Man, you must have taken a while to get your hands on that machine.;D
If you go for some X5355, I've seen them refurbished for about 70€, and new for more or less double on amazon.
The thing about cheap and expensive with respect to machines, well, it depends on what you're looking for and above all, on what you're willing to spend.
First, don't compare a workstation with a pre-assembled PC "standard" where everything (or most) is integrated and the priority is to be cheap (which is what I assume you're talking about).
At least I advise against buying that type of… computers.:ugly:
Thanks for your response, whoololon.
My doubt in general is if in this offer, for example:
DELL Precision 490/690 Matched Pair Quad Core 2.66GHz X5355 XEON CPU Upgrade kit | eBay
the processors have not been'stolen', for example, by some employee of a large company, removing the second processor from a PC, or something like that (it doesn't have to be a spectacular robbery, just that time passes, the guy removes the second processor and nobody notices).
So much time has passed and things have improved so much that those prices as refurbished or second-hand seem correct to me.
I say this because if I want to upgrade through dell, it costs me more than a thousand euros each (if there are any). Which seems like a scam after 7 years, but okay.
It's great for me. I spend a hundred and a half euros and I already have my eight cores, although old.
Regards. And thanks.