A lot of LGA 1366 replies here. I never used it, as I was too invested in LGA 775 (I recently built it with an E8400 and then turned around and replace it with an E8600) and DDR3 was expensive at first and I had a lot of DDR2 for the time, so I leapfrogged LGA 1366 and had the things before and after it instead. I won a 2500K out of a contest on overclock.net which sort of forced me to sell the old stuff to fund a new board and RAM. DDR3 had gotten super cheap for a time here so it was the perfect window of time to upgrade even if the Core 2 was still plenty fast. I
somewhat regret that because it was using the very first and original Maximus Formula motherboard, but it was worth giving it up at the time to make use of the faster CPU. I think a friend of another member on yet another forum I was on bought it off of me through him (old motherboard, CPU, RAM, and cooling funded new motherboard, RAM, and cooling). To make it simpler the member I knew just bought the stuff and had it shipped to me to save on finance exchanges. Is it just me or were forums a bit more community-like before the rise of modern social media? I wonder where all that old stuff is now though.
A funny memory I have about that Maximus Formula is that the X38 was known to run rather warm. And the stock paste or pad or whatever it was Asus used was said to possibly be poor and you could get lower temperatures by redoing it. Here comes to catch. You would want to do this before ever using the board, because after it had run, the paste cured or settled or whatever, and it was harder to remove. No joke, people were ripping the Northbridge right off the boards trying and posting the disastrous result pictures online! I found a post/guide on some forum in those dark ages that described how to do this after the fact. It recommended using a hair dryer to warm the area up and make it more likely to get the heatsink off. Huh? No kidding, and I did this. It worked! I was somewhat terrified the entire time, but I did it. I don't think I saw that drastic of a temperature drop from redoing it, but it was quite an experience and memory. It's funny how often home care stuff has aided or even saved me when it comes to PCs. Somewhat old picture now but I
had to also use a brush handle to remove my graphics card recently and I still have to on my new one. Q-tips also come in handy for cleaning, and I can't remember what but I know nail polish was used once as well (might have been in the Maximus Formula incident to get the thermal stuff off because that stuff was like tougher than normal thermal paste).
I also still have an LGA 775 platform and this one with DDR3 (G41) but it's not my primary PC obviously nor is it as capable. I still has an E8600 with it though but I also have a Q9550 I can use but it's not in it now (sometimes the OptiPlex it's in just likes to... run the intake-doubling-as-a-CPU fan at 100% speed despite the temperatures not being high [maybe VRMs overheating?] and I never figured out why so the E8600 is in it for now since it never happens with it).
The longest thing I used was that aforementioned 2500K on an Asus P8Z68-V Pro with 16 GB DDR3 1,600 MHz. All three of those lasted me from late 2011 until mid 2020. Anyone using an even earlier platform as a daily PC until recent years has my respect.
.
