Building A Cheap 8-Core PC: 2009 Vintage Xeon Build "KANZASHI" Part 1

A light gaming and rendering build. Slapped in a Zotac 750ti as I save funds for a K4200 Quadro.

Processor: Intel Xeon X3460 2.8Ghz - $60 equivalent, from a certain buy and sell website

Graphics Card: Zotac GTX 750ti 2Gb GDDR5 - $100 equivalent, from old rig

Motherboard: Asus P7H55M-LX - Free, old board  

Memory: 8gb (2x4) Samsung DDR3 1600mhz, -$40, down clocked to 1333mhz

Power Supply: Generic local 700w PSU, $10 

SSD: ADATA SU800 180gb - $60 

HDD: Seagate 500gb - $40

Fans: 2x Generic PWM 80mm fans, $4 

Case: Ancient case from old pre-built computer. Spray painted it flat black.

No, I don't have videos. Just a series of pictures.

The Xeon X3460 in its LGA 1156 socket.

Deepcool Ice Edge Mini FS 2.0 95W TDP cooler. This is the reason why I can't overclock the X3460 to 4.0ghz. I don't have any headroom to OC, for now.

Testing the Xeon with even older hardware. Turns out that PSU was having power delivery issues. Good thing it worked for this round of testing. The card in the picture is a Sapphire 6570 4gb DDR3 since the Xeon X3460 doesn't have integrated graphics.

The fans are remarkably cheap, considering they're 4pin PWM. The only downside is they're loud AF.

   

The Xeon in it's new home. I should have used metallic black instead of flat black. It's really absorbing light. Also ketchup and mustard wires.

I like ducts ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) too bad the duct blocks the 80mm fan attached to the side panel.

So naturally I had to remove the duct. Blue motherboard, blue cooler, blue fans. But the case doesn't have good cable management so there's wires strewn everywhere. I'll get braided extensions or a true-rated PSU with braided wires. Maybe a better case and cooler later. Kek are there blue SATA cables?

And it runs surprisingly cool considering how small the cooler is.

Benchmarks to follow in a separate blog post. Meanwhile, I'm still doing game dev in my 7850K APU. And that modern CPU runs really hot even with water cooling. Meanwhile is 2009 vintage processor runs 20 degrees cooler in idle and under load. Wew. Intel got their efficiency game on point.

Tera Online in 2018: How Does it Hold Up?

Before you talk to me about the new Godsfall update, let me talk to you about my 97 hours in the Lost Realm.

Honestly I don't know how to structure this blog post. So let's just answer a few questions instead.

Should you play for the graphics? 8/10 YES.
Should you play for the character/character creation? 7/10 YES.

Should you play for fashion and vanity? 10/10 YES.

Actually 5/10 because most of the fashion items are cash shop, and if they're available at auction, you'll probably need to farm a month of gold before you can buy them. Not to mention most of the cloth armor in game is kind of lewd and not really okay for a prude like me who prefers the costumes you'll usually get in Aura Kingdom.

Elves really look good with braids though.

Should you play for the gameplay? 7/10 YES. THIS GAME CAN MAKE YOU DESTROY YOUR PERIPHERALS WITH ALL THE KEYS YOU ARE PRESSING.

Is the community/player base still alive? 8/10 YES. There are still lots of active players and guilds online.

So overall, should you still play Tera Online in 2018? Yes, provided you have a PC that can play it in full, otherwise if you end up with quality like in the following capture, forget it.