Yes, it's a good idea.
Yes, it's a good idea.
Hey! I’m planning a project for my younger brother and checked out Ali-Express for affordable parts. With a budget of $1600, I’m wondering if it’s better to get an engineering sample or an ES CPU.
Usually no. These parts aren't meant to be sold and rarely come with support on real motherboards. Even if you manage to get them working, many features may not function properly due to changes between the ES version and the release unit. The board and chipset are clearly aimed at the newer models. At around $1600, it's a reasonable price for a PC, but it's not a good idea to hunt for cheap deals on other components. If you're trying to force a 3080 or similar into that budget and cut corners elsewhere, you'll likely end up hurting the GPU performance significantly.