Intel Xeon E5-2609 v4 8-core LGA 2011-3

The Xeon E5-2609 v4 is an eight-core server chip with a painfully low 1.7GHz clock and no turbo boost. Multi-thread performance is okay for the price, but single-thread is near the bottom of our database. Worth considering only if you find it at the low end of the used market and already have an LGA 2011-3 board.

The multi-thread score of 5418 in PassMark puts it right around the middle of the pack for server chips in our database, but the single-thread score of 1029 is rough. That's 22nd percentile territory, which means everyday tasks like opening apps or running single-threaded workloads will feel sluggish. The 20MB of L3 cache helps with some server workloads, but the lack of turbo boost means you're stuck at 1.7GHz no matter what. For a home server or NAS, it's fine. For anything interactive, it's a slog.

Against something like the Dell Xeon E5-2637 V2, this chip has more cores but a much lower clock speed, so it wins on parallel throughput and loses badly on responsiveness. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is in a completely different universe, but it also costs many times more. The Core i9 BX80673I99960X is another high-end desktop part that crushes this Xeon in every metric except price. If you're comparing used server chips, the E5-2609 v4 is a decent value at the low end, but it's not the best E5 v4 option out there. Look for something with a higher clock or turbo boost if you can stretch your budget.

Pricing is all over the place. In the US you'll see listings from USD 125 to USD 379, and in Europe it ranges from EUR 179 to EUR 261. The best US deal we found is on Amazon at USD 125, which is about the only price where this chip makes sense. At USD 379 you're getting robbed, plain and simple. For a budget home server or a cheap upgrade to an existing LGA 2011-3 board, the low end of that range is reasonable. Anything above that and you should look at newer used Ryzen or Xeon options.

The Intel Xeon E5-2609 v4 is an old server workhorse that's been put out to pasture and is now showing up on the used market for dirt cheap. Eight cores, 20MB of L3 cache, and an 85W TDP sound decent on paper, but that 1.7GHz base clock with no turbo tells you everything you need to know. This chip was built for rack servers that needed lots of threads at low power, not for anything that needs to feel snappy.

Skip this if you need a responsive desktop, any kind of gaming, or single-threaded workloads like photo editing or software development. The 1.7GHz clock with no turbo will frustrate you daily. Also skip it if you don't already own an LGA 2011-3 motherboard, since finding a decent board for this socket is becoming a scavenger hunt.

This is a niche chip for a niche buyer. If you have an LGA 2011-3 board lying around and need a cheap eight-core upgrade for a home server, NAS, or light virtualization box, the E5-2609 v4 at USD 125 is a reasonable pickup. If you're building a new system or need any kind of desktop responsiveness, skip it. The single-thread performance will drive you nuts.