Intel X5690-cr

The Xeon X5690 is a 2011 relic with 6 cores, 130W power draw, and performance in the bottom 5% of our database. It's cheap on the used market, but you're buying a space heater that does math. Skip it unless you're rescuing an old LGA 1366 system.

The X5690 was a beast in its day, but that day was over a decade ago. Six cores at 3.47GHz sounds respectable until you realize modern budget chips run circles around it. Single thread is near the bottom of our charts, which means everyday tasks feel sluggish. Multi thread isn't much better, landing in the 4th percentile. The 130W TDP is the real kicker. You're paying for performance you can't get while burning power like a mid range gaming rig. The 12MB cache and 6.4 GT/s bus were impressive for LGA 1366, but they don't rescue this chip from obsolescence.

Stack this against the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and it's not even a contest. The 9600X is a modern 6 core that sips power and delivers top tier single thread performance. The Dell Xeon E5-2637 V2 and the PC Server and Parts E5-2697 v2-cr are both newer Xeons that beat the X5690 on efficiency and platform features while costing similar money on the used market. Even the be quiet! Ryzen 3 Dark Rock Pro 5, which is a cooler not a CPU, probably does more for your system than this chip. The Intel-IMSourcing Xeon CM8066002402400 is another used server part that outclasses it. If you're shopping old Xeons, skip this generation entirely.

Pricing is all over the place depending on where you shop. In Europe you'll see EUR 89 to EUR 99 across DE, FR, and IT listings, with the best deal at the lower end of that spread. UK buyers can grab one for GBP 72, and Mexico listings show MXN 2,324. Even at the cheapest price, you're buying a chip that scores 6.5 out of 100 overall. That's not value, that's a donation to your power company.

The Intel Xeon X5690 is a 2011 server chip that refuses to die. Six cores, 3.47GHz, 12MB cache, and a 130W power draw that would make your electric meter spin like a fidget toy. It's cheap on the used market, and that's about the nicest thing we can say in 2025.

Our database puts this thing in a rough spot. Single thread performance sits in the 3rd percentile, multi thread in the 4th, and efficiency is somehow worse at the 4th percentile. It's a space heater that happens to do math.

Skip this if you need anything resembling modern performance. Gamers, content creators, and anyone running current software should look elsewhere. If you care about your power bill or don't already own an LGA 1366 board, this chip is a hard pass. The platform is dead, the instruction sets are ancient, and the efficiency is embarrassing.

Buy this only if you have an LGA 1366 board already and need a drop in replacement for a dead chip. Homelab hobbyists who want to tinker with old server hardware might get some fun out of it. Everyone else should put the money toward literally anything newer.