I bought a retail box Q6600 yesterday at my local Micro Center for $199.99 plus tax, a total of $216.49. This is only available in store and the flyer shows prices good through April 13. This was a G0 stepping SLACR cpu.To save a lot of look-ups, Micro Center has stores in Santa Clara, CATustin/Irvine, CADenver, CODuluth/Gwinnett, GAMarietta, GAChicago, ILWestmont, ILOverland Park, KSCambridge, MARockville, MDMadison Heights, MISt. Louis Park, MNPaterson, NJWestbury, NYCleveland, OHCincinnati, OHColumbus, OHSt. Davids, PADallas, TXHouston, TXFairfax, VAJust a head's up for the patient and thrifty.:-wave -Doug

AHA! Now you have no excuse for not overclocking, Doug. If I could do it, so can you. Go for it!VicQ6600 G0 CPU 2.4 o/c 3.65Evga 680i A1 with P31 BIOS 2G XP2-8500 DDR2 1066FSB Mushkin 996535 RAM 5-5-4-12-2T320G 7200 HD partitioned for XP/Vista/Programs 2 - 74G Raptors in RAID0 500G 7200 HD for backup SATA DVD burner Evga 8800GTS 640 PCIx 174.74 beta 702/1623/792Kandalf LCS case w/ built in liquid cooling 850W Thermaltake power supplyVisit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-supporter-sigbanner.jpg

Well, Vic, that's certainly the long run game plan. Sam's (D17S) posts have convinced me that I can run it at 3.6 GHz all day and all night. Now I just have to get a sufficient - but not over the top - air cooler and get it all installed. I'm averse to hanging two pounds of cooling apparatus off my mobo, no matter how many people get away with it, so I've pretty much settled on the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro which I can get locally for $21.99 plus tax. Plus, it's got PWM fan speed control built in, and it's pretty quiet as well. I don't want to go higher than 3.6 since that's a 400 MHz FSB which will perfectly max out my Mushkin PC 6400 RAM. All that on my Abit IP35 Pro board ought to get the job done well enough until the next ten-tuple advance that Sam says is aways off yet. Plus I have to save up for a next gen graphics card, which is already the weak link in my existing setup. Nick N, who tests the little devils as one of his many sidelines, has made it clear that money is wasted on anything now on the market, given what he knows will be coming out in the May to June time frame. I can wait that long to see what he's talking about. NDA's keep him from being specific for now. Take care.-Doug

Agree totally, Doug, especially with regard to NickN and his comments.I've had no problem running at 3.65 since I o/c the system. Couldn't be happier. Funny, one of the reasons tat I decided on liquid cooling was th exact comment you made - didn't want to hang 2 lbs of hardware off the mobo. I had one mobo failure doing that and I didn't want to repeat it. Also, I'm guessing that the new video cards will be at least as big as the current crop and that doesn't leave too much room in a normal case any more.If I can be of any assistance when you get down to it, let me know.BTW, if you haven't tried it - the Mushkin support forum folks are very helpful with memory timings when overclocking.VicQ6600 G0 CPU 2.4 o/c 3.65Evga 680i A1 with P31 BIOS 2G XP2-8500 DDR2 1066FSB Mushkin 996535 RAM 5-5-4-12-2T320G 7200 HD partitioned for XP/Vista/Programs 2 - 74G Raptors in RAID0 500G 7200 HD for backup SATA DVD burner Evga 8800GTS 640 PCIx 169.13 betaKandalf LCS case w/ built in liquid cooling 850W Thermaltake power supplyVisit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-supporter-sigbanner.jpg