X99 + Xeon on a tight budget, thoughts?
I just picked up an X99 platform paired with a Xeon E5-2696 v3 for a budget gaming build, still waiting on it to arrive.
I went with an X99 DDR3 board specifically so I could carry over my existing RAM from my old rig (2x8GB DDR3, 1600MHz), which ran a Xeon E3-1230 v2.
Whole platform comes out to around $60:
- Xeon E5-2696 v3: ₱1,200 (~$19.49)
- ENVINDA X99 DDR3 Motherboard: ₱1,694 (~$27.51)
- Jungle Leopard KF400X: ₱630 (~$10)
I mostly game at 1080p/75Hz, so I'm not chasing frames beyond that anyway. I've seen a handful of benchmarks showing this chip trading blows with the Ryzen 3600 and even the 5600 in heavily threaded games with only a few FPS in deficit, though I'll admit Zen 3 pulls ahead in pure gaming due to IPC and clocks. Still, for the price of peanuts compared to a full platform switch to Ryzen + DDR4, which would cost me a lot more, I think it's worth a shot. I'm also toying with the idea of modding the E5-2696 v3 down to 12c/12t @ 3.6GHz All-Core with TBU. What do you guys think?