Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.80GHz Processor

Great value in a processor. Unbelivable price to value ratio

Strengths: Good out of box performance. Exceptional overclocking ability. BSEL mod for cheap performance on some non-overclocking motherboards. Relatively low heat processor.

Weakness: 2mb of cache vs. the 4mb of the 6 series. Need a motherboard dedicated to over clocking to get the most out of this chip. Batch to batch variation on how high it can be overclocked.

This chip is phenomenal. I have mine overclocked to 2.8ghz easily on stock voltage (8x multiplier, 333FSB) using some cheap DDR2 ram I purchased. Using an asus P5N32-SLI Plus for a motherboard. I would recommend researching the motherboard extensively, some motherboards will take a "BSEL" pin mod which will make over clocking much easier on an inexpensive motherboard (it fools the system into...
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This chip is phenomenal. I have mine overclocked to 2.8ghz easily on stock voltage (8x multiplier, 333FSB) using some cheap DDR2 ram I purchased. Using an asus P5N32-SLI Plus for a motherboard. I would recommend researching the motherboard extensively, some motherboards will take a "BSEL" pin mod which will make over clocking much easier on an inexpensive motherboard (it fools the system into believing that the front side bus speed is much higher). Contrary to belief, fast ram is NOT wasted with this chip. Try stepping down the FSB multiplier if you have fast ram, the chip will run the same speed but much cooler. If you start to increase the voltage to the chip (vcore greater than 1.325V) to make it stable you will likely need a better heatsink than the retail one provided.

By efficacyman - Jun 5, 2007

Great performance and value

Strengths: highly overclockable

Weakness: none

The E4300 is a great CPU for overclockers. With the stock heat sink / fan, I can get 3GHz (333MHz * 9) with only 1.35V vCore. It's multiplier is 9 (vs. E6300's 8) so you don't have to use super high FSB for overclocking. Generally speaking, Core 2 Dual is awesome. You may already know, 1MHz in C2D is not the same as 1MHz in, say, P4. A 3GHz C2D beats 3GHz P4 by a great margin, while generating...
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The E4300 is a great CPU for overclockers. With the stock heat sink / fan, I can get 3GHz (333MHz * 9) with only 1.35V vCore. It's multiplier is 9 (vs. E6300's 8) so you don't have to use super high FSB for overclocking.
Generally speaking, Core 2 Dual is awesome. You may already know, 1MHz in C2D is not the same as 1MHz in, say, P4. A 3GHz C2D beats 3GHz P4 by a great margin, while generating less heat. Also, as a bonus, Vista is more efficient utilizing C2D than XP.

By xiaowei - May 29, 2007

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300

Strengths: Price, overclockable, 9x multiplier

Weakness: Only 2mb cache, needs aftermarket hsf

With a good aftermarket hsf this processor can easily be overclocked to 3.0 GHz.
The earlier produce chips overclocked better but it is the luck of the draw. You can get high overclocks with DDR2-800 memory and P965 boards due to the multiplier and fsb speed. There are a lot of resources for overclocking this chip. Price has now gone down to point that it can be fun to play around with.

By stockshowgypsy - May 21, 2007

Best performace/value within Core 2 Duo family

Strengths: Overclocks like crazy

Weakness: 2MB of cache

So far I've built 3 systems using this processor. All of them overclocked to 2.8-3.2 using stock heatsink/fan and average memory (but a good mobo). This chip, when overclocked, is good at both paralel processing (because of true dual core) and linear processing such as audio/video conversion (thanks to the sheer speed). Don't push it too hard, though: your system components will deteriorate...
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So far I've built 3 systems using this processor. All of them overclocked to 2.8-3.2 using stock heatsink/fan and average memory (but a good mobo). This chip, when overclocked, is good at both paralel processing (because of true dual core) and linear processing such as audio/video conversion (thanks to the sheer speed). Don't push it too hard, though: your system components will deteriorate because of high voltage even if the temps aren't very hot.

By minidanas - Apr 24, 2007

Best value processor

Strengths: Low power consumption, High overclockability, Awesome performance

Weakness: Noisy stock heatsink/fan

As the youngest brother of the Core 2 Duo family, E4300 is the absoultely best choice you can make this day. Highly overclockable, low power consumption (About 40W even under maximum load -- equivalent to mainstream graphic card power consumption!), and superior performance. But you might also want to consider AMD's X2 for their low price. But if you consider the performance as a key feature, you...
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As the youngest brother of the Core 2 Duo family, E4300 is the absoultely best choice you can make this day. Highly overclockable, low power consumption (About 40W even under maximum load -- equivalent to mainstream graphic card power consumption!), and superior performance. But you might also want to consider AMD's X2 for their low price. But if you consider the performance as a key feature, you should pick this up. There cannot be any substitution.

By KDKPSJ - Apr 23, 2007