PC Hardware → Just Ordered An Intel G3258, $54.99 on Amazon currently...

»www.amazon.com/gp/produc ··· F8&psc=1

For anyone that's interested, the Intel G3258 is only $54.99 right now. I'm doing a light gaming build for my little boys in the coming weeks.

I had $27 in Amazon points, so I ended up getting it for $32 total

I decided to go with this unlocked dual core for their gaming build. Both my boys play the Lego games, Minecraft, etc. Nothing super intensive.

Anyway, just wanted to throw this out there. under 60 dollars is a great deal.

Yeah. With a decent GPU, it will handle those games like a champ.

I've got a GTX 650 that's going in this. Nothing spectacular, but this card actually does surprisingly well.

I'm reusing a lot of my older parts for this build. RAM, Case, PSU, CPU Cooler, etc. Going to see what kind of overclock I can get on this thing with an H80i. Only things I need to order now are the mother board, and the 1tb hard drive.

edit: This processor only supports 1333mhz RAM too. I'm going to install my Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz RAM, which I'm hoping will be okay.

It says that, but I had my RAM at 1600 MHz when I had mine in (set in the UEFI). It ran fine.

That's a good price. That will be a nice, low cost, build.

Alright, I got the build all finished up on Sunday.

This is it so far...

Intel G3258 @ 4.5ghz
MSI Z97 PC Mate
EVGA GTX 650
8gb Corsair Vengeance Blue 1600hz RAM
Corsair CX600M
CM Hyper 212 Evo
250gb Samsung 840 SSD
Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra

I originally installed a Corsair H80i cooler, booted the PC up and noticed my idle temps at 55c at stock clocks. I was like WTF? I tried switching the fan headers around, adjust fan profiles, I checked voltages, etc. I enabled the MSI OC Genie tt 4.2ghz, I ran some benchmarks and the damn thing was running at 80-90c and actually throttling.

So I re-seated the cooler and tried some Artic Silver 5 instead. Still super high temps. I messed with the Corsair Link software, which was a complete headache. About an hour later I find out that the software is buggy on Windows 8.1 where the H80i itself won't show up in the software for adjustment. Installed an earlier version...still got temps through the roof.

So I decided to check the back plate for the cooler and tried adding some washers to the back, re-seated again this time with some Noctua compound. Temps were a tad better but still hitting 80c.

So, I ordered a Hyper 212 Evo, installed it and clocked the CPU at 4.5ghz. The shit doesn't even break over 55C under load now running the Intel Burn Test.

I'll never buy an H80i ever again. Nothing but headaches. The Link software is garbage, the cooler itself takes up a lot of space and is loud as fuck under load. I'm going to RMA this thing and sell the new one I get on Craigslist.

All in all though now, this little PC is pretty kick ass. So far I installed Arkham City for my boys and it runs at 1080p 60fps on high settings. I set the CPU multiplier in the UEFI to 4.6ghz, with the voltage on auto and I blue screened. I'll mess around with manually doing the voltages later on. But I bet I can squeeze a couple hundred more mhz out of this CPU. So far though, for a $35 processor, you can't beat it.

Sorry for the long rant.

Sounds to me like maybe the pump for the h80 is defective.

Most definitely. I forgot to add, that when I first booted the PC up, the pump was making a clicking noise. But it went away after a couple minutes and never happened again.

Corsair is pretty awesome with their RMA's, so I'm not worried about that. The H110 I installed in my regular gaming build just completely smokes that H80i. It's night and day difference on temps and noise.

I gotta say though, these Hyper 212 Evos are downright fantastic for the $30 price tag.

Yeah, it is hard to beat. If you toss another fan on there for another 2-3c reduction, you're beating every other single tower cooler and on-par with most dual towers.