Overclocking Marathon Day 2 - A Home Brew

Editor’s Note: Yesterday we overclocked Dell’s factory-overclocked XPS H2C. As we expected and as Dell predicted, gains were minimal, but we had to try. Today we overclock the high-end model from our May System Builder Marathon. Tomorrow we tackle a cheapie PC, with lots of overclocking potential and on Friday we wrap up everything, comparing the performance of all three PCs.

Updates On May’s High-end Build

Tom’s Hardware’s recent System Builder Marathon produced one very strong system that was begging to be overclocked into the ultimate dual-core performance machine. We chose dual core for its greater performance-per-price compared to quad cores, at least in the balance of games and applications. Here’s the run-down of components of our build.

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Even if we were to adjust for recent price drops on a few of the components, we’d still be left with an uber-expensive system. The major difference over the past two months has not been pricing, but instead Crucial’s memory specification change from PC2-8000 to PC2-8500 for what are likely the same Ballistix modules. Buyers who’d like to build a similar system will be pleased to note that the better-rated RAM is also a little less expensive than the part it replaces.

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