Which Intel / AMD Quad CPU?

[rcallicotte]

Thanks, Oshyan.  Do you have any places you like shopping more than others?  I usually go to NewEgg.

[Oshyan]

I tend to check Newegg first. I have a pretty good ongoing sense of appropriate pricing and good deals for hardware, so I can quickly see if there's anything that's a notaby good price. If not and I definitely want to buy something I'll check the deal-tracking sites (www.slickdeals.net www.dealcatcher.com dealnews.com etc) and see if there's anything good there. It's also good to sign up for the newsletters of places like Newegg as they often send special deals to newsletter subscribers.

- Oshyan

[moodflow]

My current PC just effectively "died" over the weekend.   

So, I bought a new rig, an Intel 6600 Quad core.  I had the local tech at PC Club successfully overclock it to 3.2 GHz, and it runs cool and stable at this speed - though I am going to see how this works out long term.  If I have to drop it back down, thats OK, as my goal was 3.0 GHz.

Overall, the cost was not too bad, just over $1000, and thats with 4GB RAM, a 150GB Raptor, and another 500GB drive for data storage.  I was also able to salvage my video card (7950 GX2), sound card, and 700W power supply, so this helped kept the cost down.  I could have used my older drives too, but since they are all IDE, I figured it was time to purge all legacy crap and get with the program. 

I think this could have been done for even cheaper, especially if its for a render-only rig that used older parts otherwise.

[lightning]

i have two dual core amd's and they are fine

[joshbakr]

Here's a deal is you are looking to save money.  That is if you already have a case, CPU Fan/Cooler, Good graphics card and most important a Good quality PSU.

http://www.tigerdirect.com:80/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=3557020&sku=MCM-680ILT-Q6600A&CMP=EMC-TIGEREMAIL&SRCCODE=WEM1587BY

[sonshine777]

Here's a deal is you are looking to save money.  That is if you already have a case, CPU Fan/Cooler, Good graphics card and most important a Good quality PSU.

http://www.tigerdirect.com:80/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=3557020&sku=MCM-680ILT-Q6600A&CMP=EMC-TIGEREMAIL&SRCCODE=WEM1587BY

Nice find, I wish I was getting money back from my Oregon State tax instead of having to pay. I would jump on this one.