I’ve been toying around with potential desktop computer configurations again. I love my Thinkpad but the screen is way too small, and there’s not nearly enough hard drive space. It’s got decent-enough specs (2GB RAM and a dual-core 1.83 GHz processor), though an upgrade’s always nice. So I’ve been toying with various configurations online, trying to stay around the $1,000 mark, including monitors.<\/p>\n
I’m looking almost exclusively at the quad-core processors Intel produces, and what I’m finding in the reviews of Newegg is that they’re all capable of being tremendously overclocked. I think the Q9300 is the best bet right now: quad cores at 2.5 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, and a 6MB L2 cache. At $250, it’s only $60 more than the Q6600, probably the most popular of the quad-core chips, but with a slower 1066 MHz FSB. I think the key in assembling a new system is to go for “leading edge, but not bleeding edge.” I can easily sink $1,000 into the latest and greatest “Extreme” processor, but, especially for what I do, it would just barely exceed something like the Q9300.<\/p>\n
The other thing to consider is that, even though the Q9300 “only” has four 2.5 GHz cores (for a net of 10 GHz, even though adding them like that is probably improper), it seems that it will very easily overclock; from what I’ve seen, 3.2 and 3.6 GHz are both easy to obtain with anything in this family. All of the reviews, though, recommend a better heatsink for the processors, whether or not you’re overclocking. So that much was a no-brainer.<\/p>\n
But I just ran into a “positive review” of the Q9300, saying that, if you water-cool* it, it runs very cool. And I’m not sure how to take that. Isn’t it like saying that, if you attach a rocket booster to a Ford Escort, it’s a very fast car? The more I think about it, the more puzzled I am. Of course<\/em> it runs cool water-cooled. About the only thing better would be if you were one of those people who use liquid nitrogen to cool your processor.<\/p>\n I’ve been toying around with potential desktop computer configurations again. I love my Thinkpad but the screen is way too small, and there’s not nearly enough hard drive space. It’s got decent-enough specs (2GB RAM and a dual-core 1.83 GHz … Continue reading \n