Intel Xeon E5-2640V4 10-core LGA 2011-3

The Xeon E5-2640V4 is a cheap 10-core server chip with solid multi-thread performance and terrible single-thread speed. It's great for home labs and budget servers, but useless for gaming or everyday desktop use. At USD 145 or EUR 86, it's a steal. At EUR 1,005, run away.

The multi-thread score of 7363 in PassMark puts it right around the middle of the pack for server chips in our database. That's solid for virtualization, file serving, or running a home lab. But the single-thread score of 259 is a real letdown, landing in the bottom 10% of everything we've tested. If your workload leans on one fast core, this chip will feel sluggish. The 2.4GHz base clock doesn't help, and there's no turbo headroom to speak of. For parallel tasks it's fine. For anything latency-sensitive, it's a drag.

Against something like the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, this Xeon gets absolutely demolished. The 7900X has fewer cores but vastly better single-thread performance and a modern platform. The Dell Xeon E5-2637 V2 is a closer match, but it's even older and slower. The Core i9 X-Series BX80673I99900X offers better all-around performance but costs more and runs hotter. If you need cheap cores for a server, the E5-2640V4 holds its own. If you need speed, look elsewhere.

Pricing is all over the place. In the US you can grab one for USD 145, and in the UK it's GBP 106. But in Europe, listings range from EUR 86 all the way up to EUR 1,005. That's a wild spread. If you're in the EU, shop carefully. The EUR 86 listing is the only one that makes sense. At that price, this is a bargain for a home server. At EUR 1,005, you're getting robbed. Spend your money on something newer.

The Intel Xeon E5-2640V4 is a decade-old server chip that still knows how to show up for work. Ten cores, 20 threads, 25MB of L3 cache, and a 90W TDP. It's not flashy, but it was built for reliability, not for showing off in benchmarks.

Skip this if you need a responsive desktop experience. The single-thread performance is genuinely bad, and everyday tasks will feel slower than they should. Also skip it if you want to game, if you need modern features like PCIe 4.0, or if you're not comfortable hunting down an old LGA 2011-3 motherboard. There are better options for most people.

This chip is for home lab builders, budget server tinkerers, and anyone who needs a pile of threads without spending real money. It's not for gamers, not for daily drivers, and not for anyone who cares about single-thread speed. If you know what you're getting into, it's a solid buy at the right price.