Conclusion – Outstanding Value for Money when Overclocked
Buying an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2140 is very attractive for buyers that wish to spend as little money as possible but still want to build a powerful system. For this equation to work out, you’ll need to overclock the CPU by 80 percent (and more) though. The problem is that the processor is hamstrung by its rather small L2 cache of only 1 MB. For example, depending on the application, it doesn’t matter whether the CPU is overclocked to 3.00 GHz or 3.50 GHz, as the performance delta may be as low as 2% in our benchmark suite.
Even if you only plan on running the Pentium Dual-Core at its default frequency, at a price of roughly €50, you are making a solid investment. Overclocked to over 3 GHz, it offers nothing short of sensational value for money. Its power consumption, even at high frequencies, is surprisingly low too. At 3.5 GHz, it draws just under 90 Watts due to the small L2 cache. Here is where its small size pays off, since there are fewer transistors that need to be powered. As a nice side effect, cooling the processor is also uncomplicated, and you’ll be fine with the boxed cooler up to the 3 GHz mark. If you plan on pushing your CPU higher you will have to buy a better cooler.
Our overclocking system as presented here costs only €284 without a graphics card. Adding in an ATI Radeon HD3850 will bring the price up to €464.
When idle, our complete overclocked system including the DVD-ROM and two hard drives only draws 104 Watts. Thanks to its Speedstep implementation, our MSI P35 Neo2 board can reduce the frequency and core voltage of the overclocked CPU without encountering instability or crashes. With both the graphics card and the processor under full load, the system’s power consumption rises to about 296 Watts.
If you’re building a PC on a very tight budget, we recommend buying the Pentium Dual-Core, overclocking it, and investing the money you saved into a more powerful graphics card. At a price like this, you really can’t go wrong.
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Each time you run these tests I wonder why the GTX has a reported ram size of 512mb, does such a thing exist I thought I was 768mb.
def 768mb
that does semm like a good deal, i'm curious as to how it compares with stuff like the x2 4000 OC'd....
I'm going to sound like a proper skin-flint now but why do sites always spoil buget overclocks by using a €90 motherboard and a €45 cooler.
If I was tring to save a few pounds/Euros then what is wrong with a P31 based system board at around €50-60 and running the cpu it 2.66-3.00Ghz (333-357fsb), without having to spend another €45 on a cooler (Use the boxed Intel one).
Use the €75-85 you have saved to buy a better graphics card which will make more diffrence to gaming.
I'm wondering why the X2 6400+ comes up on the graphs coloured as an E2140...
This is the kind of articles that make THG great! This is why i read this site. Other sites are just like an advertising leaflet.
Maybe I've found a worthy successor to my P4HT 631.
Here, victim victim victim... *starts sharpening P35-DS3L's claws*
Would this make a good HTPC?
Looks very good and you can stick a quad processor in it when they come down to a reasonable price and OC that to increase its longevity.
Could any one recommend the rest of the core components to complete the system that whist sticking to a low/medium budget will not become so decrepid it will need chucking out at the next up grade. I am going from a P4 (and I was Delled) so I need everything except Keyboard/mouse and monitor. I.e a good quality case, Sata HD and optical drive.
It will not be a gaming machine but a home workhorse with some graphics work running XP2/Vist a ?Leopard (yeah I know). So the Power Colour gfx card is over kill and I am prejudiced against ATI(probably unjustly). I was thinking along the lines of a LIAN LI PC-7B plus II ATX case and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATA II. Some Sata DVD/DW drive. (All Sata because of the ?Leopard bit I know I might not work ... yet.)
Any suggestions would be welcome.
Sakamura
I wonder if it's possible to use SpeedFan in order to drop the FSB on this motherboard when idling, so that it's possible to take advantage of the low power consumption of a non-OC CPU, with the performance of an OC version (when demanded) at the same time...
On my ancient Athlon, Speedfan automatically switches from 107MHz FSB when CPU is 70%. The plug-in power meter I have shows 106W @ 107MHz (idle) and 131W @ 163MHz (idle). 1200% CPU uses more in both cases. This is on a A7N motherbaord that has a clock generator supported by SpeedFan.
Thanks for the article guys. I followed in your footsteps and built a PC based on a E2140 and Neo2.
I'm using a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro which is a bit cheaper than the one in the article and at 2.9GHz it still idles at 24 degrees C, and stays around 31 when under load (e.g. Prime95 or Crysis).
However, mine gets unstable at 3.0GHz - but I haven't tinkered with it so I don't know if it's the CPU or the memory - or I may just leave it as it is as it's running at 180% of the rated speed as it is!
One thing that caught me out... the Neo2 has an 8 pin 12V CPU power socket, and mine had no blanking plate (which you can see in some pictures of the board). When I plugged an 8 pin 12V lead into it into the 8 pin socket (I'm logical like that), it tripped the power supply. I double checked the manual on the Neo and the PSU and it appeared to be okay... but as soon as I swapped to the 4 pin power lead, it suddenly worked fine (thanks to the tech support at Scan for sorting me out)!
I got a SLA93 E2140. Running on a P35-DS3P with Geil memory (not black dragon) the best I can get is FSB on 364ish (about 2912mhz), with memory underclocked to 728 (1:1). Any more and it's really unstable.
Great article. I must say I'm not computer professional, just normal user, in past 8-9 years I put together 4 machines for use at home, all worked well without bigger problems.
After reading this article, some other (about motherboards) and considering other not so cheap options, I tried my luck and changed my old PIV 2.8 based machine with this:
e2140 + gigabyte p31-ds3l + 1x kingmax ddr2 800MHz + radeon x1950gt, all together cost me about 240€, matched it with my old Hitatchi HDD and cheapo Codegen case with cheapo 400W ps.
Must say, this motherboard is great for overclocking (someone mentioned this chipset in earlier comment) cheap but stable with a lot of oc options.
New machine works great, from the start worked at 2,66GHz, with memory at 800 MHz,stock processor boxed fan without any need for adjustment. From 2,66 to 2.8 GHz, my enthusiasm was on pause a bit, failed to boot so I needed to adjust Vcore up a little from original setting (from 1,32500 V to 1,37500 V) and there I was in two steps at 2.8 and 3.0 GHz, reached FSB of 375, with memory running at 750MHz. Never tried to go any further.
With that final 3.0 GHz setting I run Prime for hour and a half, without any instability, and than I just give up Prime and continue my work as usual at 3.0 GHz with hours (better days) of gaming, multimedia and all that... no problems so far.
For me, it's great processor and perfect match for my GA-p31-ds3l motherboard.
Looks like 3 Ghz is the magic number for these processors. Nice article.
Thank you, 'Tom'. I trusted this site's view, as I have with other hardware. I've been running this chip at 3GHz for a month, just now hammering it with H264 decoding. Just rolling steady. Not a single blue screen. Thanks again.