2nd Hand Cpu Advice

[intruder369]

OK just been looking at purchasing a 2nd hand cpu to save a bit of money, but I must say I am entirely put off by the whole shebang of how they are advertised which leads me into thinking this is really a bad Idea. The cpu in question I have particularly been looking at is the Intel E8500 a well known cpu for overclockers and yet gets advertised in many ways of disbelief. A couple of examples are as follows:

1. E8500 never been overclocked comes with original stock fan and heatsink never used.

2. E8500 4 months old selling due to upgraded to quad core, thought I would sell it instead of gathering dust as 18 months guarantee left on it. This chap I emailed to see if it actually came with the stock fan and heatsink to which he replied of coarse, but tomorrow I am putting the Zalman 9500 Pro up for sale.

Now surely this is pure crap, because as in both cases they have used different heatsinks and fans rather than the stock which surely means that they have overclocked these cpu's.

I am not being funny here but why on earth should anyone change a heatsink and fan that comes with the exact specifications to run the cpu from Intel in the first place. Answer = To Overclock the damn thing. Now am I right or am I missing something here.

A year ago I was in some forum when some chap had a problem with is PC keep shutting down after 30 seconds or so of switching it on. He said he had replaced the the heatsink and fan with some fan-dangled thing with lights on that cost him some £50 which he thought was a good thing. I checked out the spec on this heatsink and fan, and the fan was running at 1200rpm slower than the stock fan that came with the cpu. What the hell does he expect the cpu to do. Some people man.

OK if you want to put new fandango-ed piece of crap on the cpu with lights on or whatever at least check the spec. To me anybody whoever changes the stock fan on a cpu of the calibre of an E8500 must be doing so to overclock it, am I right or am I wrong. Because some of these guys are quite frankly taking the P with there 2nd hand prices when you can get a brand new one for £50 - £60 more. The same can be said for quad cores as well when it comes to prices.

 

[iNPUt]

You've got it wrong, RPM means nothing, intels stock fans blow air down onto the heatsink, not the most effective to disperse heat.

As for people changing heatsinks, its fairly common even with people that don't overclock. Or maybe they had a old stock fan they used?

Anyways you are worrying to much CPU's are very solid, overclocking does decrease the lifespan, but nothing you should be worrying about, will give you plenty more life.

As to your question I think you are "wrong", there is far more issues buying ram, mobos etc.. CPUs you should be safe, who really cares if they have been overclocked before as long as people haven't put silly voltages through them.

 

[arknor]

or maybe they just want a computer than runs cooler and less noisy?

most stock coolers sound like a bees nest once you start doing something....

aftermarket heatsinks are bigger and usually made out of much better materials than the cheaply made stock ones so they dont need as fast a fan, usually they use larger fans anyway which arent as noisy as small ones

 

[intruder369]

Well I am likeing the advice once again here chaps, and I must admit the cpu in the PC I am using now is in fact a 2nd hand Pentium 4 2.8 ghz which I got for some £14 and its been running fine for over 3 years now. But this is peanuts compared with spending £80 - £90 on a 2nd hand E8500 which can be had for £150 Brand new, so there is an element of fear of me getting ripped off that comes into the equation.

I have the money to buy a new one, but I have other things to buy as well to complete my new build, hence me looking at a 2nd hand cpu to save a bit of money to go toward another part, and yes looking at it logically the cpu does have a lot further span than the 3 year warranty that comes with it as a rule I would say. So you have got me thinking now that perhaps a 2nd hand one would give me a bit of leverage and help me get my new PC up and running a bit faster.

 

[Camoe]

i have a e2200, and a sythe ninga, i am quite content with my CPU, i just got the Ninja to keep the temps even lower, and to make my machine look like its got a good cpu underneath (A)

 

[cmndr_andi]

I would suggest going for a second-hand Q6600 over an E8500 to be honest.

Don't get me wrong, the E8000 chips are great and overclock well, but the Q6600 is a decent quad core that also overclocks rather well. Crucially, more and more games are making use of Quad core CPUs now - so if you want the chip to last a few years a Quad is probably the one to go for. Also the Q6600 will usually cost you about a tenner less than an E8500 - which always helps.

If you do go for a Q6600 - look for the G0 version (also the Q6700 is worth a look, but it will usually cost a bit more).

As for CPU cooler and overclocking - I know loads of people with big aftermarket coolers and don't overclock. The main reason is to keep the chip cooler and the system much quieter. One of my friends had a TRUE passively cooling a stock Q6600 - was running great.

 

[Shakeel]

i did a q8200 build for a friend he he bought an aftermakret cooler becuase he didnt like the intel one. so that never used and new

 

[intruder369]

If I wanted a Quad core it would have to be at least 3Ghz I am not into overclocking and do not believe in pushing the boundaries so to speak. I have seen the difference in speed and efficiency between a 2.93Ghz and a 3Ghz cpu and it only sounds like a small step from 2.93Ghz to 3Ghz but it is noticeable by far. The fact the the Q6600 is a Quad core and as 8mb's of cache rather than 6mb's the E8500 as, is not enough when you consider that it's only a 2.4Ghz cpu with an fsb rate of 1066 compared with a 3.16Ghz and 1300 fsb rate. Or am I missing something here.

The other thing about heatsinks what I would like to know is if you say the so called stock heatsink is not good enough which is by the way made of alluminium, how is one that generates twice as much heat made of copper any better. Maybe I got something scientifically wrong here. But it's a well known fact that a copper kettle will boil water far more faster than one made of aluminium, because it generates heat a lot faster. So how can this be applied to cooling. Or does it work on the same principle of a flask that can keep things hot and cold.

Sorry for the questions I just need to be sure.

 

[cmndr_andi]

The point is that the low FSB of the Q6600 actually makes it easy to overclock. If you set the FSB to 333MHz (standard for the E8500) then the Q6600 is already at 3GHz. Most people can hit this frequency at stock volts with a G0 Q6600. Hence, with a good motherboard (like the ASUS P5Q I believe you have) the overclocking is not limited by the motherboard and the maximum FSB it can produce, but by the Q6600 chip. Therefore, with a good motherboard and a half decent Q6600 you can expect to hit 3.5GHz and perhaps more.

When you also consider that games (and other applications) are now starting to use multiple cores then you can't compare a dual core and a quad core on a clockspeed basis - as in most situations a 2.4GHz quad core will be faster than a 3GHz dual core.

As for heatsink construction, not all are made of copper - many do use aluminum. But the main reason the majority of the third party ones are better is primarily due to physical size and more airflow. If you have a look at this photograph (an intel stock heatsink in the foreground) , it is pretty clear to see.

 

[bowza]

Re copper kettle, the reason the kettle boils faster is the heat transfer in copper is fast, this is why copper heat sinks work well, they transfer the heat away from the cpu , and then the nice fans move the heat away from the copper fins, hence keeping the cpu cooler.

hope that helps.

Bowza

 

[krooton]

If I wanted a Quad core it would have to be at least 3Ghz I am not into overclocking and do not believe in pushing the boundaries so to speak. I have seen the difference in speed and efficiency between a 2.93Ghz and a 3Ghz cpu and it only sounds like a small step from 2.93Ghz to 3Ghz but it is noticeable by far.

No, 70mhz will have no noticeable effect on how a system runs. It wouldn't even alter Super_Pi scores.

 

[intruder369]

No, 70mhz will have no noticeable effect on how a system runs. It wouldn't even alter Super_Pi scores.

Well that I would beg to differ as 2 years ago I built 2 PC's 1 for my brother and 1 for a mate who lives down the road from me. For both systems I used exactly the same components Mobo/Memory/Hard Drive/DVD-RW/Graphic Card/PSU, and installed Windows XP Pro the only diff between the 2 was that my brother had a Q9650 and my mate had a Q9550.

OK the difference here is between a 2.83Ghz and a 3.0Ghz cpu. I could tell the difference in performance straight away between the 2. It is definitely noticeable, they do not slap a price difference of £80 - £100 more for the 3.0Ghz for no reason. If what you are saying is the case why on earth would one spend the extra money. OK in terms of overclocking you can get whatever processing speed you want out of a cpu, but I am talking about cpu's run with no overclocking at all.

Perhaps the difference between 2.93Ghz and 3.0Ghz is smaller and not that noticeable but you will still pay a difference in the price between the 2 cpu's. So something as to be better somewhere along the line. In most cases this may very well be down to the size of the cache, but in the case of the Q9650 and Q9550 they have exactly the same.

I recently built a PC with a E7500 which is 2.93Ghz and though it handles HD and stuff nicely because it is a 2 core, I personally have found a Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz act much quicker to processing than the E7500. OK granted the E7500 is better for handling multi tasking but in terms of fast processing it's certainly no better than a 3.0Ghz Pentium 4 single processor.

 

[intruder369]

Re copper kettle, the reason the kettle boils faster is the heat transfer in copper is fast, this is why copper heat sinks work well, they transfer the heat away from the cpu , and then the nice fans move the heat away from the copper fins, hence keeping the cpu cooler.

hope that helps.

Bowza

This I like very much and can certainly see the logic behind it.

 

[krooton]

Well that I would beg to differ as 2 years ago I built 2 PC's 1 for my brother and 1 for a mate who lives down the road from me. For both systems I used exactly the same components Mobo/Memory/Hard Drive/DVD-RW/Graphic Card/PSU, and installed Windows XP Pro the only diff between the 2 was that my brother had a Q9650 and my mate had a Q9550.

OK the difference here is between a 2.83Ghz and a 3.0Ghz cpu. I could tell the difference in performance straight away between the 2. It is definitely noticeable, they do not slap a price difference of £80 - £100 more for the 3.0Ghz for no reason. If what you are saying is the case why on earth would one spend the extra money. OK in terms of overclocking you can get whatever processing speed you want out of a cpu, but I am talking about cpu's run with no overclocking at all.

Perhaps the difference between 2.93Ghz and 3.0Ghz is smaller and not that noticeable but you will still pay a difference in the price between the 2 cpu's. So something as to be better somewhere along the line. In most cases this may very well be down to the size of the cache, but in the case of the Q9650 and Q9550 they have exactly the same.

Yes, steps of around 200mhz are where increases in performance become noticeable, but the impact is likely to not be felt anywhere outside of benchmarks in real day to day use.

70mhz will not be discernible, it will barely feature in benchmarks, and will offer little over a placebo effect in day to day use.

Your price point analogy doesn't hold water. They do it because business users and many home users do not overclock, and it is an easy way for them to squeeze some extra money out of them by offering minor speed increases. In the instance of the Q9550 and Q9650, the £60 for an extra 0.5 on the multiplier is essentially a scam.

I recently built a PC with a E7500 which is 2.93Ghz and though it handles HD and stuff nicely because it is a 2 core, I personally have found a Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz act much quicker to processing than the E7500. OK granted the E7500 is better for handling multi tasking but in terms of fast processing it's certainly no better than a 3.0Ghz Pentium 4 single processor.

This is just all kinds of wrong.

P4 @ 3Ghz, 12+8kb (20k) L1 cache, 512k L2 cache
E7500 @ 2.93Ghz, 32x2kb (64k) L1 cache, 3MB L2 cache

With effectively 3 times the cache of the P4 and a completely different architecture, even with the 70mhz deficiency in the raw clockspeed, the E7500 will destroy the P4 in any task.

You are looking at 490ish Passmark points for the P4 compared to 2,000ish of the E7500.

 

[intruder369]

This is just all kinds of wrong.

P4 @ 3Ghz, 12+8kb (20k) L1 cache, 512k L2 cache
E7500 @ 2.93Ghz, 32x2kb (64k) L1 cache, 3MB L2 cache

With effectively 3 times the cache of the P4 and a completely different architecture, even with the 70mhz deficiency in the raw clockspeed, the E7500 will destroy the P4 in any task.

You are looking at 490ish Passmark points for the P4 compared to 2,000ish of the E7500.[/QUOTE]

Well looking at it like that yes your right, but benchmarks and specs do not always measure up to real time live speed performance that one see's with there own eyes. But obvioulsy the E7500 is way better than a P4 single cpu.

But when opening things such as programs like Photo Shop and installing programs I do not see how the E7500 is any faster than a P4 3.0 Ghz at all. I have found many old PC's that I have reformated and reinstalled operating systems on for people with P4 3.0Ghz cpu's which are very fast to respond to opening applications, and in many cases more impressive than the E7500 to be quite honest about it. But obviously the P4 as got no chance of matching the E7500 in terms of running them programs smoothly, where as the P4 will struggle with many. I would have the E7500 anyday on that score because it would like you say leave the P4 behind in the dust.

 

[cmndr_andi]

Well looking at it like that yes your right, but benchmarks and specs do not always measure up to real time live speed performance that one see's with there own eyes. But obvioulsy the E7500 is way better than a P4 single cpu.

But when opening things such as programs like Photo Shop and installing programs I do not see how the E7500 is any faster than a P4 3.0 Ghz at all. I have found many old PC's that I have reformated and reinstalled operating systems on for people with P4 3.0Ghz cpu's which are very fast to respond to opening applications, and in many cases more impressive than the E7500 to be quite honest about it.

Well not exactly. If you have a wide range of good benchmarks (like this) then you can get a good idea of real-world performance in CPU heavy applications. Please bear in mind that that test is not just synthetic benchmarks but also repeatable tests using real-world applications like games, photoshop and video encoders.

However, the things you cite like opening and installing programs are not very CPU intensive at all - the main bottleneck here would be the hard drive and in some cases the RAM. Hence why people buy SSDs for super quick application loading.

 

[pooley]

i dont buy it either, chances are cpu's that oc well like the e8500 will have been oc'ed but as long as it works thats the main thing. i agree with cmndr andi in regards to buying a q6600, great cpu oc's well and being quad core is will be able to handle games that uses all 4 cores.

 

[intruder369]

Well not exactly. If you have a wide range of good benchmarks (like this) then you can get a good idea of real-world performance in CPU heavy applications. Please bear in mind that that test is not just synthetic benchmarks but also repeatable tests using real-world applications like games, photoshop and video encoders.

However, the things you cite like opening and installing programs are not very CPU intensive at all - the main bottleneck here would be the hard drive and in some cases the RAM. Hence why people buy SSDs for super quick application loading.

Well yes that would come into the equation and makes more sense. I must say I love the way you keep recommending the Q6600. I have seen this in a lot of your posts and I must say from what I am getting here with all the good feedback I am very much being tempted into going into a bit of overclocking. I am watching a couple 2nd hand ones of these with G0 stepping as you say at the moment. Though to be quite honest I know nothing about overclocking at all, and even though the Asus board I have as so called safe overclocking I am not entirely convinced if there is such a thing. At the end of the day I do not want to end up frying my new mobo and other components.

For my use for the PC which is more for music and video editing rather than games the Quad Core would be a better choice over a Dual Core no doubt. I have so far set aside £155 for a brand new E8500 to which I know I can get for £152. I could even stretch another £30 and get a brand new Q9550 if I wanted to, which may well be the better choice of them all. I seen one go 2nd hand for £132 yesterday and I personally would not pay that price for a 2nd hand cpu, when I know for an extra £48 I can get a brand new one. It's just not worth the risk at all, and at the end of the day it could end up being very costly.

What now does concern me regarding to going into overclocking is the parts I have already purchased for me new build. So far I have my Case. The Asus P5Q Pro Turbo. Blu Ray & DVD RW Drives. Corsair CX400W PSU. Kingston Hyper X 2 x 1GB DDR2 1066 memory.

The components I have left to buy are the CPU. The Sapphire HD5670 1GB Graphic Card. The Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Delux Soundcard and a Hard Drive. I already have the money in my paypal account for the CPU. Next Tuesday I will have enough money to buy either the Soundcard or the Graphics and the Hard Drive. If I get the Graphics and the Hard Drive first I can build the new PC and get the Soundcard in another 2 weeks time.

Now if I was to go into overclocking would I need a higher wattage PSU and different memory taking in consideration of getting say a Q6600 with G0 stepping that you suggested and running it say at 3.0Ghz or 3.5Ghz. What would you suggest especially as I can get a Q9550 if I wanted to.

 

[cmndr_andi]

Well yes that would come into the equation and makes more sense. I must say I love the way you keep recommending the Q6600. I have seen this in a lot of your posts and I must say from what I am getting here with all the good feedback I am very much being tempted into going into a bit of overclocking. I am watching a couple 2nd hand ones of these with G0 stepping as you say at the moment. Though to be quite honest I know nothing about overclocking at all, and even though the Asus board I have as so called safe overclocking I am not entirely convinced if there is such a thing. At the end of the day I do not want to end up frying my new mobo and other components.

Ha, yea the Q6600 is a bit of a legend. So many people I know got one ages ago and still run top-end games and applications on them today - they are really good chips. They are a bit slow at stock speeds (2.4GHz) but overclock to 3GHz will give you a nice performance boost and takes no time and little skill to do. Once you have it at 3GHz, taking it even higher is pretty simple as you are getting used to the BIOS options- with a really good motherboard (like the one you have) 3.5GHz should be no problem with a decent aftermarket air cooler.

As for frying components, I have never seen it done through overclocking. There are so many safety measures in modern boards that you have to do something REALLY stupid to break you kit with overclocking. So long as you familiarise yourself with an overclocking guide and read up on the voltages and temperatures your motherboard can take - you will be most of the way there. You should also bear in mind that your motherboard is made specifically for overclocking - it can achieve FSB speeds and provide onboard cooling that is far more than is required for even the highest spec stock CPUs.

For my use for the PC which is more for music and video editing rather than games the Quad Core would be a better choice over a Dual Core no doubt. I have so far set aside £155 for a brand new E8500 to which I know I can get for £152. I could even stretch another £30 and get a brand new Q9550 if I wanted to, which may well be the better choice of them all. I seen one go 2nd hand for £132 yesterday and I personally would not pay that price for a 2nd hand cpu, when I know for an extra £48 I can get a brand new one. It's just not worth the risk at all, and at the end of the day it could end up being very costly.

The Q9550 is a great chip (still using one myself). It is clocked higher and is faster clock-for-clock compared to the Q6600, it also overclocks higher (many get up to 4GHz). If you can happily afford this chip then I say go for it - it is wonderful (look out for the E0 stepping- it is the newer, better version). However, if you are on a tight budget - the Q6600 will give you performance not too far off the Q9550 and cost considerably less.

What now does concern me regarding to going into overclocking is the parts I have already purchased for me new build. So far I have my Case. The Asus P5Q Pro Turbo. Blu Ray & DVD RW Drives. Corsair CX400W PSU. Kingston Hyper X 2 x 1GB DDR2 1066 memory.

With a heavily overclocked Q9550 (or Q6600) system with a 5670 - your 400W corsair PSU will still be totally fine, it is a quality bit of kit and these parts will not come to close to 400W. The 2GB RAM may hold you back in you applications (I believe video editing makes good use of lots of RAM) so you may want to consider changing this for a 4GB kit (if you are still within 7 days of purchase - you can return any unopened items back for a full refund under DSR). However, a 4GB kit is expensive - but if you think you can afford a Q9550 then I would most strongly suggest you go for 4GB of RAM.

 

[intruder369]

With a heavily overclocked Q9550 (or Q6600) system with a 5670 - your 400W corsair PSU will still be totally fine, it is a quality bit of kit and these parts will not come to close to 400W. The 2GB RAM may hold you back in you applications (I believe video editing makes good use of lots of RAM) so you may want to consider changing this for a 4GB kit (if you are still within 7 days of purchase - you can return any unopened items back for a full refund under DSR). However, a 4GB kit is expensive - but if you think you can afford a Q9550 then I would most strongly suggest you go for 4GB of RAM.

OK... can I not just get another 2 gig kit of the same to make up the 4 gigs rather than send them back. I know it is perhaps a bit more costly this way but that does not bother me at all. I presume that now I will be using a 64 bit OS rather than a 32 bit.