Nice...I guess you won't be working with your old setup then.
I came across this thread because I'm in a very similar boat. I'm a n00b and I don't have a great deal of $ to buy a new computer and was thinking of giving my Dell setup a refresh. So, from what I read, I guess you can't overclock factory Dell systems; if I were to buy some new parts (such as a motherboard), would I be able to port my processor over and overclock?
I currently have the Pentium D 820 (2.8 ghz, 800 FSB) as well and a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GPU.
I saw this motherboard in an earlier post:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131347
Are there any other alternatives?
Since I currently have a stock setup, I think I need a better cooler, case and a power supply.
Is this an okay product?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002G1YPH0/?tag=tec06d-20
I also did a bit of research and it seems that with the right settings you can get a stable OC of 4.0 ghz on air.
I'll be using my computer mainly for school, running a good amount of engineering software i.e. MATLAB, COMSOL, etc. I guess my main goal is to get another few years out of this setup.
I tried HWMonitor but it didn't display my processor, only my GPU and hard drives. I'm running Win 7; does that matter?
Thanks in advance!