Thanks for the support and cooler suggestions!
Arctic got back to me and confirmed that the mounting bracket is still compatible in the new revision.
It's £21 on Amazon and is in the early 20s for dBa noise levels, I'm gonna try it out and see how it goes for a high TDP cooler - I'll post back if it's a bust or if it's actually worthwhile for a C2Q build.

Update:

Got the Freezer 7 X from Arctic.
Pretty straightforward installation, chipset heatsink got in the way of mounting clips, so had to reorientate the cooler to have the fan blowing upwards. Keeps the Q6600 pretty chilled, reaching around 50° under load.
I'm triple booting with this PC - XP, Win7 and Linux Mint. Did the GTA4 and Bioshock Infinite stress tests and it handles a lot better than the E4700 I had before, not nearly as loud now I replaced the Intel stock cooler. Would recommend to anyone running a high TDP rig, retro or new!

That's a great cooler. I have that on my main e8600 system it's quiet and keep that cpu nice and cool.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-08, 14:39:

That's a great cooler. I have that on my main e8600 system it's quiet and keep that cpu nice and cool.

If I didn't already have the Q6600, I would've gone with the C2D you're using, it's higher frequency thrashes C2Q's in most XP games. What GPU are you using with it?

Zalman is best

I'm using a GeForce 470gtx. I'm using a EVGA nforce 680i sli mother board with 8 gigs of RAM. I've had this system for years and its probably my favorite. It's still my main computer I've got XP Pro, and windows 7 ultimate installed and it handles my daily tasks perfectly

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-08, 15:57:

I'm using a GeForce 470gtx. I'm using a EVGA nforce 680i sli mother board with 8 gigs of RAM. I've had this system for years and its probably my favorite. It's still my main computer I've got XP Pro, and windows 7 ultimate installed and it handles my daily tasks perfectly

Sounds great! I didn't know the Nforce boards went up to 8GB's of Ram, I'm using a P31 Gigabyte board for my Retro rig - having 4 cores has helped out with running newer games under Win7 and Linux.
Been considering to downgrade from the 7970 to a 750Ti, doesn't consume as much Watts and has PhysX and better HDMI resolutions. The apparent benefits of going AMD/ATI isn't really applicable to most XP systems, if people want more features and higher resolutions, Nvidia seems to be the better choice for gaming.

8 gigs is the max for the 680i chip set. The system does everything we need still. I've been eyeing a GeForce 1650 super to replace my GTX 470. It runs cooler and consumes less power.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-08, 16:25:

8 gigs is the max for the 680i chip set. The system does everything we need still. I've been eyeing a GeForce 1650 super to replace my GTX 470. It runs cooler and consumes less power.

I think you already know that the 1650 doesn't have drivers for XP. If it's your main driver and you don't care about XP hardware acceleration, then it's a good choice if you want a lot of power and have it consume barely anything.
To be fair, if you're concerned about power and thermals, I think the Nforce board is gonna be holding it back from being cool and efficient.

I don't use XP much on this system anymore I built another 775 system for XP. Same E8600 with 8 gigs of RAM and a GTX 470 as well

bionicle_159 wrote on 2020-06-08, 16:55:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-08, 16:25:

8 gigs is the max for the 680i chip set. The system does everything we need still. I've been eyeing a GeForce 1650 super to replace my GTX 470. It runs cooler and consumes less power.

I think you already know that the 1650 doesn't have drivers for XP. If it's your main driver and you don't care about XP hardware acceleration, then it's a good choice if you want a lot of power and have it consume barely anything.
To be fair, if you're concerned about power and thermals, I think the Nforce board is gonna be holding it back from being cool and efficient.

In fact, I could not get 1650 working on seven either - once the driver was installed, there was no graphics output, just black screen. I upgraded to 10 to address the issue. So I guess XP is a really long shot.

That's weird my brother has a 1650 in his computer with windows 7 and he's had no issues with it

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-08, 17:20:

That's weird my brother has a 1650 in his computer with windows 7 and he's had no issues with it

What Chipset is your brother running? Problems with newer cards might arise from old Phenom or Nehalem era boards, they were the first DDR3/PCI 3.0 products from both sides.

RacoonRider wrote on 2020-06-08, 17:18:

In fact, I could not get 1650 working on seven either - once the driver was installed, there was no graphics output, just black screen. I upgraded to 10 to address the issue. So I guess XP is a really long shot.

What board did you try it in?

Not entirely sure I'll have to ask him. I do know he's using a Ryzen 7 3700

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-08, 17:43:

Not entirely sure I'll have to ask him. I do know he's using a Ryzen 7 3700

Most likely a B450/X470. Mix of late PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 (Top slot for GPUs)
One way of finding out is to borrow his card for a day and see if it works in your system.

I wouldn't pair a GTX 1650 with anything from core2, it's bottlenecking GTX 150 cards at up to 4k, a 1650 is a waste of money, no offense intended but you need a newer main to utilize a card that new, a core 2 really good out around GTX 760 or R9 380.

I'd look for a second hand 3rd or 4th gen system, dell Optiplex systems are cheap secondhand for instance, and a core2quad at 4.5 looses to an i5 2500k at stock speeds.

candle_86 wrote on 2020-06-08, 19:37:

I wouldn't pair a GTX 1650 with anything from core2, it's bottlenecking GTX 150 cards at up to 4k, a 1650 is a waste of money, no offense intended but you need a newer main to utilize a card that new, a core 2 really good out around GTX 760 or R9 380.

I'd look for a second hand 3rd or 4th gen system, dell Optiplex systems are cheap secondhand for instance, and a core2quad at 4.5 looses to an i5 2500k at stock speeds.

I think he just wants a brand new card that can at least match his 470 but just run off PCIe power instead. I doubt he wants to do any modern gaming considering that the Core2 line lacks the instruction set to work with a lot of recent games.

It runs cooler and quieter than my gtx 470 and it's free my brother is getting a new card and giving me his EVGA 1650 super. The most demanding game I play is Kerbal Space Program.

bionicle_159 wrote on 2020-06-08, 17:42:

RacoonRider wrote on 2020-06-08, 17:18:

In fact, I could not get 1650 working on seven either - once the driver was installed, there was no graphics output, just black screen. I upgraded to 10 to address the issue. So I guess XP is a really long shot.

What board did you try it in?

ASUS P5K.

I guess my previous post was a bit of misinformation since I decided it was a hardware issue and replaced the whole platform for ASUS TUF B360-PRO with new CPU and RAM only to find out my new stuff was not compatible with Windows 7 either. And only then I gave up and went for 10. Ended up with a nice new computer in the end, even though it was not exactly what I needed or wanted.