Time to save some electrons. On yet another whim, I purchased a new Intel Q9300 processor for General Melchett, replacing the venerable Q6600.
The CPU temperature seems to have dropped by 9degC, whilst the performance (12Gb video encode using Expression Encoder) is within a margin of error the same. The Q9300 is 4% faster. I think there might be something else at play as the benchmark results from xbitlabs seems to show 11% or so improvement.
Installation: 10 minutes; and 6 minutes of this was spent chasing screws around before I relented and grabbed a magnetised screw driver. The Zalman fan makes CPU replacement a little more difficult.
I expected that the General would have dust throughout. None. The first rear fan’s filter has grabbed the dust bunnies and holds them steady. w00t!
The strategy is to overclock the new Q9300 a little; with a lower temperature starting point it’s all upside from here!