The Chinese X79 Benchmarks... Mission Accomplished?

I'm now on Patreon! Working on putting together projects, merch, rewards and content for Patreon backers. https://patreon.com/CraftComputing?ut... Benchmarking of this Chinese x79 build is now complete. TL;DR: I achieved both goals. I have a moderately inexpensive 6-Core system that plays VR while performing live green-screen chroma via OBS, and handles it's own at video editing. But first... What am I drinking? Today, I had Der Couvensteiner from Loowit Brewing Company in Vancouver, WA. A Dunkelweizen weighing in at 5%. If you ever see it on tap, do yourself a favor. Chinese mATX x79 Motherboard v3.5A - $117 - eBay Intel Xeon E5-2667 6-Core 2.9GHz (3.5GHz Turbo) - $55 nVidia GTX 1070 Founder's Edition - $275 - Purchased used. Find GTX 1070s on Amazon - http://amzn.to/2z9R1p4 4x8GB Samsung DDR3 ECC @1,333MHz - $75 - eBay OWC 60GB 6G SSD - $25 - Purchased used 1TB Western Digital Black - $40 - Purchased used ThermalTake Smart 500W 80+ - $35 - http://amzn.to/2z9ul8G Scythe BIG Shuriken n2B - $37 - http://amzn.to/2A6IC3M Swiftech 8-Fan PWM Splitter - $13 - http://amzn.to/2z40Anq 4x AsiaHorse 120MM LED PWM Fans - $39 - http://amzn.to/2xMPtOt CoolerMaster MasterBox Lite 3.1 - $40 - http://amzn.to/2zoTopa Like every PC build, there were a few issues to work around on this one. All in all, the only quality issue I ran into was the USB3 header on the motherboard, but you're likely to run into that on most boards. Internal USB3 is a terrible connector. Benchmarking revealed that this board does not in any way hamper the hardware I installed in it. All components perform as I would expect them to. The GTX 1070 was running a stable boost clock of around 1830-1900MHz (no manual overclocking, just factory boost). Power draw was as expected. The CPU was able to stress-test via AIDA64 for over an hour, peaking at 81C. All this while maintaing a steady 3.2GHz turbo across all cores. Gaming performance was excellent, achieving over 100FPS in some fairly demanding titles. Again, the motherboard was in no way a weak link to this build. If there are any limitations to this board, it is due to the platform it is running (x79/C602 Chipset), not any kind of manufacturing problems. The solder joints are excellent, the build quality is fantastic all around (minus the USB3 header), and aside from looking like a motherboard straight out of 2004, I would highly recommend this to someone on a budget needing as much CPU power as their dollar can buy. Pairing this with an E5-1650 6-Core would get you an unlocked SKU as well, with the motherboard supporting up to a 39x multiplier for a 3.9GHz overclock. Or, if your workload is multithreaded, there are always the tried and true E5-2670 and E5-2690 8-Core chips. Yes, Ryzen and Intel do have chips that will make this system look a bit dated. But with the current cost of DDR4 memory, at $259 for the same 32GB I picked up for $75, that alone almost makes this platform a viable option in the entry workstation market. What do you guys think? Would you buy one of these boards? Would you do anything differently than I did? Let me know. I'd love to put some more configurations to the test. Music: On the Ground Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Twisted Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...