Overclocked Dell Optiplex 960

[HardwareExtreme]

Hello everyone,
I was able to overclock a Optiplex 960 with setFSB.

Specs:
Core 2 Quad Q6600 (Normally 2.4ghz, overclocked to 3.0ghz sucessfully)
2gb DDR2 RAM (Planning on slapping another 2gb in)
ATI Radeon x300 SE (I am planning to replace this)
Windows XP SP3

My PLL: CV184-2APAG
Base Clock w/ overclock: 335.0 mHz
Memory Frequency: 501.3 mHz
CPU Frequency: 3007.68mHz
I did not alter the PCIe bus frequency at all.

I was able to bump the FSB up some enough to get this puppy to 3.0 ghz. Prime95 has run fine at least for 10 minutes now without crashing. Anyways, does anyone have any tips for this system? For example, what do I need to worry about for RAM speeds to avoid it going unstable? And will changing PCIe bus speed improve performance?

I just tested this overclock for the fun of it, I threw the system together using some parts I had. As for temps, its sitting about 43 degrees celcius on all cores. I also replaced the tiny heatsink that came with the original Core 2 Duo e8400 with the taller and heavier one from a dead XPS 410.
I also tried with that Core 2 Duo, but I was only able to get maybe a 100mHz before it freezed.

Anyways, can anyone give me any tips? This is my first successful attempt at overclocking anything.


Edit: It has been stable for over an hour.

 

[Lutfij]

Since you're dealing with a prebuilt workstation grade system from Dell that apparently is devoid of any heatsinks in the area around the CPU socket area, the first issue you'll face is that the system will die because of lack of cooling the power delivery area.

To ask out of frankness, is this system expendable? If so then you can tinker with higher PCIe bus frequency's above 100 but that would not yield any fruition and can also make your board die faster. Is it possible to pass on your voltages?

If you're going for 4GB of ram then you're going to need a 64 bit architecture of the OS... to have the system recognize all 4GB's of ram. You might also want to see if you're on the latest BIOS.

 

[HardwareExtreme]

The voltage is the same stock voltage of the processor, since there was no way for me to alter it. It is at 1.238V according to CPUZ. I only altered the FSB speed on this system with setFSB. I installed Windows XP temporarily to find out what this thing can be overclocked to. After testing, 3GHz is as far as I can push it without it freezing, and its perfectly stable. It has the latest BIOS update installed (A18). However, does this CPU throttle or why does it switch from 2GHz all the way up to 3GHz which I overclocked it to, and back again?

 

[Lutfij]

I think you're talking about Intel's Speedstep technology. If the system isn't taxed then the processor goes to a lower power state with a lower processor frequency.

What other apps have you used to tax the newly overclocked system? You can also use Intel Burn Test but these are more of a synthetic stress testing tool and you won't see those kind of loads in a real world/gaming scenario. On the other hand it's also seen that a system that's passed through multiple IBT runs and Prime95 loads fails after playing maybe one chapter in a game campaign.

Which leads me to ask, are you doing this for fun or to kill it or to have a small gaming system on the cheap?

Using Coretemp, see what your processor's VID is and it's stepping.

 

[HardwareExtreme]

That's odd, I don't have Speedstep on in the BIOS. As for stress testing, I did Prime95 with the blended test. I am doing this mostly for fun, since I am using my HP Z600 as my main computer. I do not want to kill this machine, but it doesnt matter to me a lot if I do. However, I may use this for some gaming.

Vid: 1.2375v
Stepping: G0

 

[Lutfij]

I do not want to kill this machine, but it doesnt matter to me a lot if I do.

You do realize that that's a paradox you're in, right?

1.2375v isn't bad for that stepping and that chip. With all that you have to work with, I'd say that you're fine but for prolonged use that system will just die down or blow up(take your pick). At the end of the day it's going to be a fun experiment but one that won't net you any notable gains since the current gen GPU's will all be bottlenecked while you're limited by the power outputted by the bundled proprietary PSU.

System's with much better components broke a sweat overclocking the Q6600 with top tier components so I wouldn't be surprised if your off the shelf prebuilt(and used) Dell OptiPlex vaporizes.

FYI, it's very bad practice to overclock using software. if you must overclock then do so via the BIOS. The lack of this feature in your BIOS is evident that the unit wasn't meant to be overclocked.

 

[HardwareExtreme]

I hate to bump this thread, but I have a Nvidia SLI 680i board that I have and I am going to try overclocking on that. So far, however, temperatures are a little bit of a problem, and with the stock heatsink I get roughly 60 degrees Celcius on a minor overclock (Bumped it up roughly 14 mHz, clock speed is now 2430mhz)
I'm going to try and make a working system out of this, and use it for some light gaming. I need a better heatsink, but currently I'm saving so that may not happen.