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Intel E8400 do's & don'ts
Date of Review: Apr 12, 2009
The Bottom Line: Best $165 I've ever spent on a processor.
Having built many PCs back to the days of paying $1,000 for a processor that ran at 100hz, recalling the progressions over almost 30 years has brought me to the point where justifying the purchase of another CPU has become nearly impossible due to the almost instantaneous launch and multi-task applications.
It's also become somewhat of a "game" among computer nerds to see how little money can be spent for a processor that can be overclocked further than the last boasting blogger.
I am guilty. Until 2 days ago, I was running an E5200 2.5Ghz processor at 3.0Ghz in my main system which consists of a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P board, 2GB of OCZ DDR2-9200 RAM and Arctic Freezer 7 Pro to keep things super cool in my Antec 300 case that is loaded with 120mm fans. I m not a gamer so my video card is an older NVIDIA GeForce 7600GS powering two 20 Acer AL2051W monitors set at 1680x1050. After too many Maxtor, Seagate & Western Union hard drive failures, I m now happily running 2 Samsung HD322HJ 320GB SATA drives that could probably eat Barracudas and Raptors as an appetizer.
Two months ago, I purchased an E8400 before I fully understood the difference between the CO and EO stepping versions. I received a CO version which refused to move above the default 3.0Ghz speed settings so it was returned. More research revealed that if I waited a while, i could probably get one with EO stepping. BEWARE: No where on the outside of the Intel boxes does it say CO or EO stepping. The ONLY way you can tell is by looking at the S-spec part of the label. Mine says SLB9J which was reported by others to be of the EO breed. For the record, the Pack Date on my box says 02/26/09 and batch #Q844A663.
Numerous blogs indicated that I should be able to easily run this E8400 EO at 4.0 Ghz using my Arctic Freezer 7 Pro to keep it in a 32C to 35C safe temperature range. Everyone seems to agree that the heatsink/fan packaged with E8400 is worthless unless you keep the processor at default settings. Lots of research presented a number of CPU coolers with larger 120mm fans but none that come close to the overall satisfaction of Arctic Freezer 7 Pro with 92mm fan that runs VERY quietly and keeps my E8400 at 33C.
I installed the new processor and first booted at default. I ran a few apps and although the speed wasn t noticeably faster than my E5200 at 3Ghz, I did sense a bit more smoother operation in my Windows Xp Pro SP2 environment.
Moving to 4Ghz. After gathering a number of supposedly good BIOS settings to achieve 4Ghz, the consensus seemed to be using a 450 x 9 multiplier with a 1.27 Vcore setting. Adjusted my DRAM to D2.66 multiplier which boosted my OCZ RAM (rated at 1066) to 1197.
WOW! Is the best word I can use to describe the differences I ve enjoyed running at 4.05Ghz ever since. I ve thrown everything I can think of at this E8400 to see if any signs of overclock instability would appear. Not one hiccup. If I had to pick a number to generalize the extra speed of opening apps or loading web pages, I d say 40%. One app that always seemed to lag under my E5200 was my Pinnacle PCTV 800i which lets me watch HDTV on 1 monitor while surfing the web or running another app or 2 on the other monitor. This E8400 not only improved to app loading time but now I can change HDTV channels almost instantaneously.
Where to buy. I buy lots of gizmos from the big brick & mortar store that rhythms with Flies but when I asked a clerk there if they sold E8400 with EO stepping, they had no clue.
I bet my money on newegg and won.
UPDATE 7/5/09: Happy to report that my E8400 still running flawlessly at 4.05Ghz and things run even faster in Windows 7 RC1. Unfortunately, Win 7 still lacks ability to properly recognize MANY hardware drivers (including my Pinnnacle PCTV card and AOpen voice/fax/modem) so I'm probably sticking with Windows XP SP2 until Microsoft releases Win 7 SP1.
