So a few weeks ago I picked up these two AOpen MP965-Ds for ten bucks each, and they quickly became my favorite PCs. Seriously I've spent more time computing on these recently than my i7 or Xeon workstation.

(^^ XBMC got wiped, one of them is now dual-booting WinXP & Manjaro KDE and the other one is running Lakka.)

They both have Core 2 Duo T7250s (2.0 GHz, 35W TDP, socket P.) I would love, love, love a quad core in a tiny box like this. I would basically replace like three machines with it & use it for everything. Fortunately Intel made some! I've found a Q9000 (2GHz, 44W TDP) for a reasonable price.

The later BIOSes for these supposedly support 45nm Penryn CPUs and the official compatibility list goes up to a T9500, but doesn't list the Q series.

The internal cooling isn't as bad as you'd think, and it actually does a pretty decent job moving hot air out the perforated back panel. I haven't pulled the cooler & re-done the thermal paste yet, but with the Duo installed it doesn't seem to run overly hot. I could also yank that wi-fi card (which doesn't work very well using that single WAN antenna 😜 ) and swap the HDD for an SSD to reduce internal heat.

I guess there's always the possibility that the unsupported chip just plain won't work on this board. My gut feeling is that wouldn't be the case - these things are made from pretty standard parts: i965 chipset, Phoenix bios, etc. - but I can't find anyone on the internet who's tried. Not a lot of info out there on these in general.

What do you guys think? Should I gamble the 30-odd bucks out of my limited budget for the Q9000, or would I cook my favorite little computers?