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Comment by Keyframe | Hacker News Reader

Still rocking 3930k as one of my machines. It refuses to be obsolete.

Me too until about 5 months ago. It's been a great CPU. I'm still using the same machine I bought in 2011 as my workstation, and in 2011 the 3930k was like jumping into the future with its 6-cores. It was definitely worth the cost considering how long it's been useful.

I retired the 3930k CPU 5 months ago when I decided to upgrade the machine to the fastest possible CPU that would go into the socket-2011 motherboard. I found a Xeon E5-2697v2 CPU on eBay for about $40 (currently $30 with free shipping). So it took me from the 6-core/12-thread 3930k up to 12-core/24-threads. It's the final upgrade for this machine, there's really nowhere else for it to go. Maxed out 64GB RAM, RAID10 8-drive array, decent modern video card. I tried to get a TPM module but the BIOS didn't recognize it so it won't install Windows 11 unfortunately, I tried the workarounds but no go.

I don't really need a new modern workstation, but when this system dies (if it dies, it's been a reliable workhorse), I'll get the fastest machine possible at the time and keep that for at least 10 or 15 years.

I've been thinking of upgrading it to E5-2xxxv2 as well, for years now heh. BUT, I think I'll just let it slide for maybe another half a year or year and retire it altogether. It has been really an amazing run also since 2011 and I am quite positive I could still get maybe few to five years out of it.

The E5-2697v2 scores 227 cpumark points faster than an Apple M1 CPU, for the price of $30 on ebay. It's an easy upgrade that makes the system still quite useful, although it runs quite a bit hotter than the M1. But yeah, it's really at EOL now as it won't run the latest OS - I mean it could, but damn Microsoft for locking my system out. I'd keep it going for 5 more years if Windows 10 seemed viable for that long.

Yeah, I'm bummed a lot of these perfectly capable chips are unsupported by Windows 11. Only Intel generation 8 or newer CPUs are officially supported. Installing to an unsupported processor puts you at risk for MS withholding security updates from you in the future.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/mi...

Luckily I haven't run a microsoft OS in eons. No need.

When MS announced the limitations on CPUs I was kind of gobsmacked. Now I'm just riding windows 10 pro until either all my hardware dies, I get bored with gaming, or an unexpected need arises requiring the change.

My primary machine can run windows 11 but I refuse to "upgrade" out of principle at this point...

There's always Linux... ;)

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