‘Tis the season for building systems — well, ’tis always that season, but right now you’ve got a pretty nice spread of components to pick from, whether you’re into the AMD or Intel flavor of things. Of course, if you’re feeling really spendy, or just want to have a different top-end processor from the guy next to you at the LAN party, then sometimes you have to get creative.

eBay, as always, is the place for semi-shady transactions like that. Right now (oops, it ended a while ago) There’s a prototype 6-core Westmere Gulftown 2.4GHZ LGA1366 CPU being auctioned off with a reserve of $1200. There’s no guarantee this is going to outperform a regular Core i7 or Phenom II, but it might just be worth it for the look on your friends’ faces when you say you’re running a Core i9.

If you want it, better bid quick; I don’t think these engineering samples are labeled for individual sale. It does say “Intel Confidential” on it, which doesn’t suggest public availability to me.

[via Tom's Hardware]