Okay, I've been looking for a new CPU lately, and given the new price of the CPU, I'd normally think this was a scam, but these days I'm not so sure. Can anyone help me evaluate?
The listing is here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/CM8064401967500-INTEL-XEON-E5-2678V3-2-50GHz-30M-12-CORES-5GT-s-120W-PROCESSOR/253030137712?epid=1558609291&hash=item3ae9c57f70%3Ag%3AMkEAAOSw2WBZgki~
Yes, that's 12 cores that would be going into my workstation. Considering that I already have the appropriate X99 motherboard, cooler, RAM, etc. this would be a drop-in fit. If you're curious, I'd be doing dev/analytics work with it with multiple VMs. Not a gamer box.
The original price would have been well north of $1000, maybe north of $2000, but with all the recent CPU introductions (Threadripper, Skylake i9s) with 12-18 cores, I could see those driving down the cost of older Xeons. It claims that it is used and makes no mention of it being an Engineering Sample (ES) or Quality Sample (QS) or the like.
As for the seller, it seems like quite a high score (16066) with 99.8% positive feedback.
Thoughts about the listing?
Yeah it could be real, there's nothing inherently scammy about it. Computer parts depreciate FAST.
Doesn't look like a scam to me.
I'd wait for the price to fall.
Why is someone selling a brand new cutting edge processor? Used?
Check your MB specs, just because it will socket the processor does not mean it is supported.
What is that, a pair of i7's in parallel?
I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the first xeon's released. Or was that the Itanium....
I'd be inclined to agree with Gameboy, if I'm reading Wikipedia correctly this is a processor introduced in September 2014.
Update: I did some further research, including chatting with Intel support. The particular CPU model was not available for retail sale, but was only available to system vendors. Is there a legal problem with buying those parts used?
No once it's been sold in a system intel does not control the resale. I'm not a lawyer though!
bentwrench wrote:
I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the first xeon's released. Or was that the Itanium....
Itanium is not an x86-based CPU so you should remember if you had a CPU of a different architecture. None of your old precompiled software running would be a clue 
Jere
Dork
8/22/17 12:27 a.m.
I've bought some stuff that was vendor only. It all worked so far. I did have serial number issues registering a router but nothing an hour long call with customer support didn't fix 
