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Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 OC: AIR vs Phase vs LN2 Cooling

Overclocking/Overclocking Tests by Blind @ 2008-05-20

The Intel E8500 is the highest end dual core CPU currently on the market, it doesn´t get any faster than this… or does it? In this Overclocking report we take a retail E8500 sample for a spin with high end air cooling, than mount a modified phase change cooling on it, and to finish it off pour a few liters of LN2 over it. How high can it fly? How fast does it get? Find out now.

Overclocking results

Results

Let's have a look at the improvement in performance when overclocking. Below you find the bar charts to visualize the performance gain. For test details, please have a look at the screenshots under the bar charts.

Madshrimps (c)

Detailed results

PiFast: 17.88

SuperPi 1M: 8.250

Evaluation

Following are some thoughts about the E8500 retail that I've been using for a few weeks now.

If you're not into videorendering or other multithreaded applications, this CPU will do just fine, no need for a quad-core.

If you've got a good sample, you'll be able to overclock very high on air cooling and low voltage. I've almost hit 5GHz with a plain air cooler (1.6v, though)!

If you have the right motherboard and bios combination, you have a bloody fast benching system.

I'd recommend an Asus Commando P965 or Dfi LP UT P35-T2R motherboard to overclock these processors. If you're already into DDR3, I'd use a 790i chipset, if you want to run at a high FSB.

With the right bios, the Abit IP35-Pro is pretty fast, especially in SuperPi 1M, however, for overclocking to the limits, this board doesn't let you use a high FSB.

It's a lot of fun to play with!

Madshrimps (c)

I hope you enjoyed reading this OC report, until next time, click the banner below to read up on our previous overclocking endeavors:

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