Upgrading for decent gaming experience, need some opinions

[nate1232]

I'm liking hwmonitor - I've been using coretemp and speedfan, its nice having it all in one program. So idling the temps are pretty consistent at 40C. During the stress test the cpu is between 60-65. I believe the maximum safe temp for my cpu is around 70C

 

[brinks]

Looks like you'll hit the max temp 71.4°C soon. You can do a small overclock at most with these temperature readings. I'm guessing your using the stock cooler came with the cpu? If you want higher overclocking you'll need to get a better aftermarket cpu cooler.

 

[nate1232]

Yea almost everything is stock, I'm just doing some small upgrades because I'm getting into gaming a bit more. I'm pretty sure the fans are an intake and a cpu fan.

So by replacing the cpu cooler alone, that will let me overclock a bit higher? My crappy Dell case doesn't really have much room for additional fans - even trying to fit all the wires from my psu is a struggle

**I was poking around in my bios just to familiarize myself with the process of overclocking and lo and behold, the options simply aren't there. I'm on a Dell and from what I've read Dell makes it hard to overclock. I may just have to make a separate thread...

 

[brinks]

I'm not even sure if you can overclock Dell's, the manufacturer usually removes all the fancy overclocking options in the bios like you just found out. You probably have the cheapest ram dell can give you too, that would also lower your overclocking abilities if you even could overclock.

 

[nate1232]

Yea I haven't upgraded my ram but I'm sure Dell didn't take the liberty to install any decent quality hardware. I'm not even going to bother putting anymore money into this pc. In a year or so I'll probably just build myself a pc and make this a family computer or something.

Well thanks for all the help everyone, I guess thats everything I'd like to know for now.

 

[Roark]

Googled "can you overclock a Dell", first result was this awesome little post (link).

 

[nate1232]

Lol nice find Roark. Well, that confirms my fears, and crushes my hopes for even a mild overclock. I'll squeeze what I can out of this pc and just make a new one soon enough