Cheapest effective upgrade of Q6600 ?

[Aquinus]

The big issue with skt1366 is that if the motherboard fails, you're going to have a hard time finding a decent motherboard that's reasonably priced to replace it. Dead means replacement parts will be used and harder to come by. It also consumes more power than a more recently released CPU will. If you do go with skt1366, treat that board like royalty and hope it doesn't fail.

What's the budget?

 

[Hood]

I am a firm believer in building with new parts these days, unless I'm just throwing something together with donated used parts. Too many times I've plugged a different video card in an old motherboard and it refused to output video ever again, through the PCIe slot or the on board iGPU, maybe fried a capacitor or two. Also a few that never booted again after a thorough cleaning, possibly from a tiny static discharge. When you consider how many small electronic components there are on your average motherboard, it's amazing how long some of them last. But caps age, resistors change values, corrosion takes it's toll, and any little component failure can render the board unbootable. I'd say that any board 5 years old or more is a candidate for failure at any time, even though some last 10 years or more. LGA 1366 had a 3 year run between late 2008 and late 2011, so those boards are getting up in years now. Also, most of the new boards have better ESD and voltage protection, fused ports, etc. and are just built better. Those used parts would have to be very low-priced before I'd take the plunge. By the way, an i7-960 performs only slightly better than a Haswell i3 at stock clocks, and any Haswell i5 will easily leave it behind.

 

[Mussels]

I am a firm believer in building with new parts these days, unless I'm just throwing something together with donated used parts. Too many times I've plugged a different video card in an old motherboard and it refused to output video ever again, through the PCIe slot or the on board iGPU, maybe fried a capacitor or two. Also a few that never booted again after a thorough cleaning, possibly from a tiny static discharge. When you consider how many small electronic components there are on your average motherboard, it's amazing how long some of them last. But caps age, resistors change values, corrosion takes it's toll, and any little component failure can render the board unbootable. I'd say that any board 5 years old or more is a candidate for failure at any time, even though some last 10 years or more. LGA 1366 had a 3 year run between late 2008 and late 2011, so those boards are getting up in years now. Also, most of the new boards have better ESD and voltage protection, fused ports, etc. and are just built better. Those used parts would have to be very low-priced before I'd take the plunge. By the way, an i7-960 performs only slightly better than a Haswell i3 at stock clocks, and any Haswell i5 will easily leave it behind.

you're the opposite of me. my current system came from a plastic box with no lid at the tip - yeah, my 1155 mobo was found at the tip. also found three AM3 boards and one FM1, and every last one worked.


second hand parts are perfectly fine, if you can verify they work fully before you buy

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

The big issue with skt1366 is that if the motherboard fails, you're going to have a hard time finding a decent motherboard that's reasonably priced to replace it. Dead means replacement parts will be used and harder to come by. It also consumes more power than a more recently released CPU will. If you do go with skt1366, treat that board like royalty and hope it doesn't fail.

What's the budget?

Its possible to find the odd brand new mobo I paid amazon 89 quid for a new saphire black x58 , it didn'tttake that much looking either