Threepwood Posted July 10, 2008 Share Posted July 10, 2008 Hello, I'm going to buy a new CPU but I'm not sure which one. The E8400 or the Q6600. I don't play games on the computer (if you don't count NES/SNES emulators), and I want my computer to be as quiet as possible so I'm going for a passive cooler (well, it's not really passive since it'll sit right next to a 120 mm case fan blowing cool air onto it). The CPU intensive tasks I do are audio production and photo/graphics editing. I'd like to overclock the Q6600 to 3GHz - how much hotter would it run compared to the E8400 at stock speed? I'm also worried about power consumption. I'm on an Athlon X2 now, at ~90W or so (IIRC). It runs at 52C idle and 64-65C at 100% load (with a Zalman cooler, 700 g of copper). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commander Waffles Posted July 10, 2008 Share Posted July 10, 2008 That Q6600 would produce about 1.3 ~ 1.5x the heat of the e8400 @ stock spead(45nm has less leakage = heat). You can overclock that e8400 to 4ghz quite easily). It is impossible to go passive with a quad. You might get lucky with a low end dual core (e2160). A Q6600 @ 3ghz would produce about 65 @ load. A e8400 @ 3.6ghz is 57C @ load (both with a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme with a Sythe S-flex fan) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threepwood Posted July 10, 2008 Author Share Posted July 10, 2008 That Q6600 would produce about 1.3 ~ 1.5x the heat of the e8400 @ stock spead(45nm has less leakage = heat). You can overclock that e8400 to 4ghz quite easily). It is impossible to go passive with a quad. You might get lucky with a low end dual core (e2160). A Q6600 @ 3ghz would produce about 657 @ load. A e8400 @ 3.6ghz is 57C @ load (both with a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme with a Sythe S-flex fan) Like I said, it's not really passive cooling since there's a 120 mm fan blowing onto a massive heatpipe cooler. People tend to be quite pessimistic about cooling. When I bought my fanless PSU everyone told me that it was a bad idea. Turned out to be one of my best purchases ever. Sure, it gets burning hot with no air circulation at all, but I reversed the case fan so that it blows cool air into the case instead. This works much better than sucking warm air out of it. The PSU stays nice and cool. And dead quiet, which is the most important thing. I think going passive with my current setup would result in pretty much the same CPU temp. The Thermaltake Sonic Tower doesn't have a fan (like the Zalman which I'm using now) but on the other hand it's got heat pipes, and it's taller so it would be right in the airflow. The Q6600 should run a little hotter than the Athlon X2 3800+ but I think it would be alright. However, I'm still tempted by the E8400. I work with audio, but there's a freeze function in every app nowadays. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stellarola Posted July 11, 2008 Share Posted July 11, 2008 Like I said, it's not really passive cooling since there's a 120 mm fan blowing onto a massive heatpipe cooler. People tend to be quite pessimistic about cooling. When I bought my fanless PSU everyone told me that it was a bad idea. Turned out to be one of my best purchases ever. Sure, it gets burning hot with no air circulation at all, but I reversed the case fan so that it blows cool air into the case instead. This works much better than sucking warm air out of it. The PSU stays nice and cool. And dead quiet, which is the most important thing. I think going passive with my current setup would result in pretty much the same CPU temp. The Thermaltake Sonic Tower doesn't have a fan (like the Zalman which I'm using now) but on the other hand it's got heat pipes, and it's taller so it would be right in the airflow. The Q6600 should run a little hotter than the Athlon X2 3800+ but I think it would be alright. However, I'm still tempted by the E8400. I work with audio, but there's a freeze function in every app nowadays. Both are great chips, however I think you'd be happier with the E8400. If you want to go quad core with 45nm, a Q9450 might be in your future at around $300. -Stell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vbetts Posted July 12, 2008 Share Posted July 12, 2008 8400 will go about 4 ghz +. For gaming, I would go for the 8400 overclocked this high, but for things like multitasking, I would go for the OCed 6600. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goz Posted July 18, 2008 Share Posted July 18, 2008 I actually have both processors (E8400 and Q6600). The Q6600 overclocked at 3.2Ghz does a better job at Video encoding than the E8400 overclocked at 3.8Ghz. The E8400 is very snappy at standard apps and game playing but the Quad is a better overall performer for tasks like encoding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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