Hi all, 

Just wanted to share my experience with a really interesting and also budget friendly way to give new life to older LGA 775 based computers such as those with a Core 2 Duo cpu. 

I had an old computer running a Core 2 Duo e8200 that had been overlocked from 2.66GHz to 3.4Gz for the last 6 or so years. It had recently been acting up, probably due to the increased voltage and long duration that it had been OCed.

My options were either to throw it away or see if I could get a replacement cpu. While looking around for an LGA 775 compatible cpu I found two things:

 

 

1. LGA 775 cpus are incredibly expensive for their age
2. There were some interesting article about using an adapter with LGA 771 Xeon cpus to run in an LGA 775 motherboard. 

 

This second point certainly piqued my interest, especially since I found that these Xeon cpus which once sold for $999 USD were now selling on Ebay and Aliexpress for ~$40 USD. 

Since my old PC has a P5K SE motherboard I had to do some bios hacking to add Xeon cpu microcode, but it was fairly easy and I got to add AHCI support to the motherboard to make the SSD work better at the same time. 

I decided on a Xeon E5450 SLBBM stepping which is a quad core running @ 3.0GHz stock and equivalent of a Core 2 Quad QX9650.

I installed the cpu last night with a little bit of help from my wife to cut the tiny plastic bits out that prevent LGA 771 CPUs from fitting. It runs really well now, I have yet to overlock but I have a pretty hefty HSF so I am sure I can boost it to 3.8GHz or so with no problem. 

Anyway just thought I would share my experience with this as it's an incredibly cheap upgrade for an older PC that can give it a bit more life. 

If you are at all interested in doing something similar then check out the article over here at Delidded.com http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/