Scan has succeeded in overclocking Intel's new Pentium G3258 from 3.2GHz to 4.5GHz
We were pretty excited to hear about Intel's plans to introduce a multiplier-unlocked Pentium a few months back and Scan seems to have been too. It's been playing with samples of the new CPU for a few weeks and the results are good.
Using a decent air cooler, the company managed to push the 3.2GHz Anniversary Edition chip to 4.5GHz. Yet Scan has listed the CPU for just £54 on its website.
This appears to be a somewhat of a bargain, especially as in their testing with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 , the Pentium-based system kept pace with its more expensive K-series siblings in Battlefield 4, with a minimum frame rate of 47fps and average frame rate of 64fps.
This is fantastic news for overclocking enthusiasts, system builders and budget-conscious consumers alike - buying a cheap CPU and overclocking it hasn't been on the cards for several generations of Intel's CPUs, with AMD gaining much of the budget ground here.
For system builders, the CPU means lower potential system prices if they're willing to do a bit of tweaking, while budget-conscious home PC builders can save over £100 on the cost of a K-series CPU.
It remains to be seen just how the Pentium performs elsewhere - clearly with only two CPU cores and two threads, with anything multi-threaded it's going to lag behind but the extra grunt from a 1.3GHz overclock will certainly mean that in the right hands, it's the most potent sub £150 CPU Intel has released in quite a while.
You can read more on Scan's Facebook page or on its 3XS System Blog. Let us know what you think in the comments.
We were pretty excited to hear about Intel's plans to introduce a multiplier-unlocked Pentium a few months back and Scan seems to have been too. It's been playing with samples of the new CPU for a few weeks and the results are good.
Using a decent air cooler, the company managed to push the 3.2GHz Anniversary Edition chip to 4.5GHz. Yet Scan has listed the CPU for just £54 on its website.
This appears to be a somewhat of a bargain, especially as in their testing with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 , the Pentium-based system kept pace with its more expensive K-series siblings in Battlefield 4, with a minimum frame rate of 47fps and average frame rate of 64fps.
This is fantastic news for overclocking enthusiasts, system builders and budget-conscious consumers alike - buying a cheap CPU and overclocking it hasn't been on the cards for several generations of Intel's CPUs, with AMD gaining much of the budget ground here.
For system builders, the CPU means lower potential system prices if they're willing to do a bit of tweaking, while budget-conscious home PC builders can save over £100 on the cost of a K-series CPU.
It remains to be seen just how the Pentium performs elsewhere - clearly with only two CPU cores and two threads, with anything multi-threaded it's going to lag behind but the extra grunt from a 1.3GHz overclock will certainly mean that in the right hands, it's the most potent sub £150 CPU Intel has released in quite a while.
You can read more on Scan's Facebook page or on its 3XS System Blog. Let us know what you think in the comments.
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