Buying used Intel Xeon X5690 CPUs

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May 7, 2014
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Hi.

I'm a noobie, I own a 2009 Mac Pro dual processor that I'm going to perform a CPU upgrade to.

I found someone selling some intel x5690s for a good price, and of course I'm paranoid its too good to be true. My MP is in the US, and I won't get my hands on it to upgrade until July, but if I buy these CPUs I'd like to know an easy/cheap way to get them bench tested. I want to be sure they are fully functional chips.

Other than looking at the pins on the bottom, I don't really know how I can check these out without the computer I'm going to put them in

Any advice on how to check them out after I buy them would be appreciated. Thanks
 
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C_A_S

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May 7, 2014
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Do you think there is anyone in London I could bring the chips to to test them? Installing them in my Mac Pro is going to be a several hour, tricky job, I need the easiest way to slot them into a computer to test them I guess. Any suggestions?
 
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Fine, contacts, call em whatever you want. I am in new territory for me, that is the point of the inquiry, and I'm talking about second hand parts in a out-of-production series of chips, that is the other point.
 
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C

C_A_S

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May 7, 2014
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Its an upgrade to a Mac Pro, its sitting with my family and I won't get my hands on it until July. The job is trickier than a normal CPU upgrade, so its hard to do it as a test run on someone else's Mac Pro (if you are curious, http://pindelski.org/Photography/2013/07/08/mac-pro-2009-part-tbd/).

Thanks for the info on CPUs not dying, that is reassuring. I guess I live in fear of things like memory controller faults, etc. The fear is not unrelated to this being new to me
 
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Individual

 
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COLGeek

COLGeek

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Meaning you assume all risk with no ability to return/exchange.

As pointed out earlier, CPUs are pretty darn hardy. Also, Xeons are darn near impossible to OC, so they are very likely to be okay. Do you know how they were used previously?
 
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May 7, 2014
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I don't, but my impression from his story is that this guy got a hold of them in the past to put into some kind of Dell workstation/box, but they weren't appropriate somehow and he got stuck with them unable to use them. Either that, or he's a wide boy from Essex who got them some other way.

The good news is I found a guy who works on servicing server/big it clients, buying and selling parts in this range all the time (he has a stellar ebay feedback record), and he knows what he is talking about and is happy to stick them in and stress test them for an hour for 35 quid, or overnight if I want. I told the seller I would pay cash for them if he gave them to the tester and they passed, otherwise I'd only go through ebay and paypal so that I can open a case if they don't work.

This tester told me that out of 5000 cpus he tests, maybe a couple don't work, that CPUs themselves work almost all the time, the only issues tend to be around memory
 
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