Went looking for a 9th gen Coffee Lake CPU for my Asus PRO WS C246-ACE , now i'm completely baffled

[heromode]

So in April 2020 i bought a Asus PRO WS C246-ACE Mobo for 180 EUR for my new desktop, and it's been sitting unused ever since. Now i'm looking for either a Core i7-9700K or a i9-9900K cpu for it, and since it's 3 generations old, i assumed i could find a cheap CPU from ebay atleast, but NO.

Used i7-9700K's on Ebay are like 200-250 EUR, which is ridiculous since a brand new Core i5-12600K which has about double the cpubenchmark score, not to mention pcie5 and pcie4 support etc, sells for 287€.

But the real shocker is the prices for new Coffee Lake CPU's, they've practically exploded higher! What is going on here? How can a new i9-9900K sell for 600 EUR on Amazon.de, when a brand new Core i9-12900K sells for 584€ ?!

Core i9-9900K:



Core i7-9700K:



I'm tempted to forget about populating the nice C246 mobo all together, and just buy a i5-12600K instead, together with a ASUS Prime Z690-p D4 that combo would cost me 475€, only 154€ more than a new Core i7-9700K, 3 Generations old!

Moreover the only Asus PRO WS C246-ACE Motherboard for sale i can find anywhere, sells on Ebay from China for a ridiculous 517€ ?! What? Did i happen to buy some collector rarity?

I'm wondering if i should put the C246 for sale in the Forum sales thread, It is one of the best C246 Mobo's out there, could be valuable to someone with a Xeon E-22xx CPU.

But back to the original question, what in the world is going on with Coffee Lake prices ?!

 

[ReturnedSword]

Intel is still making both CFL and CFL-R, but probably at much lower quantities. Then the used prices haven't dropped yet because the CPU is still "new" enough that people who have them haven't upgraded yet. Once there's a big upgrade cycle the prices drop fairly fast, then go up again once supply dries up.

What you're seeing is quite usual. A few "generations" out, the prices tend to be much higher.

Interestingly, I had the opposite happen with my nVidia Pascal GPUs. I bought a GTX 1080 Ti, 1070 Ti, and 1060 6GB around the time the GPUs came out. I never had a chance to use them, so they were just sitting in their shrink wrapped boxes for a few years. Fast forward to the mining boom, and I had actually sold the GPUs for much more than I had bought them for.

 

[heromode]

Interesting, thanks for your reply.

Before discovering this 'price shock' i had planned to source a Xeon E-22xxG for the C246, because i wanted to try to use Intel RSTe to get my 2 x Intel DC P3700 800GB 2,5" U.2 SSD's running in a stripe using 'Intel VROC (non-VMD NVME RAID)' mode:





Does anyone have any experience with C246 and Intel® Rapid Storage Technology enterprise? It would be interesting to benchmark with and without, as it's a "poor man's VROC".

I haven't yet researched if Alder Lake chipsets support full VROC/VMD?

EDIT: the Z690 does NOT support RSTe:
EDIT2: the Core i5-12600 supports VMD, no mention of VROC. It's utterly confusing.

full VROC/VMD support will probably be in the upcoming W680 chipset then presumably. Damn this is frustrating, i can't pay 600 - 800 EUR for a 'old' Xeon E-22xx. Maybe it's just best to wait and see.

References:
https://www.intel.com/content/dam/s...software/Intel_VROC_Supported_Configs_5-3.pdf
https://www.intel.com/content/dam/s...software/Intel_VROC_Supported_Configs_7_5.pdf
https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/rst-linux-paper.pdf
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/147326/intel-c246-chipset/specifications.html

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/218833/intel-z690-chipset.html
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/96149/intel-core-i512600-processor-18m-cache-up-to-4-80-ghz.html

 

[Tom5051]

crypto mining has driven the price of second hand cpus and motherboards through the roof as you need one of each for every rig you have.

 

[heromode]

crypto mining has driven the price of second hand cpus and motherboards through the roof as you need one of each for every rig you have.

That makes no sense since u can get a i7-12700 plus mobo for 450€ which has a CPU Benchmark score of 31538 versus paying 600€ for a i9-9900K with a benchmark score of 18733.

edit: Ah, you mean for each rig running GPU's.. right

Well this sucks because there is no point for me to pay 400€ for a Coffee Lake CPU, or even a ES Xeon E-22xx for my c246 mobo, better get an Alder Lake plus mobo for the same damn price :\

 

[ReturnedSword]

Will you be about to sell your motherboard for a decent price?

 

[heromode]

Will you be about to sell your motherboard for a decent price?

Well i was really hoping to use it, but just as i go to find a good 8C CPU, the prices of Coffee Lake CPU's are exploding, this is absolute insanity. I see Asus Pro WS C246 (non-ACE) motherboards sell for more than i paid for mine now, and the only ACE selling for 571€.

So no, i won't be selling it for a decent price, i mean if someone wants to pay 400€ then fine. I can use that money to buy a i5-12600 plus a Z690 mobo.

So if anyone in EU wants a unused, never powered on Asus Pro WS C246-ACE in original box plus all accessories for 400€, then contact me.

A new Core-i9-9900K plus a Asus Pro C246 motherboard is now about 800€, which makes no sense since u can readily buy a i7-12700 plus a ASUS Prime Z690P-D4 for about 550€. At this rate i will soon be able to buy a house with my old hardware.