Great value, great performance. (Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 / 2.4 GHz)

Member Name: bored_at_home

Product:	Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 / 2.4 GHz
Date:	11/01/09 (6 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quad core, 8MB Cache, easier installation, great heatsink

Disadvantages: Performance depends on OS & Game

When purchasing PC bits I always aim for the point where value meets performance and for quad-core processors this is it! After reading many in depth reviews of this processor rating its performance as only inferior to its own upgrade that costs 50% more I decided to take the plunge.

It's a great piece of kit that stands up to the current best-of PC games. The retail box includes a nice new heatsink design that really knocks the socks of the standard "block of steel" heatsinks that you use to get from Intel. If you're one of those people that have previously snapped motherboards with the previous "Push til you hear a crunch" heatsink installations then you'll be very pleased with the new locking mechanism that puts very little pressure on the motherboard and sits the CPU using plastic pins that twist into place.

I'll admit I immediate scraped the heat paste off and replaced it with a custom one but it wasn't particularly difficult or messy to remove and the provided heatsink has great contact with the CPU, the fan isnt too huge either. The whole lot sits solidly at 50 degrees full load without any specialised cooling around it and the included fan is definitely mighty enough for the job at hand as well as being virtually silent.

If you're new to PC building and some of what I've set confuses you, rest assured this is a new simpler design that comes with more complete instructions and everything you need to attempt plug-and-play.

I haven't attempted over-clocking but from what I can tell there are no in-built restrictions on finding your CPUs absolute limit although I don't recommend trying it!

Be warned: a large amount of the quad core performance comes from the windows version you use and the game that you're playing. Vista is the only windows OS so far to be completely multi-threaded and using a 64 bit OS is also essential. Games are hit and miss but most brand new off-the-shelf games should be made with this generation of CPU in mind.

Summary: Great value

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