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Processors

Posted on 12 May 2008 at 10:54

For a quiet system, however, you want something that consumes as little power - and therefore produces as little heat - as possible, so the system's fans can run more slowly. In these terms, you can't get much better than Intel's dual-core CPUs produced using the 45nm process, codenamed Wolfdale. The 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6750 and E8200 are both nominally rated at 65W for heat dissipation requirements. However, the E6750 is manufactured on Intel's 65nm process. So it consumes around twice as much power when idle, and about 50% more at full load. The E8200 requires less than 30W even at full pelt. AMD's latest Athlon BE-2000 series processors are similarly miserly, but run at much lower clocks so offer nowhere near as much processing grunt. So we've opted for Intel's Core 2 Duo E8200 in our quiet PC, for strong performance without the need for meaty cooling.

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Author: James Morris