Got a raise in pay and was tired of dealing with an old Celeron, which I thought was fast. at 2.4Ghz single core.
This new homebuid is an Intel Core I5. It isnt the best that money can buy, if you want to spend around $800 on the microprocessor to go even faster, go right ahead, too rich for me.
This thing is 4 cores at 3.2Ghz each. 64 bits. Its ungodly fast.
No hyperthreading, for that, use I7 and pay another $100 on the processor.
Doesnt matter to me this hyperthreading idea for what I wanted speed for (transcoding video asap).
With FFMpeg as the codec, that will use all cores at 100 percent.
What took an hour now takes ten minutes.
It gets rather toasty (the chip) under full load, goes from using 4 watts to 30 watts, but cools down quick enough when done, with its automajic clock speed and fan control, not a big problem.
I love it.