Intel Xeon
Ranked 3 of 8 server CPUs by recommenders
Long-lived server and workstation chips that are cheap used and stable for years, but they draw a lot of power and have slow individual cores.
Long-lived server and workstation chips that are cheap used and stable for years, but they draw a lot of power and have slow individual cores.
25 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 11
- approval share
- 56%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 15 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Cheap used chips and reasonable builds
“you can build a micro-ATX machine with a Xeon or an EPYC in it for what feels like a pretty reasonable price”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business” “There's a lot of Xeon chips for $10 on eBay. Too bad there's no drive for cpu based inference.”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “AI Coding at Home Without Going Broke” “8480s and 8592s have been quite accessible”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Intel's make-or-break 18A process node debuts for data center with 288-core Xeon” Stable and long-lived, still capable
“Been going strong for ten years and still overpowered for what I use it for.”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “A 10 year old Xeon is all you need (for 26B-A4B MTP Drafters without GPU)” “it's been very stable this whole time”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “External Clock Generation on RTX 50 Series” Go-to pro workstation and server CPU
“Last time I looked, anything remotely useful here was only on the Xeon chips”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “Is x86 ready to ACE it?” “professional/workhorse level CPUs like EPYC/Threadripper/Xeon”
Comment from 27 Mar 2026 in “Hold on to Your Hardware” “Zen 5 Ryzen or Epyc CPUs and Granite Rapids Xeons”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Unlocking Python's Cores:Energy Implications of Removing the GIL” - Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
High power draw
“but it chugs power like it's not even funny”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Geekbench 7” “These old servers are not energy efficient at all”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “A 10 year old Xeon is all you need (for 26B-A4B MTP Drafters without GPU)” Slow individual cores
“The core density is bullshit when each core is so slow that it can't do any meaningful work.”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Intel's make-or-break 18A process node debuts for data center with 288-core Xeon” “each core is so slow that it can't do any meaningful work”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Intel's make-or-break 18A process node debuts for data center with 288-core Xeon” Premium pricing, locked to workstation
“it has a 500W TDP and retails north of $17000”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Intel's make-or-break 18A process node debuts for data center with 288-core Xeon” “Intel making and keeping it workstation/Xeon-exclusive for a premium for too long”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “10% of Firefox crashes are caused by bitflips”
Other server CPUs people recommend
The four most recommended other server CPUs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD EPYC | 26 | 3 | 90% | 11 | — | Approved |
| AWS Graviton | 16 | 7 | 70% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Intel XeonThis page | 14 | 11 | 56% | 4 | 15 yrs3 owners | — |
| Nvidia Vera CPU | 11 | 7 | 61% | 6 | — | — |
| Ampere CPU | 8 | 6 | 57% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
27 of the 29 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“but it chugs power like it's not even funny”
“Last time I looked, anything remotely useful here was only on the Xeon chips”
“Save your money for a Xeon or EPYC build”
“All the while leaving out energy costs associated with GPUs, RAM, storage, networking”
“There's a lot of Xeon chips for $10 on eBay. Too bad there's no drive for cpu based inference.”
“it's been very stable this whole time”
“Been going strong for ten years and still overpowered for what I use it for.”
“Granite or sapphire rapids are very under rated for MoE inference loads.”
“These old servers are not energy efficient at all”
“Intel never got their act together regarding mobile processors for MacBooks and MacBook Pros.”
“Intel doesn't even have enough capacity right now to make enough Xeon chips”
“I bought a bargain bin Xeon. Only to realize later the only motherboard that accepts it costs $1000.”
“professional/workhorse level CPUs like EPYC/Threadripper/Xeon”
“compared their new CPUs with some antique Intel Granite Rapids Xeon CPUs”
“those are so crippled that they are not worth for anything else but for enabling the testing of some server systems”
“Zen 5 Ryzen or Epyc CPUs and Granite Rapids Xeons”
“Intel making and keeping it workstation/Xeon-exclusive for a premium for too long”
“the packaging story is way more interesting here”
“8480s and 8592s have been quite accessible”
“Sure looks like a lot of glue holding that CPU together”
“each core is so slow that it can't do any meaningful work”
“it has a 500W TDP and retails north of $17000”
“The core density is bullshit when each core is so slow that it can't do any meaningful work.”
“Putting more cores is just another desperate move to play the benchmark.”
“Absolutely none of these forms of naming have any way to correlate between them.”
“Intel did amazing with Xeon having integrated OmniPath 100Gb a long time ago, that was amazing, for barely any extra bucks”
“you can build a micro-ATX machine with a Xeon or an EPYC in it for what feels like a pretty reasonable price”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.