon build was around $50 Ozzy sure I probably get a bit excited about it but for over a hundred and fifty dollars are you kidding me also something else I hadn't accounted for is the cooler you can get the risin 5 1400 with the Box cooler delivered for one hundred and twenty two dollars so that's five dollars Ozzy extra for the zone you'll need to buy an LGA 1366 or 2011 socket cooler they really aren't hard to find an out terribly expensive but you will have to spend at least another ten dollars not a big deal but it does take the Rison option from 40 percent more expensive down to 34 percent more expensive so every dollar really does count here alternatively though if you really want to save every last dollar on the rise and build you can get an a320 motherboard though it kind of pains me to say so they sell locally for just twenty to thirty dollars Australian so they're probably just about giving them away in the u.s. honestly though I'd strongly recommend avoiding an a320 board you can't overclock on them and they won't support sin to processors but an r5 1400 on an a320 board is still much better than their xeon option there's also the overclocking angle for the r5 1400 which I didn't even bother exploring for this video I didn't want to risk inflating the issue for me it's pretty clear the rise in processor is a significantly wiser investment and overclocked r5 1400 results are out there anyway but in short you can extract at least another 20% performance with a simple multiplier overclock so in summary the Rison 5 option yeah it's a little more expensive you do have to make a slightly larger initial investment but once you do the benefits are well worth it not only do you get a much faster PC packing loads more features but you get a vast and very cost effective upgrade path I think that's really going to do it for this one I think we've covered pretty well everything I think it's pretty clear what the better buy is here and yeah what you should do but anyway as always I'm really interested to hear what you guys think about these cheap Z on videos and CPUs like this guy here worth it because of well the motherboards that you end up getting stuck with yeah anyway very interested to hear what you guys think yeah that's gonna do it for this one if you liked the video like it please that'll be much appreciated you can subscribe for more content and if you appreciate us here at harbor unbox our doing what we do then you can support us directly on patreon you'll get access to our discord chat where you can talk about things like this with us directly quite a few patreon members actually pushed us to make this video which is one of the reasons why we invested some patreon money in that silly motherboard any way you can yeah get access to our discord chat monthly live streams then it's a whole lot of fun yeah thank you for watching I'm your host Steve and I'll see you again next time