is this a good cpu for music ripping and picture editing, is it the best bang for the buck uner 150, and does it oc well?


Should i buy some arctic silver with it or is it not that important?

Yes, it is a good CPU for the price. It overclocks very well, 3GHz+ with the stock HSF is pretty common. Do you need some thermal paste to go with it? Entirely up to you. The stock HSF already comes with thermal pad, but if you want to shave a few degrees off temps then by all means, remove the stock stuff and apply some AS5.

Yes, it's a Great CPU.

I like the E2160, E4500, and E6750 for good CPus at various price points.

The E6750 is actually not a great buy right now because of the E8400 coming out soon in the same price range. The E2160 and E4500 will not be effected immediately by new chips so they will remain good value chips at that price.

no!
its ok!

get the 6420 or the 6550 if you oc them better yet the 6750

Actually, the E4500 is better than both the E6420 and the E6550.

The E6420 is way overpriced at this point -> $199 at NewEgg.
You will have a hard time finding it anymore.

The E6550 will not OC that well due to the High Default FSB and low Default clock Speed. It will underperform the E4500 when they are both OC'd due to the FSB walls it will likely hit. And that is also $45 more to get less performance.

The E6750 is a nice CPU, but will be outdated in that price range in 2 weeks, so it does not make alot of sense to build around that system at this point.

The E8400 should be about the same price, run faster at stock, OC more, run cooler, and be faster Clock4Clock.

I don't think the E6550 suffers from a FSB wall, at least not until you hit very high clockspeeds. Most P35 boards can do 500FSB+ easily with dual cores, 500FSB is enough for 3.5GHz operation on an E6550.

I do agree with the rest of your post though.

for music ripping and picture editing, those program depend heavily on ram size, and cpu cache is another major factor.

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