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Cheap clockable cpu

Associate
Joined
17 Dec 2007
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876
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Easington Lane
I am looking at doing a new build for my Dad but it is a very low budget so was wondering what older cpu is worth looking at? I do not mind if its going to be Intel or AMD as i will be building the system are the cpu.

It is going to used for a bit of HD play back, games and web browsing. I was thinking something that is cheap but easy to overclock instead of paying extra for a faster cpu.

Any advice would be great thanks
 
Associate
OP
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17 Dec 2007
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876
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Easington Lane
I have a Q6600 in my main rig and yes they are very good but not looking to spend that much. Going to beg borrow or steal and try and do the full build for around £150.
 
Soldato
Joined
12 Jun 2008
Posts
3,011
for that money id get hold of an intel e3200, can get them for 25 second hand and they have been known to overclock to 4ghz with some good cooling. Very impressive chip, i had one myself and put it up to 3.6ghz on stock voltage.
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
33,188
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-250-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1328

With any even half decent mobo(ie, all of them) theres an incredibly high chance of unlocking that to a quad core and we're well past the days these were fsb limited badly, 250/260fsb is very easy and that would get you a 4Ghz quad core, at worst a 3.8Ghz dual core which will still be very fast, cheap and a decent mobo/system.

You can't beat the value of a core that unlocks, its not the best ever value if it doesn't unlock but its certainly not a slow cpu, its just if it unlocks to a quad, its insanely good and probably the best value cpu we've ever had.

The black edition costs more, will overclock the same and has unlocked multipliers, but honestly, you won't need it. I got the black edition, largely because the 545 was out of stock and closer in price anyway, I don't use the multi, I run at 250Mhz or so, can quite easily run at 300Mhz with a lower multi though theres not a huge amount of reason to.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Nov 2009
Posts
11,595
Location
Northampton
But its cheap :)

Its not particularly cheap the Athlon II 245 is the same price and would be on par performance wise but will overclock due to being on a smaller manufacturing tech (60nm vs 45nm IIRC)

That kind of budget you really are looking at second hand Core 2 Duo


I'd say your looking at the following

P35/P45 Mainboard ~£40
Intel E3200/E3300 ~£35 New
2Gb DDR2 (1066mhz would be better) ~£40
Nvidia 8800GT(S/X) ~£40

That would be you budget gone and would need to reuse hard drive, psu, case and optical drive. The e3200s are commonly had at 4ghz, I believe a member here bought for some OCing fun and had 4ghz on stock cooling albeit a little toasy.
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Nov 2005
Posts
4,732
Location
Redditch
You could pick up an old E2140-e2180 for peanuts now, when I had one mine ran at 3.4GHZ 24/7 runnnig F@H.

At the time I think I paid, £30 for it,that was a couple of years ago.
My E4800 I had at the same time, did 4.2GHZ but that cost me £100 at the time.
 
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