Allendale vs Conroe

[Byatt]

OK folks, it's new system build time, and it's nearly time to buy, and hence, my wallet is now half making some of the decisions, notably this one.

So, it's E6300 vs E6600. One has 2Mb L2, the other 4Mb. One is £117, the other £217 (with a heatsink I won't use).

I'm going to overclock whichever one I get (so I'm ignoring the higher stock clock of the E6600), so the questions basically are:

Are people getting better overclocking results with the 6600 than the 6300?
Is double the L2 cache worth £100 if the answer to the above is yes/no?
Given the (fixed?) lower multiplier of the E6300, it'll require a higher FSB to hit the same speeds as a E6600, and thus better RAM? £100 better?

Oh, and a cheeky afterthought:

Haven't decided on a PSU for this system, it's got to power a X1900XT and four or five hard disks, suggestions please? (HINT: I've got a Tagan built OCZ unit that ticks at the minute, and I hate it, suggestions would ideally be exceptionally quiet)

[kalniel]

Are people getting better overclocking results with the 6600 than the 6300?

Can't answer that one myself, sorry.

Is double the L2 cache worth £100 if the answer to the above is yes/no?

'Worth' is always relative If you can't spend the cash on anything else then sure. Otherwise no - cash spent elsewhere will give better return.

Given the (fixed?) lower multiplier of the E6300, it'll require a higher FSB to hit the same speeds as a E6600, and thus better RAM? £100 better?

That's assuming you have to run RAM synchronously. Fortunately this is no longer the case, you can run RAM at a different speed to the CPU with little/no performance loss. The FSB of the motherboard is the only limit.

Haven't decided on a PSU for this system, it's got to power a X1900XT and four or five hard disks, suggestions please? (HINT: I've got a Tagan built OCZ unit that ticks at the minute, and I hate it, suggestions would ideally be exceptionally quiet)

Seasonic are meant to be quiet. Something around 480W would be plenty

Hope that helps

[Byatt]

Cheers, some ace answers there - I'm still stuck in the school of synchronising RAM from my old n-force 2 days (I say old, I'm still using it), obviously it's time to get out of it

Any further opinions?

[abeacock]

Check this forum thread out for reports of various overclocks of Core 2 Duo CPUs:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=17611316

Hopefully that can answer your questions.