How Bad is This $10,000 PC from 10 Years Ago??

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Can you really future proof? The Classified SR-2 seems to think so, and we're maxing out its upgrade path to see what it can REALLY do with 24 threads from 2011.
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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova
Video Link: • [Electro] - Laszlo - S...
iTunes Download Link: itunes.apple.com/us/album/sup...
Artist Link: / laszlomusic
Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High
Video Link: • Sugar High - Approachi...
Listen on Spotify: spoti.fi/UxWkUw
Artist Link: / approachingnirvana
Intro animation by MBarek Abdelwassaa / mbarek_abdel
Monitor And Keyboard by vadimmihalkevich / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/PgGWp
Mechanical RGB Keyboard by BigBrotherECE / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/mj6pHk4
Mouse Gamer free Model By Oscar Creativo / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/Ps3XfE
CHAPTERS
---------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
1:36 The SR-2
2:25 The Rest of the Build
5:30 The GPU
7:00 Overclock
8:30 Quad SLI
15:40 Time for a Modern Card
19:30 Conclusion
21:47 Outro

[@admyro3206]

shaved linus, wearing earrings, 980ti's, SLI, this really is a throwback

[@barrupa]

and the Polo shirt

[@apfelingo]

And the intro!

[@jupitersailing6911]

​@@barrupai was gonna say 😂

[@Kirsty_McKay]

I love it all.

[@AMV12S]

Could be worse: Using hair gel, sandals and socks...

[@nugget-zf5by]

Bro is actually time traveling rn lmao

[@pitruscitrus_104]

as am I, seeing a wild nugget has appeared

[@TheSykoRC]

you mean he didnt shave, they brought him from the past ... back to the future?

[@tamablescarf6886]

bro i thought it was an old vid not even lying then i see him get the case out and im like wait didnt he only just get that when he made the evga gpu video

[@newaccount877]

Yes

[@Raderade1-pt3om]

He came back from 10 year ago to make this video with stuff he brought back

[@AlexKasper]

As a fun note, at work I'm still running an HP Z400 desktop PC which hasn't turned off (other than the occasional power outage on the Vancouver Lower Mainland), since circa 2012. Yes 12 years up and running non stop 24/7/365. The PC carries on like an old truck, and it's used for remote desktop tasks. Hard drives were updated twice, if I recall correctly.

[@Iron_Sights99]

I've been rocking an HP Probook 4430s 2011 model in similar fashion. Not too long ago I did a full refurbishment/upgrade, upgraded to an SSD from the original HDD, new bluetooth card, 16 gb of DDR3 ram, a 2'nd gen i7 2630qm, the works. Honestly I wish I had done it a lot sooner. It is similar in performance (slightly slower) in comparison to my current main computer, a Probook 440 G7 which has a 10'th gen i3 and 8 gb of ram. For a laptop that started on Windows 7 and that spent many years trying to run games it shouldn't have been trying to run, it has aged very well.

[@ealtar]

@@Iron_Sights99 p9x79, i7 4930K 32go ran cyberpunk on gtx 770(died) i now have a gtx 1650 still running win 7 ... "it just works " i'm waiting for some new product releases before new pc (i say new because upgrade is .. debatable)

[@chrisrowan4953]

I'm still running a hpz620 with 2 6 core xeon with 16bg of ram for my audio production studio and still runs like a champ ,just a little slower load times but I'll take it

[@AnonymousHomonid]

those things are quality BEASTS lol i got one (not running) z420 and dell t3600 as a daily driver. Power hungry but WORKS GREAT

[@j_taylor]

Those Z workstations are something special. I'm running a Z820 for gaming and...well, it's old but lots of cores and RAM with a modern GPU, there's not much it can't do.

[@jameshogge]

10 years ago... I might well have had a "Dream PC" wishlist back then with exactly this hardware. It's about the time I started looking at components to build my first

[@ace.5162]

Damm

[@shagstars]

But gtx 980 ti is 8 years and 10 months old. How would you build this 10 years ago

[@alphariusfuze8089]

@@shagstars Some timetravel things I guess

[@shagstars]

@@alphariusfuze8089 i guess so or he is nvidia executive 😋

[@tovarischshashlikov]

at this point linus is just fucking with us with no beard vs bearded linus, he is most CERTAINLY time-travelling via EVGA time travel kit

[@Atsumari]

I see unbearded Linus and am like "how is this Linus" it triggers me even though for years that I how he looked. Plus the swaping bearded to unbearded... my mind is broken.

[@captainwade373]

Doesn't he use a synthesized ai voice and deep fake? He made a video about it a while back

[@grimtides]

Honestly I'm hoping they bust the AI out to keep this meme going for longer

[@wembley636]

At this point? think the fucking has going on for a lot of years!

[@Megalomon]

Unbearded Linus clearly the winner. Except when it comes to goofy looking. Then the beard wins

[@tommywang8229]

Man this thumbnail really makes me thought it was 2017 again

[@Jesus-father]

for real

[@LaSombraa]

Bro this would be like 2014 wym

[@jswbr]

the way I get recommended videos from LTT a decade ago though, it's not far fetched.

[@Sl_Rust]

FR FR

[@deepeshpatel26]

Ya good times

[@mccutcheogeoff]

up until 2 years ago i ran a old FX 5990 chip with 2x hd7970. your troubles bring back a lot of memories.

[@elijahlefavour8562]

you think that’s bad, just this year i upgraded from an fx 4300 that i had been holding out on since i got it in 2015. now that i’ve got my new build i feel like i’ve been torturing myself all this time.

[@Kozo-Sushi]

@@elijahlefavour8562 I setup my rig in the basement which stays cold year around and got the FX 4300 OC'd upo to 4.5ghz for years. Finally swapped it out for a Ryzen 8 at 5.5Ghz and it functions as a comfy space heater and can finally run chonky strategy games like TotalWar and Stellaris as smooth as butter. DDR3 to DDR5 is honestly the biggest impact I noticed out of everything.

[@simplerealistic.]

@@elijahlefavour8562 I ditched my FX 4300 in early 2020, I salute your willpower to keep using that god forsaken CPU for that long

[@SEEYAIAYE]

@@elijahlefavour8562 Did you know you can juuuuuuuust run Read Dead Redemption 2 on an i5 3570k and an rx480?

[@SaHa0v0]

I miss EVGA...

[@ItsBRElite]

Only 1 like in 1 month...😭😭😭😭no one cares about evga

[@tc2241]

Getting my dad to understand that the 5k workstation he bought 10yrs ago is essentially a doorstop will forever be the bane of my existence.

[@madalinradion]

Yeah man I can already sense my parents itching to smash through my bedroom door to ask me why do i want to buy another gpu, does it not work anymore, did you break it, they always says this stuff ( I don't game much anymore so I only have a 970 )

[@VogonPoetry_42]

"But I paid SO MUCH for it!"

[@Muddy.Teabagger]

nah not a door stop, just a low end gaming PC, you got the think the 980 ti was still supported up till 2/3 months ago.

[@mshockey1216]

5K? Someone was advertising 5K in 2014?

[@Sotanaht01]

On the other hand if you were to buy a $5000 gaming computer right now, 10 years from now it would probably still be more than adequate. A lot of PC technology is plateauing right now. Storage and RAM are already as fast as they will likely ever need to be so long as the basic concepts of PCs and Gaming remain fundamentally the same. CPUs and GPUs are still improving, but much slower than before. Even if they did improve at the same old pace, graphics themselves have hit their own plateau. How much better would a game 10 years from now have to look to justify buying new hardware to run at Ultra instead of Medium, if Medium looks like it does today? AI might be what kills this argument though. There are a lot of improvements to AI happening in hardware right now. For AI driven stuff, a 6070 might make a 4090 look like absolute trash, and it might not even run games that rely heavily on it at all. Who knows. I think we've reached the limits of one technology, but that doesn't mean a new technology couldn't easily take its place.

[@bigandymc2007]

When you held up the 4090 at 9:44 i honestly though it was an edit to make it oversized in comparison to the 980ti but then i remebered how big cards have got over last 10 years.

[@jannikl.8542]

it looks so comically huge lmao

[@niklas422]

I literally thought the same xD

[@Mick_Chicken]

It's ridiculous, And it really doesn't need to be this way

[@cmac3530]

It looked like an inflatable or a plush. Absolutely comical.

[@zeendaniels5809]

Which is crazy, because the PCB is not that big, it's mostly cooling solution.

[@thequantaleaper]

14 years ago is quite a bit different than 10 years ago...

[@nemonas2019]

exactly, 10 years ago was 1080?

[@slightlyoutofphase4193]

There's no way anyone ever paired these 2010 Xeons with 2014 980 TIs lol, the build makes no sense whatsoever

[@__Maria___________19__yo]

Watching this video feels like a blast from the past! From shaved Linus to those 980ti's in SLI, it's like we're back in the golden era of PC building. Nostalgia overload!

[@yvan2218]

Holy cow linus even brought back the earrings. What a throwback

[@Metal_Maxine]

Linus never stopped wearing the earrings. On the WAN months back he said he tried to remove the stud with a pair of pliers and failed. He then tried pliers on both freaking sides and still failed. I think they were a present from Yvonne.

[@yvan2218]

Ohh that's new info I didn't know, but it's a Linus trademark from way back at least to have a polo shirt with double earrings in my opinion

[@mgtowanonymous3120]

​@@Metal_Maxine BeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeTA

[@jamegumb7298]

Left is straight, right is gay, both sides is bi.

[@besticouldget]

@@jamegumb7298Lol this is some 2005 shit

[@dustinsmith1134]

Even adding the intro back in…super nice touch to match the throwback Linus and throwback board!

[@itsTyrion]

the old intro would've been even better for this video

[@MrDacedric]

That intro is post covid so not really a throwback at all

[@SignalPrime]

My main rig is an X99 Classified! It's still pretty good, despite the age, though I probably don't know what I'm missing at this point lol. This video gives me serious nostalgia remembering building this thing piece by piece, saving as much money as I could in an attempt to "future proof" (it was my first gaming PC). I also built it with a 980 Ti that a friend gave me as payment for building his new system with a Fury X. This thing has carried me through a lot.

[@rjake333]

I still have this beast, used it for 10 years! It was overclocked to 4.2 with 4x 580's. You needed two people to move the PC it was so heavy. It was an offering so ahead of it's time, particularly when doing Vray renderings with 2x cpus and all those cores. When Vray GPU rendering came out, those quad cards were a blast too, as was rendering videos out of Resolve. A relic no doubt, but so cool and unique.

[@thatjokerperson7062]

linus slowly reverting back to pre 2020 is great

[@Clay3613]

Nah, Chad Linus is best Linus.

[@ethancbaker2002]

For real!

[@austangmane7292]

@@Clay3613Heck no that's not him!

[@lucasokeefe7935]

He and the rest of us justifiably would rather pretend the last several years never happened..

[@Clay3613]

@@lucasokeefe7935 2020-21 were years ago dude.

[@sourcan8664]

YOOOOO THEY BROUGHT BACK THE INTRO

[@raylopez99]

Yeah trying to capture that old magic.

[@NoobsofFredo]

Aye, I miss when they actually did intros for all their videos. There was just something about it that felt _right_ whenever it came on.

[@ryanjones4106]

Yeah I hope they keep it, there’s something really special about that little intro song and video

[@mrkang4080]

I built one of these with 580s in SLI in a Mountain Mods case with 6 radiators and 3 pumps... still my favorite build of all time.

[@MrETJ91]

I this generation for a while - couldn't afford an SR-2, but I picked up an EVGA X58 SLI-based system in 2015 for $100. Swapped the slowpoke i7 920 for a $50 W3690 (same CPU as the X5690's here, but lacking multi-CPU support / extended RAM support) and ran it at 4.5ghz for ~3 years on WC (OTT 480mm custom loop from previous owner - never went above 50c) as a gaming computer and 4.2ghz with a lower-profile air cooler for another 2 years 24/7 as a homelab. Incredible architecture. Great system, really, really competitive performance.

[@calebthecashew343]

lately these videos have been taking me back to 2016-2017. I actually love it so much

[@raylopez99]

You must be young. When you're old, 7 to 8 years is nothing.

[@calebthecashew343]

@@raylopez99 I am indeed young, 21 years to be exact, but there's no shame in that 🙂

[@raylopez99]

@@calebthecashew343 I'm shaming you, there's shame in that. But you are old enough to buy a beer, cheers.

[@Patisaloser]

​@@raylopez99shut up

[@TheAdaoo7]

​@@raylopez99more like 2013/2014 lol

[@11jr111]

I'm still rocking this setup from more than 10Y ago. It's been a rock star. It's also built with the EVGA 1200W and I've upgraded the RAID set on it a few times. I definitely love that I haven't had to "fork lift" replace my main workstation PC at home in that time. For me it was well worth the investment. Too bad I can't post picture here, otherwise I'd post my build in the comment. She's been running 24-7 for the last 10 years, very impressed. Thanks Linus for bringing back this great board in your channel.

[@Kyle-xv5kv]

You guys should do more stuff like this, its fun seeing old hardware doing mad stuff again.

[@hateasuka]

Love when you guys show off old school top of the line tech, and how the industry either went away from it in this case or actually stuck to it

[@1tothe2the3]

I remember being super jelly at lans when someone rolled through the door with a tri sli or quad sli setup, they always looked incredible. However, some would setup, take the side panel off and sit a desk fan blowing into the case and then spend the evening troubleshooting issues for half the games we played. When it worked it was seriously impressive (minus the micro stutter) but it made standard 2 card sli seem reliable and well optimised. Which it wasn’t. I do really miss this era of crazy configs but it was always hampered by bugs/issues. Today if you buy top spec workstation specs, it just works.

[@MrCaptainTea]

Thank you for that read

[@sachyriel]

That's great insight into the era. Like a LAN blast from the past.

[@AlexanderVRadev]

Yeah but tinkering with it is half the fun. :) Now it just costs an arm and a leg to get even above average performance and you are stuck on 1 card and CPUs don't overclock past factory settings nearly at all. Not complaining here mind you. I am happy we are getting good CPU improvements as we finally have competition but GPU state of things has been a shitshow for years now. Just look at how nvidia keeps giving us the same performance for the same money generation over generation and if you actually want top performance, or even mid tier you have to overpay like mad. It's just sad and unfun to build PCs and tinker with them now. :)

[@cncaliguy09]

How about a square room fan placed right on top of it. After few hours it got so hot basically it need to cool down. Without headphones it sounds like airport runway. Also weighed a ton to move this since you had the biggest case, largest PSU. Cant imagine what a water cooled version weighed because the one I carried took two people to lift this best and place on a chair.

[@BleedForTheWorld]

Why would anyone miss this? Don't lie. It's a huge waste of resources, time, and effort. This was an era where companies thought about brute forcing their way into gaming and thought that people would pay for it which some foolishly did lol. This was stupid.

[@ogbops]

Bro I love that he did a throwback it’s so refreshing

[@SupaKoopaTroopa64]

This brings back some memories! These are all the parts I wish I had back when I built my first PC. It makes my old quad-core 2.8 GHz, 8 GB DDR3 + GT 730 system seem even more outdated!

[@Rarexpl]

Bro you need just better GPU. GTX 750 ti will give you much much morę gaming on good old lga 775

[@SupaKoopaTroopa64]

@@Rarexpl Back when I built that PC I was on a very strict

[@92kosta]

9:43 - Holy smokes, that 4090 is huge!

[@Battleneter]

I hear a very similar statement a lot.

[@lucasmarsula7924]

And is it just me or do those 980TIs look so much better, that 4090 looks like a cheap toy xd

[@Ethefake]

​​@@Battleneteryou wish you heard a very similar statement a lot*

[@robinspanier7017]

this thing is sitting in my pc and looking right through the window and yes.. it does not feel like a consumer card, it is like a brick

[@linton85]

I thought it was a plushie at first

[@jackt883]

We have a HUGE laptop at work that has dual Geforce graphics cards, a DESKTOP intel core i7 processor, 16Gb of RAM and a 300+ watt charger! It's absolute garbage compared to even just the CAD style laptops we have these days. Tech has moved on a LOT. The laptop itself is a very weird brand that we couldn't even find! I was very surprised when I opened up the hardware details.

[@ALPHABYTE64]

Dual GPU in laptop WTF?!

[@Acre00]

I remember that MSI had one like that with a full desktop mechanical keyboard on board as well. Not sure if it had dual gpus, though.

[@YashaAstora]

​@@ALPHABYTE64Dual GPUs were pretty common in super high end laptops about a decade ago.

[@cerealport2726]

At work I recently went from 6th gen intel to 13th gen intel laptop (both marketed as "mobile workstations" by a well-known retailer). I was really surprised at the performance upgrade. I'd never buy one for personal use (and my company only buys from this one retailer, so I had little choice) but as someone who does modelling/simulation, and AI as a job, it was certainly a pleasant surprise to upgrade after 7 years.

[@ThePrincessPecorine]

​@Acre00 I own one of those laptops. Its the Msi Gt80-2qe. Dual gpu's and weighs a ton.

[@BiGStroOnZ]

Great video revisiting old hardware! Wouldn't mind seeing more content like this in the future.

[@TidusfromZanarkand]

I miss EVGA and SLI, I was lucky enough to have a top system at that time, running two EVGA 980ti Classified models on SLI, absolute beasts!! Such a throwback video

[@BaronVonQuiply]

15:00 Once upon a time on a prior PC with a GTX 560 I decided to give The Witcher III a shot. Started up the game, went through the intro, got control of Geralt, and built a new PC.

[@Wesleystewart78]

i used to rock 2 480s until farm sim 19 then i did the same thing. granted back then farm sim was probably the most demanding game i played.

[@mal2ksc]

I'm glad I checked the specs before buying Cyberpunk 2077 -- it wouldn't have run at all on my system without a CPU swap because the 1090T doesn't have SSE 4.1 or 4.2. Otherwise, it would... maybe not "run" so much as "walk with a limp".

[@BaronVonQuiply]

@@mal2kscWhen Vista was new I tried a game that required Vista, saying it relied on brand new impressive features only found in.. etc. After a forced install, maybe they were right, but the parts I played ran on XP without trouble. So later I found another game that required DX10. My card was DX9, but... No, they were telling the truth about that one. I'd never seen a program Orange Screen before that.

[@jonrainbow123]

God i wish LTT could make a video on micro stuttering. Between overlay apps and drivers and the other thousands of reasons these get caused. An in depth guide on how to troubleshoot micro stutter would be massively helpful.

[@blinddarm8478]

Yeah man! I had overpowered high end systems microstuttering in low end games for no reason SO often. Many times DDU driver uninstall and reinstall helped. Sometimes only a fresh Windows install helped, sometimes even that did not help. Once it turned out that a wifi card, that i didnt even use was the cause of stutters. Another time it was the audio driver. In 2024 i feel like everything has enough raw power to game on it, but there seems to be no connection between raw power and the potential to get your games ruined by stutters.

[@jonrainbow123]

@@blinddarm8478 in POE it was the HD audio driver that got installed with my nvidia driver. Causing some kinda issue when loot dropped and it made sound to stutter the game.

[@griffin1366]

Minimal drivers. Minimal background programs (AV / RGB software generally creates the problems) Run fullscreen Make sure the CPU and GPU are pegged at their highest clockspeeds.

[@ozzierabbit587]

I built my own mid-tower PC 13 years ago for the heart of my entertainment system. Used an ASUS MB, Intel core 7 processor, dual Western Digital hard drives, mid-level EVGA video card, all from Tiger Direct for about $1200. I still use it almost every day.

[@pickledpeppers1577]

Something somewhat similar rig I purchased for around $450 was a 2010 Mac Pro 3.46Ghz 12 core running with the same Westmere processors albeit not overclockable but with full ECC Ram support at 1333MHz. A very cheap and still viable machine for medium gaming and light video creation/editing.

[@ash36230]

2014 is 10 years ago? Cursed. I feel a similar conversation coming in time with the Nvidia Titans and Intel extreme editions of the CPUs. Would like to see how a 'future-proof' they were too

[@informitas0117]

It's not. You're OK.

[@kevinerbs2778]

That word "future-proof" is a myth as there is no such thing as "future-proof" upgradable yes.

[@Pasi123]

i7-5960X Extreme Edition from 2014 would still do pretty well in modern games when overclocked. In Iceberg Tech's video from last year it was able to get close to or even slightly beat a Ryzen 5 5600X in some games. The R5 5600X being a 6 years newer CPU which you can still buy new today. The i7-5960X does also have all the instruction sets required by newest AAA games

[@Shanks9001_]

This is honestly my favorite videos as it shows just how much computer tech and speed has improved.

[@raylopez99]

For gaming. For word processor and even coding (I just learned Rust language) I am using a i5 laptop from 2013 and it works "fine" (though Rust takes a long time to compile, but not too bad for learning).

[@DanielFerreira-ez8qd]

@@raylopez99 I mean, word processing and coding ain't exactly demanding. there's other ways to show how far it has come with 3D rendering and such.

[@raylopez99]

@@DanielFerreira-ez8qd Yeah It's true, though for some commercial compiles I've heard they run the fastest computers all night to compile all the code.

[@stoffes]

this is why ive subscribing to dis channel , these back storys old high tech gaming is so fun!

[@nauikun]

I love this type of content, it reminds me that I'm lucky I can't afford these type of rigs, because if I do I would build one even if I know to myself that I will regret it.

[@RGSPro]

Back in the day I had a triple 980 Ti setup. That was super fun to build. The micro stutters were what killed the experience. Most powerful single card is just the best way to go. It's really for the best that SLi stopped being supported.

[@loke6664]

Yeah, and it used to be even worse. I don't remember which cards I used for it any more (just that it was Nvidia and top of the line back then) in the early 2000s and if you got a 10% increase in performance, you would be happy. Not worth the money, better cooling and a bit of overclocking gave better performance for far less money. I admit my current build is really dated now, still have a 1080 GFX card but I haven't figured out how to fit a good new card in my pyramid shaped case, the 1080 is already extremely tight and I really like that case. Also, there haven't really been any games lately that wanted me to upgrade. But in a way, I miss the early 2000s with weird builds. My SLI build also ran 4 small SCSI drives raided and that made a bloody difference compared to the regular drives at the time. Funny enough am I still using my old 950W Corsair PSU in my current computer, I tried a modern 650W but it bluescreened now and again in certain games, some of those old PSUs are still good.

[@gamesaccount7614]

I ran dual sli 1080 Ti, then dual sli 2080 ti... I never had any stutters, and had mostly* no issues gaming at 4k resolutions. Only stopped using sli once I upgraded to a 4090 (now that a single card can hit 120hz alone)... and it still worked in a lot of games. You could also manually "add" it to other games, although as time has gone on less and less people are doing that or sharing info around it. Maybe the 980 ti gen and earlier hadn't figured it out, but it was pretty smooth when I used it. * I do remember one time a driver and/or game update created flickering in game, and nvidia disabled sli for that game in the driver for a release or two...

[@loke6664]

@@gamesaccount7614 SLI did get better with time, when it was first introduced it had almost no boost to performance to talk about (that was in the early 2000s). By the end it did increase performance but it is still pretty hard to say it was worth the very high cost. Another huge problem was that it worked fine in some games, poorly in others and not at all in more then a few so depending how well it was coded in the game your performance varied a lot. But sure, if you had a huge amount of money to burn and wanted the best (and there wasn't a good dual card around like the old 295 card for instance) it was a legit thing to do. If you wanted to build a basic computer and add some oomph for it though, it was not the first thing you should do, rather the last for a super high end.

[@yatox8]

Not only was it not affordable for everyone, very little gains.

[@loke6664]

@@jimmer411 No, I don't think anyone ever SLId anything but the best cards. I used 2 7800 GTX cards for instance but the early SLI bridge was not great and the games that supported it gave varying performance, most couldn't code enough to make it worth the while. And yeah, that was in... 2005 I think.

[@KydrahDemon]

Love seeing the X58 platform getting the spotlight. Still using my x5675. It was a platform ahead of it's time back in the day that has far outlived my expectations.

[@K31TH3R]

I still have an X5675 running in my home NAS, albeit it now runs undervolted and underclocked and far and away from it's previous form of a 4.8GHz water cooled 330W peak power absurdity. You'd have to pry my X58 out of my cold dead hands, it's the most reliable platform I've ever owned, and I have multiple screenshots over the years of the build surpassing year long uptimes and never missing a beat. I had two pieces of excellent X5675 silicon at one point (both 4.8GHz capable chips at 1.4V) while I waited for a good deal on an SR-2, but I did not expect to see the board turn into a collectors item and maintain an often $600+ price tag. Then AM4 came got it's first 32 thread CPU and I gave up on ever finishing an SR-2 build as it no longer made sense from a performance per dollar perspective. I ran my X5675 in my main until 2019, but it's lack of AVX instructions was getting too problematic, and my ASUS Rampage II Extreme was a B13 chipset with a bug in that particular revision that meant it was unable to successfully boot GPUs newer than Vega or Maxwell architectures. Tried to put a Radeon 5700 XT into it and that was the final nail in the coffin when it couldn't boot windows with it installed, and it was on to AM4 for me.

[@cflynn3684]

Still have my dual x5680 super micro x8dti-f with 32gb ddr3 I built used in 2014. Albeit, now it’s not my main system and it’s currently dismantled from case, as my old gtx780 died. Very slow boot up, but great versatile platform with 36 pcie lanes. Was terrific for gaming even in 2017. I even got it to boot on an nvme ssd using clover bootloader as its chipset lacks sata gen3. Uber power hungry though and no AVX 😞. Now I’m also on am4, and similarly I upgraded back in 2019. I spent too much time troubleshooting and replacing power supplies rather than just having fun. Also hot and heavy. My 3900x with 6650xt uses less than half the watts and is more reliable and snappy, and over 2.5x as fast.

[@K31TH3R]

@@cflynn3684 I still run the Xeon with 24GB DDR3 @ 29ns DRAM latency (X58 to this day still has the lowest I/O latency of ANY platform), and I think because of that, I notice no difference in snappiness between my 5800X and the X5675. Interesting that your build is eating PSUs, the PSU currently powering my X58 is a 17 year old Corsair HX620, although in my prior build it was running an Enermax Triathlor 1000W, and I needed just about all of that PSU. Going to AM4 taught me that it's not worth sacrificing comfort for performance, and I don't see myself ever running a 300W+ CPU again. The X58 dumped out so much heat that it made my air conditioning completely irrelevant in the summer. It's not worth it.

[@moardargons8160]

Running Dual X5687s on a Intel 5500 mobo here. 96 GB RAM and GTX 960. It just works. I intend to run it until Windows 10 is no longer supported.

[@dapeguer]

I had a x5650 hooked up with a fan from a broken fridge, directly connected to the outlet. Overcloked at 4.9ghz. Time flies. Makes me think about bf3.

[@vikinglife6316]

I have an Antec Lanboy case I am still using. 4 builds in this case over the years. Everything fits all the time. Its a dust magnet however I installed air conditioning filters all over it and it looks sleek and stays a lot cleaner.

[@Chalisque]

It no longer works (died last year), but I bought a refurb Z800 with two X5650's in 2015. The engineering of the hardware was amazing compared to a consumer PC. Stuff like toolless disassembly, hard caddies you slide in and out, requiring no tools and only a few seconds. Beautiful milled metal case, side panel has a car-door-handle to open it. In practice its only use left was to heat the flat in the winter. And I don't find the new style Z8's as sexy as the 800 series.

[@EndlessPlane]

Still running an x58 system with an overclocked x5670 as my main rig. It just won't die.

[@r3dhorse]

Mine is a Plex server not but still going strong.

[@kuddel928]

ha, I have similar setup! :D Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R with a x5660 @4.2GHz. Threw in a used 2080Ti in last year, I'm even playing Alyx with this setup. But mostly GTA III currently 😂 I have this "PC" since 2010 (well only the mainboard and the case are still from the original build ^^). Cheers!

[@jschuk865]

My desktop is an Asus Sabertooth x58, with a X5675, 32GB, and a 970GTX. It does what I need it to do, except provide an easy upgrade to Win11. A newer GPU would definitely increase its performance.

[@KydrahDemon]

x5675 here.

[@user-in6te4bt5e]

I started with 920. Now it got xeon nvme and everything. Give it to my mom for video editing. Truly my best investment ever.

[@tobiasjennerjahn8659]

We're finally getting into the territory where I have a frame of reference for old tech, because it's from a time where I was already actively tinkering with hardware. I already enjoyed these kinds of videos before, but now they're even more exciting for me.

[@controlaltdeleteish]

I had the same 980ti it was a monster at the time with a 2700k that was amazing to overclock. Brings back some memories

[@northernleigonare]

I bought an SR2 years ago and really wish I kept it. Now it's been sold for way more than it's worth. I'll get it back one day.

[@Kirsty_McKay]

This video was such great fun. All the little throwbacks, testing old hardware against new & the writing & production value is excellent. Great video guys.

[@lnvfx]

God I remember watching the ORIGINAL review for these products. They still don't even feel that old to me. Hard to believe they're 10+ years old now.

[@CookieButter3]

It's always cool seeing PCs from my childhood. I was too young to know this existed at the time and it's also cool to see how far we have come from something like this to the likes of a 13900k and 4090.

[@seank4148]

I had one of these. Was a SOB to overclock and keep stable. Tri-SLI only worked well on a handful (or less) games. Was insane as a workstation though.

[@ariyanwasi5609]

i fell thrown back 5 years, just came back from school. Theres a video from the pc guy, life is good.

[@schlomonoseberginterracial3906]

* feel

[@VioletDragonsProjects]

I used this exact motherboard to build my sister a hackintosh back in the day. Was running 10.8.5 then upgraded it to 10.9.5. Was used for video editing. Bob Roche also used the same motherboard for a hackintosh.

[@GRAYgauss]

I had a 2x sli 560 ti setup. Really did love it.

[@lesliekilgore648]

considering the 'age' of the games vs the age of the motherboard? i was totally shocked everything pretty much worked. fun vid, thanks! :D

[@sarah.dxv3]

10/10 on the nostalgic linus starting to go back in their real work

[@Joreg_Catapang]

The thumbnail and the video really brings back 2017 to 2018 linus tech tips

[@JPDuffy]

I have dual cpu L5630 system collecting dust, I've toyed with the idea of upgrading to something like the X5690's used here just for something fun to do. Thanks for this video, I won't waste the money on that experiment. ;)

[@jd3666]

this is the best thing you have done in 5 years... resubscribed. Don't let me down.

[@DjBlacid]

we loved the throwback to sli and overclocking but i think linus loved it even more haha

[@Hopgop1]

These are my favourite videos you do, this sort of stuff was what made PCs so exciting to me when I first started watching your channel, watching Linus play around with crazy hardware I'd never get my hands on.

[@haroldreid2349]

great video as always but back in the day quad sli required more than just plug it in and turn on sli. game specific Drivers and they do make a difference i had to change to a 20A outlet as it would blow the breaker 3d tests. yep over 1500w ultra X3 power supply 1600W. keep up the videos

[@TristanSmith]

I still use an i7-3770k with a 750ti on an ASRock Z77 extreme4 for my retro gaming rig. I've had it over 10 years now and it's still running strong. Best computer I've ever built.

[@ZachryMedearis]

Seeing you do this on Windows 7 with aero just makes me think back to a simpler time when going on the computer was fun and not inconsistent UI, oversimplified, flat garbage that requires a Microsoft Account and telemetry

[@cdjwmusic]

I forgot 10 years ago was 20q4 and not 2007. Wasnt expectong quad 980s

[@doppelkloppe]

I fully expected 580s. We're getting old.

[@servissop151]

​@@doppelkloppeI was expecting Core 2 Duo era shit

[@kady5991]

I thought he was going to dig out the Skulltrail platform again. Didn’t realize we’re at 1366 now 10 years ago

[@itIsI988]

@@kady5991 2011-v3 was almost 10 years ago. 1366 was more like 14 years ago.

[@Jearper]

Not surprised at all by these results still running a Core i7 4790k 2015 with a 1080ti from 2017, 32gb of ram, I play at 1080p 120hz I still run every game maxed out, hopefully once the 5000 series cards come these evga 3090 ti will flood the market and become relatively cheap.

[@noiamhippyman]

If you look closely at the beginning you’ll notice that Linus is not actually wearing a watch. It’s actually drawn onto his wrist to appear as though he is wearing a watch.

[@StephenOwen]

I really love this video! I’ve been having a blast buying four or five year old computers for my kids and giving them upgrades every other year or so! It feels like a huge performance jump. Every time they get an upgrade, and then learning all about computers in the fun of installing drivers and troubleshooting failures. I’m not raising any tablet kids in this household. Lol but I think really a lot of people discount how much power you can get for a humongous bargain if you just buy CPUs motherboards that are four years old.

[@bassx101]

True at around 4th gen and later a top end i7 can still hold Its own for the most part for several generations/iterations thereafter.

[@zerocal76]

You're one of the real cool dads man, very nice. You should introduce them to some basic 3D modeling and retro game emulation 😎

[@TheNiteNinja19]

I have an EVGA hybrid 980 TI, and it was still in service until last year. Overclocked it to 1,440 mhz, stuck it into my cousin's computer, and it lived there for about 6 years as a daily driver gaming card.

[@OffroadObsessionTV]

here since 21, love this guys vids

[@OmegaFares]

Oh man, the bit-tech page in the first cuple of seconds brought me way back . Used to check the forum for guides and built my first PC with their help. Sad to see them go 😔.

[@denvera1g1]

20:21 As someone who had one of these borads, and still has a dual X5690. One thing you can do to help, and i know its going to be a pain, but locking the game to whichever CPU controls that GPU and then moving all of the background tasks like steam, windows telemetry, over to the other CPU

[@dangingerich2559]

I remember back in those days, I had a Core i7 920 that did 4.2GHz pretty easily. The hitch was that using 3 channels of DDR3 over 1333 would not operate in triple channel mode, but use dual channel for 4GB of memory and then single channel for the last 2GB.

[@Pasi123]

I was on a X5670 6c/12t @ 4.4GHz with 24GB (6x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz until November last year. My first LGA1366 CPU was a Xeon W3520 (same as i7-920) in 2013-2016 but that was on a OEM X58 motherboard that wasn't capable of BCLK overclocking

[@pwnograffik]

I ran 2x SLI EVGA 980Ti Hybrids from May 2016 up until this past September with an i7-4930K @ 4.4 GHz on an ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition. The Witcher 3 and Overwatch 1 were well known for having nearly 2x scaling. Joker Productions has some great videos on this. When developers put the time into it performance was GREAT but unfortunately most did not. It also didn't help that Windows 10 post version 1511 completely broke SLI. I upgraded to an R9-7950X3D in September, still rocking one of the 980Ti's overclocked to 1500 on the core and 8000 on the memory and it absolutely still pulls its weight in 2024. Honestly, in the games that I play I feel most limited by the 6GB of VRAM. I'm looking at a GPU upgrade now because MSFS with mods struggles a bit at 1440p without using FSR (runs great with it) and its crazy seeing how GPU prices jumped through the roof. $679 in 2016 dollars would net me a 4070 super today. I currently have my eyes on a 7900 XTX at $900 which has been as low as $800 but I'm holding out a bit longer to see how the market shakes out.

[@HeiligerGrimmnir]

I literally have this setup in a Dell Precision workstation but its running a Vega64. Its running as a spare gaming PC for the family. Still runs fairly ok these days. Ive considered upgrading the GPU recently.

[@youdontknowme5969]

16:35 I'm so going to start doing that to people at work now. 😉 Thank you Colin!

[@CompMeistR]

From what I understand, the 1080TI was actually the last 4x SLI card.

[@guyknightley3499]

It was and 4 1080 TIs in testing is faster than one 4090. Like always these guys just rush to do everything and dont look stuff up. lol

[@gonzoblue1206]

while it is possible to do 4 way sli with 1080 ti. only 2 way is inspec

[@tstuff1213]

It was possible but not stable in games and not optimized. Older cards were better optomized and ran far smoother because of more devoloped drivers. So for a use of a fast amount of games this probably was the better option

[@Reac2]

Wasn't the point that the 980ti existed around when this board came out? 1080 would've been chronologically too late

[@CompMeistR]

@@Reac2 the SR2 was released in 2010, as it uses the old 1366 socket, so age shouldn't be the reason. It may be down to needing to modify drivers to get 4x 1080ti working, as others have mentioned

[@ISFRedSandman]

Cool video. That micro stutter in Heaven Benchmark you showed is the program itself though, everyone has the stutter when zooming in on the dragon.

[@DelusioNic014]

Give a raise to whoever edited this video, the popup when Linus says "This does not bode well" is GOLD 😆

[@Miltiadis_Vouzounaras]

For setups like this, it's interesting to see productivity benchmark suite (like blender) and the scaling on them!

[@PrimRoseLane]

I ran that board once upon a time.. twin E-5620's, Single GTX 590 (Had plans for more but got my power bill) Corsair 1200w power supply(Case had room for 2 power supplies... Mountain Mods Extended Ascension case) and.. I forget how much RAM but windoze would not detect all of it. I left out things I did not want like Bluetooth/wifi but made sure I could use DVD/Blueray. USB cabling in that case was a nightmare. Ahhh nostalgia. I want to say 2011 was when I was first putting it together? 10 120mm fans, and for cooling used Thermo-Electric coolers. I still have the case in use as an end table.

[@ChristopherSibert]

i remember with witcher 3, you have to change some settings for the sli to work smoothly, but when you do it's like butter, one of the best sli supported games I remember playing

[@shepherdosterompton]

My Mac Pro 5,1 has those Xeons in it (supported but was never offered by Apple) and fun fact it can support last generations GPUs like the Radeon 6000 series and while the power supply can handle 1000W the traces on the logic board can’t handle that kind of draw so what we do is tap directly into the power supply doing what’s called the “pixlas mod” anyway very cool video guys, glad to see you’re back to doing the kind of stuff I started watching this channel for 😎

[@thomasbotwood1521]

And we've got the intro as well, this video is so great. Although you could have used the old intro but j still love both.

[@andres5709]

this video warmed my heart, thank you.

[@krix-alexstrasza2526]

Oh wow!! I miss my 980 ti's so much!!! I had two FTW 2 edition in SLI and it was awesome!!! At the time i had it on an x79 platform with an i7 4820k, that i ran at a daily 4.7 ghz OC. Was running 32gb quad channel 1866mhz DDR3. That was my machine for a while! Now im rocking a ryzen 7 5800X3D and a RTX 4070, 32gb DDR4 3600mhz all on a B550I board in a mini ITX case. Kinda starting to feel like this Tech talent of mine is just going to continue getting overlooked and passed up these days. I really wish i was born like 10 years earlier lol. Its gunna be interesting to see what im fully capable of when (not if) i find my place in all of this. Got some crazy ideas for HEDT cooling solutions atm!!

[@redbaronlast]

Im still gaming on an ASUS WS Revolution motherboard with an overclocked Xeon w3690 (the single cpu version of the x5690) @4.4 GHz, 12 gb ddr3 , and a GTX 1070Ti. For a system I bought cheaply used, 13 years ago!, it is still doing pretty good. Fortnite, rdr2 , gta 5, Skyrim runs like very acceptable in 1080p, mostly with high details.

[@Grady_OBS]

As someone who had the Xeon x5670, and the x5650, you can overclock those to 4.4 with no issue. I’ve had my x5670 up to 4.6 with zero issue

[@JonsComputers]

Man We Need more videos like this now days

[@richskater]

I loved this era of hardware. I had the Classified 3 that could do 3 way SLI + a dedicated physx card. I really felt future proof. While I did run dual cards, I never made it to 3 because I couldn't afford the cards that supported it. It hurt to retire that board.

[@Ransomwave]

I love the little throwbacks you guys did for this video, It's really cool to see the intro again hahah

[@pratyushsomani4920]

Shaved Linus looks wrong

[@YazTheGamer169]

Yeah I think so 😅

[@electricant55]

Nah beard Linus did

[@OtayCrafting]

Man, he should have kept the old hair.

[@Jimmyvb98]

I'm probably one of the few who thinks he looks better without, it just makes him look younger

[@asiano3385]

He looks modern. Beard people look a bit homeless, old school and like living in a stone age to me. But opinions are just relative so it does not matter.

[@robert3892]

This brought back a lot of great EVGA memories LTT. Thanks for this video. Best regards rjohnson11, volunteer EVGA forum moderator

[@Superagent666]

That Bode reference was amazing

[@TheTornvidia]

That was awesome! Thank you Linus and thanks to your team, you have done a great job! Maybe next you can test Ati Quadfire HD5970)))? I know its way older then 980ti, but it was a monster the date it was released!

[@GTRdeamon]

Ah i remember this. The pinical of X58 running with two 6 core Xeons in it. Was X58 at it finest and overclockable as well. What comes closets to this i can think of, must be intels own Skulltrail for LGA 775.

[@atsernov]

When I upgraded to an RTX 2070 Super I was still running an i5 750 at 4Gz. Frame capping was my go to trick. I'd run a game un capped to see where it would bottleneck then up the settings until the settings were maxed or the frame rate would start falling. I'd then frame cap about 20% below that. It made for a great experience even though I never utilized the card over 60%. Cyberpunk Legacy bug got me to upgrade to Ryzen 3600.

[@exdee9]

I still use this generation of CPUs (X5675s, not 90s) in my 2009 Mac Pro, paired with 32gb DDR3 1066mhz and an RX 580, it flies running macOS Monterey, all i use it for is light gaming and photo editing, oh also storage, its got about 13TB

[@chynoweth666]

I was just getting started building PCs when the SR-2 came out and it was the center of every theory-crafted build at the time. Now I just feel old. And $10k goes a lot farther today. Thanks LTT

[@commentJake]

Oh boy, I had one of these, water cooled xeons , with 3 660ti's in 3 way sli. The GPUs were air cooled but I eventually upgraded to.... a Titan with a water block... i know... the project was a huge money and time sink but i loved that thing to death. If I'm not mistaken, only frozencpu had compatible parts and it took a bit of time to source the blocks for the socket. i should note, i did this a few years after release, and the price dropped hard.

[@username8644]

Dream build. Those days of pc building were so much more interesting than it is now.