This week I decided it was about time to upgrade my trusty old Athlon X2 system to a quad core. While the Phenom X4 did perk my interest for a short time (as they’re not bad value for money), I decided to go Intel, and the Q9450 seemed to fit the bill. Sourcing one at a reasonable price from a local retailer was another matter, but I eventually found one. While I was at it, I picked up a 4GB kit (2×2GB) of Corsair’s Dominator 8500C5 and sourced an Asus P5K-Pro secondhand (will upgrade to an X48 when the bios’ have matured). I’ve been playing with a Gigabyte 9800GX2 for a couple of weeks now, so that went in, as did my bgears B-Enspirer sound card. Optical and Hard drives were carried over from the old system too.

A quick test run with the stock (low profile) Intel heatsink/fan installed showed less than stellar cooling performance. Core temp was reporting 80°c+ while running 4 threads of prime95 (small fft test) and that was running at stock clocks/voltage. The only other suitable cooler I had available was a Thermaltake Big Typhoon, which, although not the greatest 775 heatsink, got the temperatures back under control. I was able to overclock it to 3.45ghz (430×8) at 1.275v but decided for long term use to settle on 3.2ghz (400×8) at 1.25v.

It’s currently running nicely with XP installed, although it’s only able to see 3GB. I will eventually install Vista 64 bit on it, but for the moment I’m hesitant as I had some issues with the sound card running Vista 32 bit.