Manual overclocking vs pre-built

marky1124

marky1124

marky1124

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11 Aug 2004
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Hi,

I'm preparing to buy a new gaming system ready for the plethora of great titles coming out in November. I'm finding myself drawn to overclockers "Ulimate OC 8800GTS" system for £969 this week.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-048-OK&groupid=43&catid=781&subcat=

If I choose to buy these components myself how difficult would it be to match that 3.4GHz overclock? Has anyone tried it? How much does it depend on luck with the quality of the parts you receive?

I build my own systems and take advantage of what easy overclocking I can achieve. Usually I make some bios adjustments and then use nTune since it saves me much of the bother of finding the right values, but it can be a bit hit or miss, and I'm sure it doesn't squeeze out the ultimate overclocking performance.

Thanks very much in advance,
Cheers,
Mark
 
G0 stepping Quads should do 3.4 pretty easily. You are paying someone else to have fun overclocking your system. :(
 
Well, with mine ... they didnt stress test it all, tbh i think they just put in the FSB and Vcore to what other CPU's achieved and if it install's Vista, job done, so i wouldnt expect it to stable anyhow.

Anyway, G0 Quads should do 3.4GHz fairly comfortably.
 
You are the customer! Contact the store and ask them what stability testing they put the system through. If it ships with an Orthos 8-hr screenie, then great, if not, then buy the parts independently. The single greatest advantage of buying a pre-overclocked system is they cannot bounce you on the warranty if it goes wrong. If you buy a CPU and clock it, then they are quite likely to ask if you overclocked, and if you say "Yes" then they won't honour the warranty. In a pre-overclocked system they have to support that overclocked system.
 
truebluecfc - Thanks very much for your reply. That's interesting. Would you be willing to tell me which system you bought and perhaps share the exact bios settings that have been used to achieve the 3.4Ghz?

WJA96 - Thanks good suggestion. I've asked them that question. I'll reply here with their response.
 
I bought this one months ago when it was on special offer, it came with the wrong motherboard and RAM (same speed RAM though & a 650i board instead of a 680i) without being told and it wasn't just me, a friend ordered the same system on the same day and also got the wrong motherboard and ram.

It arrived 2 days after i ordered it, hardly any time to check for stability most probably and it kept freezing whilst playing games so i decided to reformat and reset the Bios to it's original setting and overclocked myself, so i basically wasted a few pounds on a pre-overclocked system which i had to reset a couple of days later.

A couple of months down the road, and a few problems starting occurring, most problematic one being the Network ports broke and only 1 stick of RAM was working, managed to get it replaced fairly quickly and then came with the correct motherboard and RAM, even though they didn't send me the new manual or CD, but they forgot to take out their Vista 32bit disc out and funnily enough i ordered it with Vista 64bit before so now I've got 2 vista disc's, hehe.

Basically, build your own.
 
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Thanks truebluecfc. That's a useful lesson.

I took WJA96's advise and emailed pre-sales support with the following two questions:

1) What stability testing is done with the system prior to shipment?
2) Do you supply full details of what settings are used to achieve the overclock?

Here is their reply

1) we run many tests to stress the CPU and the Gx card such as 3d mark and other programs
2) we do not i am affraid thank you

Cheers,
Mark
 
weescott said:
G0 stepping Quads should do 3.4 pretty easily. You are paying someone else to have fun overclocking your system. :(
Click to expand...

When the shop says 95W Q6600 does that mean you get a G0 stepping?
e.g (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-161-IN)


melbourne720 said:
Hang around here long enough and you'll learn what settings you need to use to stably overclock, that's how I learnt :D
Click to expand...

I've taken your advise to ask about overclocking settings. (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=10069606#post10069606)

Cheers,
Mark
 
Ive just bought a pre built system from here, ulitmate 8800gts system. Have nothing but problems with it at the mo. Playing games makes it crash with a strange blue screen, or sometimes a repeating sound aswell. Might be slightly too overclocked, dunno yet. Apart from that they are good systems (344fps in cs:s test) and save all the building hassel.

Doh must update my siggy lol
 
BurntCarcus said:
Ive just bought a pre built system from here, ulitmate 8800gts system. Have nothing but problems with it at the mo.
Click to expand...

Hi BurntCarcus,

Following on from my questions to support that I've mentioned above I asked this question as well:

If I found the system to be unstable under heavy load what actions would overclockers take if I brought my issue to you?
Click to expand...

This was their response:

If the system was unstable we would give you a return number and take the system in for testing, if a component was found faulty we would replace it.

The system would then be retested and shipped out from us.
Click to expand...

So if you want their helping making the system stable I'd suggest contacting them by their web form. I've found they have replied to me each time within 24 hours, which I think is very good.

Cheers,
Mark
 
I will do once my m8 has a quick look at it, might be somthing simple, if not then ill phone them and see what the crack is, strange it runs 3Dmarks 06 fine and the burnin test fine. But 3d marks 05 and 03 both crash out aswell as 3 out 4 of the games crash.
 
LOl these prebuilt overclocked pc's from OCUK sound pritty crap. Your paying to get stupid mistakes with wrong components and clocked cpus that arnt stress tested.

Na ah, thats poor.
 
Your right 8igdave, ive just found that my memory was oc'ed too much to the point of unstable. They couldnt have tested it as the burnin test was only an evaluation copy that only ran for 15 mins. 20 mins with gold mem tester showed the memory failing. Had to turn it down to standard to get it to run. So what do i do? RMA it as its not doing what it says it does on the tin so to speak? Now its running its running really well though. If it had of worked straight away i would have had to disagree with you 8igdave, now i agree.
 
If by turning down the mem speed (to standard), you have lost minimal performance, I wouldnt bother returning it.

Its running fine now and if you go through the hassle of returning it, etc, you will waste a lot of time, only to find that your performance will be raised (after the rma), by an amount that you can hardly detect. In otherwords - not worth the hassle.

If the performance has dropped substantially by changing ram speed, then by all means rma the system.


The problem with pre-built oc'd systems is that the hard part is running the tests and finding out the limits of the hardware. This is not being done thoroughly by OCUK simply because it would take them many many hours to do so. This would shoot the cost of the system up substantially and no one would bother buying it. So I can see it from their side.

Personally, I would never buy an oc'd system from a supplier, at an inflated price. If the price is the same as the non-oc'd system, then by all means buy it, but to pay extra for a oc'd system that hasnt been fully tested is just ridiculous.

With regards to the cpu/video card failing when oc'ing - Ive been overclocking since 1999 and Ive never had a video card, a motherboard, ram, a cpu, ever fail on me due to the overclock. Ive never had to rma these items due to me pushing too hard. So the warranty issue is a non-issue.
 
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