Intel Xeon E-2224 4-core LGA 1151

The E-2224 posts a 2552 single-thread PassMark score, good for the 71st percentile, but its 7189 multi-thread score is dead average. Pricing is wildly inconsistent, from CAD 70 in Canada to EUR 613-648 in Europe. If you find it cheap, it's a decent ECC-capable server chip. If you're paying European prices, don't.

Let's talk numbers. PassMark puts this chip at 7189 multi-thread and 2552 single-thread. The single-thread score is the highlight here, landing in the 71st percentile, which translates to solid responsiveness for everyday server tasks, light virtualization, or a basic workstation. The 4.6GHz boost clock does real work when only one or two cores are active. But the multi-thread score of 7189 sits at the 49th percentile, dead middle of the pack. Four threads just isn't enough to move the needle in 2024, especially when modern budget chips are shipping with 6 or 8 cores.

You get 8MB of L3 cache and 1MB of L2, which is fine for the core count but nothing to write home about. Memory support tops out at 128GB of DDR4 with ECC, which is respectable for a small file server or a lightweight NAS build. The 71W TDP is reasonable, and the efficiency score lands at the 56th percentile, so it won't cook your power bill. But there's no iGPU, so you'll need a discrete card or a board with its own video output just to see a BIOS screen.

Stacked against the competition, the E-2224 has a clear lane but a narrow one. The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X absolutely demolishes it in multi-thread and efficiency, but that's a modern desktop chip with a much higher price tag and no ECC support on most boards. The Dell Xeon E5-2637 V2 is the more interesting comparison: an older 4-core Xeon that can be found for pocket change on the used market. The E-2224 beats it on single-thread and platform features, but the E5-2637 V2 wins on price if you're just looking for a cheap server chip. The ADVB3 Phenom II X6 and DAKboard CPU v4 aren't really in the same conversation, they're either ancient or purpose-built for niche hardware. The be quiet! Ryzen 3 Dark Rock Pro 5 is a cooler, not a CPU, so that's a weird one to see in the competitor list. The E-2224's real competition is the used market, and there it faces an uphill battle.

The value story depends entirely on where you live. At $259 in the US, this chip is a tough sell when you can get a modern 6-core Ryzen or a used higher-core-count Xeon for similar money. But at CAD 70 in Canada, it's a completely different conversation. That's cheap enough to justify for a home lab tinkerer or someone building a budget ECC-capable box. The European pricing is where things get ugly. EUR 613-648 and GBP 519 for a 4-core chip from 2019 is hard to defend, and the 33rd percentile affordability score reflects that. If you're in Europe or the UK, you're paying new-platform money for dead-platform performance.

The Xeon E-2224 is a weird little chip. You're looking at a 4-core, 4-thread server CPU with a 4.6GHz boost clock and a 71W TDP, which sounds fine on paper until you realize it's sitting at the 49th percentile for multi-thread performance in our database. That's about average, but average for a Xeon in 2024 is a strange place to be. The single-thread story is better, landing at the 71st percentile, which means it'll feel snappy for basic tasks but won't impress anyone running heavy parallel workloads.

The bigger issue is what you're paying for. US listings hover around $259, but European buyers are looking at EUR 613-648, and UK shoppers face GBP 519. That's a massive spread for a chip with no integrated graphics, no included cooler, and a platform that's been dead for years. The 33rd percentile affordability score tells you everything: this thing is not a value play in most markets.

Skip this if you're in Europe or the UK. EUR 613-648 and GBP 519 for a 4-core chip with a 49th percentile multi-thread score is a bad deal, full stop. Also skip it if you need integrated graphics, since there's no iGPU and you'll be buying a discrete card just to get video output. And if you're planning to run heavily threaded workloads like video encoding, virtualization with multiple VMs, or modern game servers, 4 threads will frustrate you. The gaming score of 30.9 out of 100 should be enough warning for anyone thinking about a budget gaming build. This chip has a narrow use case, and outside of cheap North American listings, it doesn't make sense.

The Xeon E-2224 is a fine chip that's stuck in a bad position. The single-thread performance is genuinely good, the power draw is modest, and ECC support is a real feature for server builds. But 4 cores and 4 threads in 2024 is a hard ceiling, and the pricing outside North America is borderline offensive. If you can snag one for CAD 70 or find a US listing under $200, it's a reasonable pickup for a small home server or a budget workstation. At EUR 613 or GBP 519, you should run the other way and buy something with more cores, more threads, and a platform that isn't already dead.