In the past we have written various overclocking articles, such as the E6300 and E4300 Overclocking for Beginners guides. Taking a mid-range motherboard and memory combo, we set out to overclock these Core 2 Duo processors to the max! Both processors maxed out at a very respectable 3.5GHz, which is more than enough Core 2 power for today’s games. However, for some reason enough processing power just never seems to be enough, so today we are going to look at the slightly more expensive E6400 processor. The E6400 costs just $230 US, making it just $50 US more than the E6300.

Although $50 US is not a huge difference in price, at the same time there is very little difference between the two processors spec wise. While the E6400 operates at 2.13GHz using the 1066MHz quad pumped FSB (Front Side Bus), the E6300 runs at 1.86GHz using the same quad pumped FSB. Both processors feature all the same technology and both use the same 2MB L2 cache. The only difference being that the E6300 features a 7x clock multiplier where as the E6400 makes use of an 8x clock multiplier. What this means is when overclocking the E6300 requires a much higher FSB to achieve similar frequencies to that of the E6400.

For example, using a 400MHz FSB means the E6300 will be operating at 2.80GHz, while the E6400 will be sailing along at 3.20GHz! This means that users should not only be able to reach higher frequencies with the E6400, but they should also be able to do so using cheaper memory modules. While today’s overclocking article will be focusing on the E6400, we will also be paying a great deal of attention of the new ASUS P5N-E SLI motherboard which features the nForce 650i SLI chipset. This is an incredible motherboard offering exceptional performance that is comparable to high-end motherboards costing over $250 US. Priced at just $130 US the P5N-E SLI appears to be the ultimate low-cost solution for gamers.

The ASUS P5N-E SLI features everything die hard gamers could ever need, such as Nvidia’s SLI technology, quad-core processor support, Firewire, eSATA, Gigabit LAN and much more. Previously we used the Gigabyte 965P-DS3 for overclocking the low-end Core 2 Duo processor and while it did provide excellent results, at around $125 US it lacks a number of features found on the P5N-E SLI. However, the real reason we have chosen the ASUS P5N-E SLI motherboard for this article is because it is dead easy to overclock with. We were able to hit 3.60GHz with DDR2-800 memory and the only setting that required any attention was the FSB.

Amazingly, the board required no other tweaks to achieve this overclock, no voltage adjustments at all. This really is an ideal motherboard for beginners looking to produce impressive overclocking results from a Core 2 Duo processor. Although the Core 2 Duo processors are notoriously easy to overclock, many have still found getting an E6300 for example, past 3.0GHz to be quite difficult.