Today, I went against my common sense and bought myself a new processor.

Done gasping? Now let me tell you the story.

I was tired of hearing my Pentium D 925’s cooler rattling while desperately trying to keep the processor under redline temperature. Yes, it is actually rattling, some of my friends have witnessed it themselves. Yes, I’ve checked the cooler mount, fastening motherboard screws, replacing thermal paste, and so on, none of them works. This intel original cooler is just vibrating wildly at ~5000rpm. 

Now, I was originally planning to buy a new cooler. I’ve already set my eyes on Coolermaster’s Hyper TX2, which is cheap and have pretty good review. 

The moment I have the money, I re-think this step. Rather than reducing noise, why don’t I reduce the noise as well as improving performance? That reminds me of the widely famous Pentium Dual Core E2xxx series.

E2xxx series are famous for their low heat output and high overclocking potential. The smallest child, the e2140, clocked at 1,6GHz, has reportedly reach 2,8 GHz with no problem. The middle child, the e2160, stock at 1,8 GHz, should reach 3 GHz using its stock cooler and a little voltage boost, if needed.

I didn’t buy neither of them.

Instead, I bought an e2180, clocked nicely at 2,0 GHz. I bought this because I figure if I failed overclocking it, I would at least end up with a faster processor than my old 925, not to mention a cooler one. (pun intended)

The moment I got home, the first thing I do is changing my clothes. And then I…

Okay, I’ll skip to the best part…

I opened the case, yanked the old CPU cooler, removed the 925, put the e2180, put new cooler, turned the PC on.

Then I realize that the new cooler seems rather cheap. It doesn’t even report the fan speed correctly, and it is very light, compared to my Intel original cooler. Yes, I bought an OEM (tray, if you will…) version of the 2180, call me cheap. So I installed the old cooler back in. If you are curious, this was originally a Prescott cooler, my 925 was also OEM.

To be honest, nothing is wrong with the old cooler, it just that the 925’s running really hot and it tries its best to cool the hot chip down. Creating entertaining noise. Now, though, with the e2180 under its charge, I can’t hear it anymore. I only hear the PSU fan and the occasional harddrive spinning up.

OH YEAH…

Now, time to prove a legend. I overclocked the hell out of the e2180.

Usually when overclocking, you should try with small FSB increase at a time, and then stress-testing it. I did the adrenaline-rushing way. I increase the FSB from the original 200MHz to shining 266MHz. That is a 33% overclock, and this processor shrugs it with ease. At this speed I tried testing it with 3Dmark05. It scores ~10500 3DMarks, versus ~8000 3Dmarks with my old 925.

OH GOD, YES!

That didn’t satisfy me. I did what people think stupid. I raised the FSB to 333, which is a 66% overclock from its original speed. It should give this processor the same speed as Intel’s offering, the Core 2 Duo E8500. Which will give me a very kickass bang-for-the-buck. Because, you know, the E8500 cost US$ 290, while I got my e2180 for… oh… US$ 70. Did it work, you ask?

Nope.

I think the processor is fine, but the motherboard is refusing to run the processor on 333 MHz, it stopped at 291MHz, which gives me a stable 2,91 GHz. Damn.

I presume this kind of thing will happen, though, I’m only using a Gigabyte GA945GCMX-S2. Yes, you’re looking at an Intel 945GC chipset user. Intel 945 was made to accomodate the then-new Pentium D, all of them have 200MHz FSB. Being able to make it support Core 2 Duo with 266MHz FSB is an achievement by itself, so I’m not complaining.

So to play safely, I reduced the FSB a little bit more to 280MHz, Which gives me an honest 2,80GHz of Intel Core Microarchitecture power. 2,8 GHz is not a small amount of clockspeed for Intel’s core and pentium e2xxx processor, for a comparison, my old 925 at 3,0GHz is pretty much equal-to-weaker-than a 1,8 GHz e2160.

2,80 Ghz by itself should give me around the same performance as Intel Core 2 Duo e6750 or e8200, both cost 250% of e2180. So, well, I’m glad, really.

At 2,80 Ghz, I got myself an astounding 11000 3Dmark on 3Dmark 05. which is satisfying all by itself.

Now, let’s see… I think I need a bigger harddrive, oh, and that motherboard needs changing, while we’re at it, why not changing the Graphics card, too… hmmm….