Intel Core 2 Duo E4300

Before going to University I spent ages researching the best bits to go into a PC that would be powerful, yet inexpensive. The E4300 certainly fit the bill - at just over £50 it was one of the best choices for people wanting to boost (overclock) the speed of their processor.To start with, the processor runs at a stock speed of 1.8GHz, well recommend Intel Core 2 Duo E4300.

I bought this CPU based on the excellent over-clocking reputation of the Intel Core 2 Duos and because the x9 multiplier would make obtaining my over-clocking goal a bit easier. I paired this with the ASUS P5B Mobo and Kingston 2x1Gig PC5300 DDR2 RAM for a budget Core 2 Duo system to replace my aging Intel P4 system.

I was able to over-clocked to 2.8 at stock voltage. I reached 3.0ghz with only a slight bump in Vcore, all with the stock Intel heat-sink and fan. After adding an after-market heat-sink/fan combo I took the over-clock to 3.3ghz and passed a 3+ hour Orthos Blend stability test, though the CPU temperature was now at the top of my comfort level under full load (62c)

I've now scaled back the over-clock to my original goal at a very stable, cool running 3.0ghz resulting in a very fast system at a budget price. To prove the stability to myself I ran 2+ hours of Orthos Small FFT to make sure things seemed OK with the CPU, and then ran 10.5 hours of the Orthos Blend test which is designed for C2D systems. There were no errors in either case.

Because I was able to reach 3.0ghz at a bus speed of 334 with the "x9" multiplier, I was able to use less expensive DDR2 667 ram chosen from the motherboard manufacturer's approved vendor site. My goal was a high performance system on a budget and the Intel E4300 delivered.