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Solve : Core 2 Quad processors so cheap these days? |
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Answer» I figured I'd share this in case anyone else is using a older socket 775 motherboard based system that is able of running a Core 2 Quad processor who might want a cheap upgrade. If your running a Pentium 4, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo, Pentium E series Dual-Core, or Celeron or Celeron D that is socket 775 and would like a performance gain cheaply, the price of Core 2 Quad CPU's on ebay has tanked out to less than $20 each with free shipping in some offers. The 6600 is a workhorse Beast...i've used them in a few budget builds for low budget clients... Yeah the people I have known that ran them never had any complaints. They even overclock well with liquid cooling too. I remember when they first came out the expensive price tags they had, but they dominated back then. My coworker spent like $2400 for a gaming rig and the Q6600 CPU was like $700 of the cost with a massive expensive heatsink that barely cleared the side panel when closed ( a massive copper fin loop with heatpipes and a 80 mm fan at the center of the loop, the 2 video cards in SLI added another $800 to it and then OS, drives, and 24" flat screen. Its one of the reasons why i have stuck it out with AMD for so long for my new builds is because I cant get over the hefty premium that comes with the Intels. To me a system that lasts 3 to 5 years and then getting something better is the cycle I usually stick with, but i dont buy the best of the best, I buy whatever is the next available bargain to upgrade and trail behind at a heavily discounted cost of computing generally. Run systems that can meet the minimum requirements for games I am running and the games generally run well as long as the video card is plenty to drive the game. I use to tease him that my Sempron 64 x2 2.08Ghz with 1.5GB DDR 667Mhz RAM running Windows XP Pro with GeForce 7800GT 512MB was a cost of about $300 and plays the same games he is playing without any troubles and I saved myself $2000 not having the best of the best. However... Looking back now, if I bought the Q6600 and didnt go with a crazy build like his but say $1000 for CPU, Motherboard, RAM combination. I could have potentially been still running that same system today and not have gone through as many upgrades in between which probably brings me close to the $1000. So I guess what they say... pay now or pay later, the cost is about the same. However, its much easier to spend small amounts of money here or there buying price reduced and used parts than that hefty lump of cash all at once. I'm happy and also impressed with the performance her system is getting with the Q6600. Games play so much better now and it runs cool! I didnt have to get a heatsink replacement for it. Even when gaming its in the high 40C low 50C range air cooled at its normal 2.4Ghz with the stock heatsink that came in the HP tower with the Core 2 Duo with the heatpipe style heatsink and 80mm fan at the front of the tower blowing air across the block of metal fins. I have Dragon Age Inquisition installed to her system and the Pentium E5400 2.7Ghz while able to run the game, there would be occasional freeze framing where ever anything big was about to trigger that loaded down the 2 cores heavily. Both cores were almost a constant 98-100% use running that game. Now the game runs flawlessly! The minimum recommended specs for Dragon Age - Inquisition: Quote OS: Windows 7 or 8.1 64-bit. Her system specs are now: Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz 4GB DDR2 800Mhz RAM GeForce 9800GT 1GB Video Card 300GB Maxtor HDD SATA II I decided to go and buy the 5 QTY of the Q6600 CPUs from a merchant in Washington State. He has 3 left at $14.99 each with free shipping as of LINKING this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/322330984064 Going to give my daughter one of these as a replacement to her Celeron D 336 2.8Ghz... she is going to have the largest performance gain going from 1 core with crippled cache to 4 more powerful cores and way more cache. Daughters motherboard has the Q965 chipset... and the Q6600 is flagged as partially supported... whatever partially supported MEANS? http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Intel_(chipsets)/Q965_Express.html At bottom of the page the yellow check mark for partially supported states... - The CPU may be supported. Please check the source of this record to see whether it was posted by a visitor, or was created based on chipset support list. [attachment deleted by admin to CONSERVE space]I still run my Q6600...it's my Win7 rig currently. I beat the snot out of it and never had anything other than the stock cooler... Just checked it for shirt and giggles...doin an image of another HDD to external.... All 4 cores between 29 and 32c...My 775 System was built with a Core 2 Quad Q8200 to begin with. I replaced it with my current 4770K-based system but HARDLY out of necessity. I did try to upgrade it afterwards and found a QX6700 Extreme which was the best processor that could run on the motherboard. it was only 8 dollars shipped on eBay. However I didn't trust it. It worked fine but it's temps hovered around 70 degrees at idle even after several repaste attempts, so I put the system back to the Q8200. I'd probably need to replace the cooler and haven't really been bothered to do so; I seldom even boot the system so while 8 dollars is worth the diversion of installing a CPU a new cooler tends to run a bit higher. |
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