Wondering about this Intel Core i7-980X Extreme 6 Core

[Terry1953]

OK guys I have a question about a CPU and yes I know it's not AMD but I like what I read about it. And what I want know is this a good price in this Intel chip? http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Six-c...597472311.html It's an old chip by that I mean this is a new (neveer been used) chip. By old I mean that Newegg is out of them and don't plan to sell any more. I'd also be interested in anything you can tell me about it. Thanks.

[vaughan]

Its an old chipset, might be hard to find unused motherboards on the "second hand" market. Also it needs good cooling eg something like water kit or a high end Noctua setup.
Better to get a Skylake CPU.

[Dirk Broer]

In the case of a Intel Core i7-980X Extreme I would not go as far as to blame the chipset, that is: not directly.

To the i7-980X Extreme's advantage you can count the number of cores (6) and threads (12), but to it's disadvantage the rather high tdp (130W), the low maximum supported memory speed (DDR3-1066) and the somewhat limited instruction set, as compared to later Intel i7 chips. Generation-wise this CPU can be compared with the latest AMD Phenom II and earliest FX CPUs.
It is a 2nd generation Socket 1366 CPU, needing an Intel X58 chipset mobo -out of production- and a Socket 1366 compatible cooler. Socket 1366 has meanwhile been succeeded, first by Socket 2011 (with X79 chipset) and later by Socket 2011-3 (with X99 chipset). If you do want Intel-style consumer i7 Extreme, buy an Intel Core i7-5960X for that latest platform.

I agree with Vaughan that, when you buy Intel, your money is (much) better spent on a Skylake CPU such as a Core i7 6700K, needing a DDR4 Socket 1151 mobo (preferably with a Z170 Chipset).
If and when you decide to go for an Intel 'Heavy' (a mobo able to support not only i7 CPUs, but Xeons as well) you can start thinking about DDR4 Socket 2011-3 boards with an Intel X99 chipset. These might be able to house up to an 18-core Xeon -that's 36 threads per CPU! The price for such a system is also factors higher than a Socket 1151 system...You can buy three i7-6700Ks for the price of one i7-5960X, and eighteen(!) for the price of one Xeon E7-8880L v3 (the cheapest 18-core at $6,000).

If you really want to kick the s#$%^t out of every other member -while using Intel- and you have money to burn, you can start thinking about a mobo such as the ASUS Z10PE-D16 WS Work Station board, complete with server chipset. It will house two of them Xeons and up to 1 TB of RAM...But you might want to wait for AMD's new 32-core/64 threads ZEN server CPU's as well, we are talking megabucks here.