i5-650 Overclocking (Worth it for me?)

[ibex333]

So they were throwing out a bunch of old PCs at my job... I got one for my parents, and a few others I salvaged the CPUs from and some RAM as spares in case the PC fails. I really wanted to take more, but I got no space, so whatever...


I got this crazy idea to buy a good overclocking LGA 1156 board and push these babies to the limit as far as air cooling will allow. I got 4 of them to kill.

Right from the start this does seem to be a pretty bad idea. First of all, I got a nice i5-6600k rig running at 4.5GHz so this whole ordeal, is not because I need this, but just because I can. Just for fun. But at the same time, I don't want to bother if the end performance will be complete crap, and I'll have to waste more money on good overclocking hardware that it would cost to buy something newer.


I cant really find any good online articles about performance of an overclocked i5-650. I looked at a website called cpu-boss, and according to it an i3-2100 will beat an i5-650 in overall performance. That's pretty depressing, since it would probably cost less to build an i3-2100 system today, from scratch, using old parts bought right here on AT from random people...


What do you think? Am I right? Am I wrong? Would a i5-650 be faster than say... i5-2500(non-k) when overclocked to like 4.2GHz? Am I just wasting my time with these stupid ideas?


PS: By the way, I only care about gaming performance of all mentioned CPUs, nothing else. And yes, I know they wouldn't run any of the newest games well.

 

[Geforce man]

your problem will be the motherboards. 1156 boards are fetching a premium right now. I'd say save one in case of a failure, and e-bay or craigslist or whatever the rest of them. Performance wise, take Sandy bridge, and minus 10% (roughly), and you'd have Clarksdale level of performance.

Not sure if that helps or not, but thats what I can remember .

 

[Wall Street]

If you have a working 1156 board, then you can get a quad core for really cheap so you shouldn't bother with the dual core i5-650s. If you get an i5-750, i7-860, or X3440 socket 1156 CPU, those can actually run modern games if you have working motherboards.

If you don't have a working 1156 board, then don't bother. Those still go for "like new" prices. The issue is that a lot of the sockets on those boards failed (there was a notorious issue with the socket pins failing) but almost none of the CPUs failed. Also, there is a flood of processors from server breakdowns, but most people aren't interested in the old server motherboards. Therefore, for every working motherboard there are 3-4 working CPUs, making the CPUs cheap and the motherboards expensive. Plan to spend at least $60 on EBay for a working middle-of-the-road P55 motherboard.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I got this crazy idea to buy a good overclocking LGA 1156 board and push these babies to the limit as far as air cooling will allow.

"Good overclocking 1156 board" is an oxymoron. Those sockets were known for "burning" when you OCed. They were garbage, which is why there are so very few around these days. Seriously, drop the CPUs on ebay, get what you can get for them, and buy some i3-6100 rigs instead.

 

[.vodka]

There are a few problems with the i5 650. Here is AT's review.

First, it's a dual core + HT. No, you're not going to reach stock i5 2500 (quad core) performance in newer games with an OC to 4.2GHz.

Second, there are two dies beneath the heatspreader. One has the CPU cores, the other has the memory controller and the graphics core... a setup not unlike the old 775 platform with the chipset in the motherboard housing the memory controller. It's a hack job compared to other products in the same lineup like the quad cores in the i5 7xx and i7 8xx/9xx lines. Performance per core vs these other CPUs will be lacking, performance in games will not be as good, etc.



For a machine that will be running at stock settings it'll work, but that's about it. As said above 1156 motherboards with Foxconn sockets are likely to burn out when overclocking, if you can't find one with a Lotes socket it's not worth it. You're better off selling all of it and buying something newer.

 

[Ieat]

i5-6xx chips are just i3-5xx chips with a turbo mode which is pretty useless when overclocking. Many of them do overclock pretty well in the 4.4 to 4.8 range but if you don't have a board its better just to sell them.

 

[lyssword]

2500 would destroy i5 650 oc'd .

 

[ibex333]

Thanks everyone!