A Xeon CPU upgrade for the computer

I picked up a used Xeon W3690 CPU from eBay to upgrade the Core i7-930 currently powering my computer. Browsing around eBay, I found several for under $80. For two extra cores and a few hundred more MHz, it seemed like a pretty good deal to me so I picked one of them and bought it.

The existing CPU still works fine, but after seeing a few friends talking about computer upgrades, I did a bit of research to see what I could put into mine to give it a bit of a boost without having to do a complete computer replacement.

My choices were dictated by the motherboard revision (a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 Rev 1.0) and BIOS version (F7e). The best CPUs supported by this combination were the Core i7-970 and the Xeon W3690.

Doing my quasi-semi-annual computer cleaning and replacing the CPU will be a good weekend project. With luck, this computer will be up and running with a “new” and faster brain.