Aging system in need of a new lease of life, on a budget

Big.Wayne · 13 Sep 2010 at 22:42

hey gpherber

gpherber said:
Cannot change motherboard due to my operating system of choice.

Reason for not changing the motherboard is stated above, never get rid of my computer hardware until it is of no use to anyone. Family get machines I build from parts I've replaced and suit them fine

I don't understand what your first reason means? . . . you can't change the mobo because of your "operating system of choice"? . . .

I understand your second reason fine however there are plenty of folks out there right now who already have a poo motherboard and a nice quad-core and they are faced with having to fork out like £85 for a nice clocking Intel® P45 Express chipset like yours . . . they would be very glad to take the board of your hands for like £42-£60 no questions asked . . it's a win/win situation!

With that said you gotta do what you gotta do, it's a pity that you are missing out on the AMD® Athlon™ II X4 which for you if you sold your old mobo would costs less overall and performs better compared to the more expensive and slower Intel® Core™2 Quad Q6600 which is over three years old . .

Good luck anyway and thanks for dropping by! :cool:

RJC · 13 Sep 2010 at 22:45

Wonder if the op is talking regards OEM software, tied to the board it was originally installed on.

Big.Wayne · 13 Sep 2010 at 22:47

What you mean the OEM Windows licence where you phone up Microsoft® and tell them you had to replace your mobo? . . . 5 min job?

RJC · 13 Sep 2010 at 23:01

Thats the one!!!

But of course will condone such a act :eek:

Big.Wayne · 13 Sep 2010 at 23:46

Hey gpherber!

Assuming you basically can't be bothered to swap-out your mobo and re-install Windows® . . . one last attempt to save you some money otherwise there was literally no point at all in you posting here!

gpherber said:
the G0 version of the Q6600 but its more expensive than the Q9400 here

gpherber said:
Rather not go the used route for the same reasons, as you don't have warranty or any idea of how long it may last

If you give Intel® your money for a three year old product they will take it from you and laugh in your face . . .

I understand you have some kinda "reason" in your mind about buying a used processor but will you at least talk it through with us? . . . the Intel® Core™2 Quad Q6600 is literally indestructible . . . no pins to bend . . . I've never heard of of one going faulty ever! . . . I honestly do not know myself why someone would genuinely pay over £160 for one new when you could save yourself some good money and buy one used for less tha half price! :eek:

As far as most of us on OcUK forums are concerned you will literally be throwing away £90 extra to safeguard yourself against a "problem" none of us here know about! :confused:

RJC said:
I would look for a a second Hand Q6600

Big.Wayne said:
A used Intel® Core™2 Quad Q6600 is a good suggestion

wannabedamned said:
I'd go with the Q6600 as suggested

JimboJet said:
+1 for the Q6600

cmndr_andi said:
+1 to the suggestions above

setter · 13 Sep 2010 at 23:55

+1 for a used q6600, the q9400 at £160.00 is way too expensive for a chip with less cache than the q6600, for that sort of money you could get a 12mb cache q9550 second hand, (still too expensive imho though). I wouldnt worry about issues with a second hand q6600, theese chips are practically indestructibe.

gpherber · 16 Sep 2010 at 17:39

by "operating system of choice" i was referring to a topic which as far as i know isn't allowed to be discussed on this forum, OSX on a beige box. If anyone else has done it or looked into it they will know why I'm sticking with the Intel CPU + P45 + ICH10 chipsets.

Will a Stock Q6600 beat a Stock Q9400 when encoding H.264?

pastymuncher · 16 Sep 2010 at 19:01

The Q9400 will be slightly faster but if you are spending £160 on a cpu for a dying socket you are out of your mind. It will not be twice as fast or anywhere near that.

Listen to what the guys are telling you. A second hand G0 stepping Q6600 at less than half the price would be a massive improvement over what you currently have. I also do not see the logic behind not wanting to overclock it either. As already stated, the Q6600 is practically indestructable and a light overclock to 3Ghz is not going to hurt it.

gpherber · 16 Sep 2010 at 19:27

Bidding on a Q6600 on the bay, if I can get it under £80 then I will go that route. I looked on the Anandtech thing and there wasn't much in it so makes sense to save the £80.

If I overclock wouldn't I have to increase the cooling to keep the temps down? and therefore create more noise in an already annoyingly loud machine (compared to my macbook).

cmndr_andi · 16 Sep 2010 at 19:57

gpherber said:
Bidding on a Q6600 on the bay, if I can get it under £80 then I will go that route. I looked on the Anandtech thing and there wasn't much in it so makes sense to save the £80.

Cool, best of luck. Just make sure you get the G0 version as it is the cooler (lower TDP) version on the chip (compared to the B3 version) and overclocks better.

The codes for the two versions are "SLACR" and "SL9UM". The G0 is the "SLACR".

gpherber said:
If I overclock wouldn't I have to increase the cooling to keep the temps down? and therefore create more noise in an already annoyingly loud machine (compared to my macbook).

Aye, you will want to upgrade the cooler. However, depending on the cooler, it should be able to run quieter on a overclocked system - compared to the intel stock cooler. This is due to the much larger fan running at a slower speed, and the much larger surface area of the heatsink for heat dissipation.

I would suggest having a look at this cooler, here is a review showing its cooling performance with a stock and overclocked Q6600.

setter · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:02

That coolermaster looks like a great cooler at the price, the q6600 overclocked resuts are pretty impressive, but i took a further look at its performance on an i7 rig, very impressive for such little cost.

gpherber · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:02

I'm using a Zalman CNPS9700 cooler at the moment on my Pentium Dual Core. So I wouldn't use the stock cooler anyway.

pastymuncher · 17 Sep 2010 at 09:26

I found that to be a particularly noisy cooler. I had one on a E8500 and even on a fan controller could'nt get the speed below 1500rpm. Ended up getting rid of it for a Zalman CNPS10X Flex with a Arctic cooling F12 fan and i can't hear it now.

JimboJet · 17 Sep 2010 at 12:23

I'm pleased that you have come to your senses. Have you won the Q6600 auction yet? You may want to look at gumtree (apologies if I shouldnt post website name) as you may be able to find someone selling relatively locally to you, will most probably be cheaper than on ebay too.

If you are really worried about noise (and you shouldnt be, remember the Q6600 is 3 yrs old, a lot of coolers have been released since then that will provide more than adequate cooling with little noise!) then perhaps look at the H50-1 cooler as an option. Its up to date and should transfer to any subsequent CPU you upgrade to in the future. That being said, the DH14 is about to be superceeded by the Thermalright Silver arrow as the top air cooler available and should be around the £50 mark if you can find one.

gpherber · 17 Sep 2010 at 13:24

I got the Zalman for free from a mate when he was chucking a machine away. I cant hear it at all in my case, the fan controller makes it very quiet and keeps my Pentium Dual Core very cool (28 or so when idle). I need to replace my fans for quieter ones and put some acoustic foam inside the case and i shouldn't be able to hear it at all.

I've got 30 minutes to go on the auction, so fingers crossed. Looking forward to the boost in encoding performance, at the moment when encoding H.264 High Profile videos in Handbrake I can barely get 10 frames a second. From the benchmarks on anandtech the Q6600 should get 45 - 50 at least.

Edit: I won the auction, £83.77 delivered.

pastymuncher · 17 Sep 2010 at 13:47

Was that the lapped one? I hope you made sure it was a G0 stepping first. The seller hardly put up any details on it.

gurusan · 17 Sep 2010 at 16:44

Glad you got the q6600. Don't forget to set FSB to at least 333MHz

You won't sacrifice stability or longevity with a mild clock like that.

setter · 17 Sep 2010 at 16:50

gurusan said:
Glad you got the q6600. Don't forget to set FSB to at least 333MHz You won't sacrifice stability or longevity with a mild clock like that.

Good idea, a small oc like that should be achievable on stock voltage.

gpherber · 22 Sep 2010 at 11:02

Got my Q6600 today, and its a SLACR G0. It wasnt lapped like the picture, but I'm happy. I'm not sure how well overclocking is going to go. I was fiddling around yesterday and my motherboard has very few settings for setting the memory speed, so its quite hard to keep the ram under stock whilst boosting the FSB.

Duke · 22 Sep 2010 at 11:14

Good choice for a quick upgrade