Help Cain OC his computer....

[juneau]

The e8500 is like any of the Core 2 Duo range. And that chip, depending on quality and motherboard can overclock like a monster!

Overclocking these chips is easy. But first, find out RAM you have, and most importantly its max rated speed.

[Nauticas]

K, the RAM I have is as follows:

2 sticks of 2GB, Qimonda, DDR2-SDRAM (PC2-6400 / 800 MHz)
2 sticks of 1GB, Samsung, DDR2-SDRAM (PC2-6400 / 800 MHz)

Motherboard: Dell with nVidia MCP 51 chipset

Processor: E8500 Dual Core, 3.16 GHz

[juneau]

K, the RAM I have is as follows:

2 sticks of 2GB, Qimonda, DDR2-SDRAM (PC2-6400 / 800 MHz)
2 sticks of 1GB, Samsung, DDR2-SDRAM (PC2-6400 / 800 MHz)

Motherboard: Dell with nVidia MCP 51 chipset

Processor: E8500 Dual Core, 3.16 GHz

Not sure what motherboard that is, but from your post previous to this one i presume it's a Nvidia 680i. These weren't great overclocking boards iirc but you should be able to get something out of it.

Have you overclocked before?

[Dead_And_Gone]

Hmmm... Have trouble finding how to get to the
overclocking portion in Bios...
Doesn't seem to have that option, at least doesn't look like
anything like the youtube tutorials.

Will check motherboard web site late tonight after work, might need bios update.

[WalkinTarget]

DELL ???? Cripes, no wonder .... you might as well give up now. Dell uses a custom BIOS that does not offer ANY overclock options worth a hill of beans. No FSB, no voltage or memory tweaks .... might as well throw in the towel and quit now.

Yet another reason to build your own if you like to tinker or fiddle around, as no off the shelf PCs like a Dell are going to give you those BIOS options.

Edit: Actually, I have been able to OC a few boards that don't offer any BIOS options, but you'd better have some knowledge of what you are doing and the proper tools to do it. Start off by googling the terms 'BSEL mod' and go buy a rear window defogger repair kit or a conductive pen found at Radio Shack for $10. They were actually fun to do, and in fact I modded 2 earlier this summer in this way.

[juneau]

DELL ???? Cripes, no wonder .... you might as well give up now. Dell uses a custom BIOS that does not offer ANY overclock options worth a hill of beans. No FSB, no voltage or memory tweaks .... might as well throw in the towel and quit now.

Yet another reason to build your own if you like to tinker or fiddle around, as no off the shelf PCs like a Dell are going to give you those BIOS options.

Edit: Actually, I have been able to OC a few boards that don't offer any BIOS options, but you'd better have some knowledge of what you are doing and the proper tools to do it. Start off by googling the terms 'BSEL mod' and go buy a rear window defogger repair kit or a conductive pen found at Radio Shack for $10. They were actually fun to do, and in fact I modded 2 earlier this summer in this way.

I didn't think Dell were that mean.

[WalkinTarget]

I didn't think Dell were that mean.

You know what I mean. Dell sells Mom n Pop PCs that are never meant to be screwed around with. The user checks their email and surfs the web, they don't overclock the thing too often.
So its in Dell's best interests to lock the BIOS down to prevent little Jimmy from screwing around with Mommy and Daddy's computer after he read some tech site on the web on how to overclock.

I still have fun with those crap ECS or Dell boards with the BSEL mod and a little conductive trace from one pin to another on the chip. The e2160,2180 chips are just crazy little overclockers. They ship at 1.8-2.0 with a 200 FSB, and you can BSEL mod them easily to 266 FSB using the stock Intel cooler, resulting in a 2.66 chip for $20.

[juneau]

You know what I mean. Dell sells Mom n Pop PCs that are never meant to be screwed around with. The user checks their email and surfs the web, they don't overclock the thing too often.
So its in Dell's best interests to lock the BIOS down to prevent little Jimmy from screwing around with Mommy and Daddy's computer after he read some tech site on the web on how to overclock.

I still have fun with those crap ECS or Dell boards with the BSEL mod and a little conductive trace from one pin to another on the chip. The e2160,2180 chips are just crazy little overclockers. They ship at 1.8-2.0 with a 200 FSB, and you can BSEL mod them easily to 266 FSB using the stock Intel cooler, resulting in a 2.66 chip for $20.

I just didn't think Dell removed that many features from the bios. I don't have too much experience with prebuilts...... thank god!

RAM upgrades would be a pain if they removed things like voltage control.

[Nauticas]

I have overclocked before, just been about 4 years since I've done it. My Dell actually has a lot of overclocking options in the BIOS. I can change the voltages, cpu/ram ratios, memory timings and and a few other items you'd want when overclocking.

I'm having problems right now finding good information on my RAM, so I figured I'd keep the speed ratio so the RAM stays at stock settings.

I do have the nVidia Control Panel with the nTune. It's kind of buggy though and I'm wondering if that buggy software will cause problems for me so I may uninstall it.

[Duke{CLR}]

Ntune was crap from what I remember. Go to some forums somewhere like EVGA and three will be guys will have how to guides and it will all come back to you.

Here is a good place to start. Overclocking, Cooling and Benchmarking

[juneau]

Never use any software to overclock. Always use the bios.

Overclocking a Core2 is easy. Just make sure your voltages are all manually set, PCI-E speed i set to 100mhz, not auto, and slowly increase the FSB 20mhz at a time making sure your RAM speed doesn't go over 800Mhz (possibly displayed as 400Mhz dpending on your bios) and using a RAM divider if needed. After each 20Mhz jump boot into Windows and run stress test tool like Orthos for 20mins. If it doesn't crash or report errors, go back to the bios and increase by another 20Mhz. Keep doing this until it either fails to boot, or crashes during a stress test. Now roll back 20Mhz and stress test for at least 6 hours to make sure it's fully stable.

Something to note. Your RAM config may hold you back. S775 overclocking is best done using matched pairs of RAM in 2x1gb or 2x2gb configs, especially on Nvidia chipsets motherboards. it's also ideal to only ever use 2 of the 4 dimm slots.

Did your PC come this way? Or have you added extra RAM yourself?

[Dead_And_Gone]

Read the Jetway Manual
Changed to speed spectrum disabled.
disabled auto check PCI speed.
Bumped up 20MHZ
No boot
Bumped up CPU voltage
no boot.
Anything i do in bios seems to cause a no boot.
back to original specs.