ITReviews tests the Core2Duo E6700 CPU. It runs at 2.67GHz and costs a mere £411 - less than what top of the range used to be. This one comes with 4MB cache and makes a small job of compressing a 350MB DIVX movie to DVD format and, more importantly, during the test, the processor heatsink remained cool to the touch.

We tested our E6700 on an Asus P5B Deluxe with P965 and ICH8R chipset, 2GB of Corsair XMS 8500 memory and a WD Raptor 150GB hard drive. The motherboard employs passive cooling throughout and during our performance testing we ran a noisy Sapphire X1900 XTX graphics card to generate some impressive results.

Once we were done we swapped the Sapphire for a passively cooled Asus EN7600GS graphics card and plugged in a fan controller on the CPU heatsink. We turned the controller down to barely audible levels and measured the heatsink temperature at 35 degrees while the graphics card touched 51 degrees during testing. Performance was adequate for all but the most demanding gaming and the noise level of the PC was very close to silent.