Intel Pentium G3258 20th Anniversary Review with Asus ROG Z97 Ranger
Test Setup
Intel Pentium 20th Anniversary G3258
ASUS ROG Z97 Maximus VII Ranger
nVidia GTX780Ti
Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400 & 2933
Corsair AX760i
Corsair Neutron GTX
Corsair H105
Custom Corsair 540 Air
Windows 7 x64 Â
We’re using the Maximus VII Ranger today as the price perfectly matches the good value of the Intel Pentium G3258.
Overclocking
At stock the Pentium requires almost no volts at all thanks to that low power draw and only a couple of cores to run. Sure 3.2GHz is nice, but the whole fun of a lower price Intel is smashing the hell out of it and seeing we can get. After all, even if we blow it up it’s only £50. Fortunately you don’t need to get any where near to the kind of voltage that could cause issues. We managed to eke 4.5GHz out of the G3258 at a mere 1.23v. If you’re feeling even more demanding then there must be more available, but we wanted to keep the overclock at a level that would only take a few minutes to explore. This could well be your first venture into the dark arts of overclocking and so it’s nice to have something to aim for.
Temperatures
Unsurprisingly with just a couple of cores to run, and hardly any voltage running through the CPU, the Pentium Anniversary was very cool, even when overclocked.