New life for socket 775, welcome Xeon 771

[Yorus]

Surely many of you have seen it in other forums, because this is not a new topic; in fact, this type of mod started to appear several years ago. For those who don't know, I'll briefly explain that some socket 775 motherboards (those that use Core 2 Duo/Quad) allow, with some small modifications, the use of Xeon-type micros from socket 771 that are normally intended for servers.

Why did this become popular?

Well, it's very simple. With the obsolescence of the Xeon platform for socket 771, these servers began to be replaced by more modern ones or discarded as spare parts. And since they are server/workstation architectures, they practically had to give away their components. That's why Xeon 771 micros fell spectacularly in price, well below even Core 2 Duo micros, which had much more demand in all types of markets, domestic and professional, although without many pretensions, of course. And I don't know who decided to investigate this, but once it was discovered, there you have it: the possibility of replacing dual-core micros with quad-core ones at the same level or superior to the best Core 2 Quad. Currently, and due to this trend, the price of Xeon 771 has risen somewhat, but it can still be interesting.

Before anything else, can I install one in my motherboard?

Well, it depends mainly on the chipset of said motherboard, but a quick summary would be this:

Compatibility of Xeon micros by chipset

• P45, P43, P35, P31, P965, G45, G43, G41, G35, G33, G31, nForce 790i, 780i, 740i, 630i, GeForce 9400, 9300 - Compatible with Xeon 5xxx and 3xxx series both 45nm and 65nm
• Q45, Q43, Q35, Q33, X48, X38 - Compatible with 3xxx series 45nm and 65nm - Not compatible with 5xxx series
• nForce 680i and 650i - Compatible with 5xxx and 3xxx series 65nm, in the case of 45nm micros, more specific information would have to be sought, as they don't always work.

You can find all the details at: LGA 771 to 775 MOD – Motherboard Compatibility

Modifications to the socket or the micro

To adapt a 771 micro to the 775 socket, modifications are necessary, but let's first look at what a 775 socket looks like:

I have highlighted that pair of tabs that make us insert the micro only in one position without making mistakes, and now we'll see why.

Now let's look at what two micros look like physically, a Xeon and a Core 2 Duo. Since the serigraphy isn't very well seen, I clarify that the one on the left is a Xeon E5440 (771) and the one on the right is a Core 2 Duo E6550 (775).

As you can see, the notches that allow inserting the micro into the socket without making a mistake are in a different position, so we have two options:

• Cut the tabs of the socket so they don't get in the way when inserting the micro. I haven't done it, but they say that leaving the Core 2 Duo pin to protect the pins and using a cutter or a razor, preferably a hot one, works quite well.
• Make notches in the micro right at the position of the tabs. This is more dangerous than the previous one.

Did I say two options? Well, no, there's a third, and honestly, it's the best:

• Buy the micro with all the modifications done on eBay or Aliexpress. On top of being cheap, you save yourself headaches and don't touch the motherboard.

Another modification, this one essential to the micro

Another difference between the micros of both sockets is at the pin level. I won't go into technical details, but just tell you that two pins have to be exchanged, either in an artisanal way, buying stickers that we can find in the same places mentioned before, or, again, buying the micro with this modification already done.

For details, I refer you to this web:

LGA 771 to 775 MOD – Instructions for completing this MOD

And this is how it should look:

Now we can put the micro and see if everything starts up perfectly.

BIOS modifications

Apart from seeing if it works correctly, we can start the operating system, it doesn't freeze, etc... We have to check that we have all the possibilities of the micro available. For this, nothing like a classic, CPU-Z:

This is an example of my micro. We have to see that it identifies it well, that it's working at the correct frequencies and that it has available all the instruction set that the micro can offer, as in my case MMX, SSE (1, 2, 3, 3S, 4.1), EM64T and VT-x. To know what our micro should have, we can consult the Intel page. For the Xeon L5430 example:

Intel® Xeon® Processor L5430 (12M Cache, 2.66 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB) Specifications

What if the micro isn't detected well or functionalities are missing?

In that case, the problem will be due to the absence of the microcodes of our micro in the BIOS. We must bear in mind that we are using motherboards that were not conceived for these micros, so it won't be strange that this happens. To solve it, we must insert the microcodes into the BIOS. To do this, and considering that it's a step that I didn't need to do because I got the motherboard with the work done, I refer you to the same page:

How to Update CPU Microcode in Award or Phoenix BIOS - For LGA 771 & 775

There are more sites where to look for this same process, both in Spanish and English and even for AMI BIOS.

With this, everything should already be perfect.

Final notes

• This text is not intended to be a step-by-step guide, but to make this MOD known to those who didn't know it and to open a debate around it within the community.
• I DO NOT ACCEPT ANY RESPONSIBILITY UNDER ANY CONCEPT FOR THE DAMAGES THAT THIS MOD MAY CAUSE TO THE COMPONENTS USED (AND IF YOU'RE CLUMSY WITH THE CUTTER, EVEN LESS!).

Reference web

LGA 771 to 775 Adapter (MOD) - Run faster Xeon CPUs in a Core 2 Quad motherboard

[Fassou]

This is great :sisi: Very well explained

You can tell the HL school

Best regards!

[JuezDred]

As long as they are motherboards from manufacturers like asus and others. Try it with something made for hp. Or a private label. Uff. It's a mess

[Yorus]

@Fassou:

Así da gusto :sisi: Muy bien explicado

Cómo se nota la escuela de HL

Salu2!

Gracias!, se hace lo que se puede, aunque algún gazapo habrá.

@JuezDred:

Siempre que sean placas base de fabricantes como asus y demas. Como lo intentes con algo echo para hp. O alguna marca propia. Uff. Chungo chungo

Sí, sobre todo por el tema de las BIOS tan cerradas que tienen, que cualquiera les mete mano… Y además de serie tampoco creo que funcionen, porque a veces con solo cambiar de un Core 2 Duo a otro que no sean los que tenía pensada la marca para sus modelos ya te avisa de error y que actualices los microcodes (si, puedes, claro).

[amd125]

Everything is explained very well. I had a Q6600 with its corresponding motherboard and I regret having sold it. I would have liked to put a Xeon in it and give it some power. Since that time I have not done OC to the micro :wall: my FX is hot and the use I give to the computer does not even deserve OC. In fact I have it at a lower frequency than the nominal one :facepalm:

It's not that I don't like my micro, but I miss the Q6600 that I had at 3.2 and it was a rock :ugly: too bad that it only had 4 Gigas of Ram and that made me make the change. Anyway, I hope to get some more retro hardware to entertain myself for a while ;D

[Yorus]

I don't think I'll OC mine for now, unless I need extra performance at specific times.

I got the Xeon L5430 which has a TDP of 50w to replace an Athlon Am1 5150 at my parents' house, because last time I tried to convert an HD movie because it wasn't showing on their TV, it took over 4 hours, and the resulting format wasn't readable either :frio:. I did a test with my i5-2400s (another power hog) and it took just over half an hour, so with a bit of luck this one won't reach an hour of encoding. And it's also mounted in an ITX case, so power consumption and temperatures are important.

[JuezDred]

An am1 that bad?? What memory did you have installed? Because that is its weak point. If it has slow memory... it works terribly.

[Yorus]

I had Windows XP, maybe that's where the problem was, although Asrock provides drivers. The motherboard is this http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/AM1B-itx/, and the memory I think is 4Gb DDR3 1600 of a basic brand, like value. Let me do some performance tests with a more current Windows, although I'm going to leave it to mess around with server and virtualization issues (proxmox).

[JuezDred]

The latest bios, 1.60, gives the option for memory at 1833mhz if I remember correctly. Although it only uses a single channel of memory. It handles very well despite all the limitations it has. Incidentally, this processor is what AMD came up with to see if it was viable to integrate the entire chipset into the core. Although it only has 4 pcie lines and another 2 for sound and t.red, it works very well for htpc

[Yorus]

Yes, I had it as an HTPC with Windows 7 and I never noticed it lacking power for anything, in the end I changed it because of the paranoia of putting Linux on it and AMD doesn't do things well in that area.

[winters]

Jolin thought that even, these things could not be done anymore, it brings back memories of when the bridges of the micros were joined with pencil.. what times kids.... this makes me feel old.....

[cobito]

Now that I've read the post more carefully, it has left me thoughtful. The other day, remembering this thread, I started looking for Xeons for LGA 775 and the truth is that they have a very attractive price offering fairly decent performance and giving just under half the performance of an i7 6700k, which is pretty good.

Taking the Passmark performance of the 6700k which is close to 11000 points, for example, for 40€ they sell an X5450 that offers just over 4200 points. And for 70€ they sell the X5470 with a performance of 4700 points.

We are talking about performance equivalent to the lowest i3s of around 100€ and it is still a platform that was born to house the archaic Pentium 4s.

By the way @Yorus, I've uploaded the images to the forum server so they don't get lost. I hope you don't mind.

[Yorus]

@cobito said in New life for the socket 775, welcome Xeon 771:

By the way @Yorus, I've uploaded the images to the forum server so they don't get lost. I hope you don't mind.

Of course man, better, you just have to look at the typical gallery threads of users' computers to see the damage that the change in imageshack's policy did, which was the most used image hosting.

I see the mod thing mainly for taking advantage of components that are already owned, although I must admit that I bought almost everything for this purpose out of sheer gadgetry apart from covering a need.

[Nemo]

Brilliant post. My congratulations on the work of explaining it and for discovering this new vein for us that, as some of the colleagues have said, reminds us so much of the old school mods.

[rul3s]

Hehe, I found this a while ago on overclock.net and right now my second pc is one assembled with this platform, details:

Gigabyte P35 DS3L (Socket cut + Bios Mod)
Intel Xeon E5440 2.83@3.4GHz same vcore, 1.25v
8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 800 Kingston HyperX
nVidia GTX560Ti 1GB
Kingstone SSD V400 120GB

To be honest, as a second computer it works wonderfully, so when I get home I'll post some benchmarks so you can get an idea of the real performance.

In terms of OC I could push it more, but I prefer to leave it at FSB:RAM 1:1, they say that on this platform it works better leaving it in synchronous mode and all, to gain 200MHz more, well, I don't want to break my head either.

Regards!

[cobito]

I just picked up an E5472 for 30€. I have a p965 and I'm not sure if it will work for me, but seeing how expensive ram, ssd and 4k ips screens are, I think I'll try to give this old thing a nineteenth life.

[Fassou]

A storm is forming, quick to the lab! xD

[Yorus]

@cobito said in New life for the socket 775, welcome Xeon 771:

E5472

That micro is quite a cucumber. Let's see how it goes with that board, because it's a chipset that I had seen little in these mods but it seems that there are many compatible boards. The doubt that assails me is that I find that the micro's FSB is at 1600, quite high and I think the chipset does not support it, but maybe something can be done.