I have a fairly old Dell 2350 that came with a 2.2 GHz Pentium 4. I desperately want to ge this baby running a bit faster, but I am not really informed on how to go about it. I have upgraded it just about as far as I can with my limited knowledge of overclocking. So far I put a PCI GeForce 5200 FX 128MB, two sticks of 512MB 2700 RAM, two HD 60GB/80GB, a Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 Surround Sound Card, and a high performance neon heatsink/fan on my Vid card. Unfortunately, my mobo did not come with an AGP port (i think i will be replacing it). I am hoping to keep my current processor with the motherboard upgrade and simply overclock it. I may need some help over clocking with a tutorial or something. I am a pretty computer savy person, but I am in the dark here...thanx for any help Real Friends Stab You in the Front

Go for the better Motherboard quick! You should also see if you can find a PCI-Express motherboard, this would probably give you greater overclocking headroom, and you would be able to run the latest graphics card in it! :-) If you do however you may have to dump your RAM for faster DDR2 RAM that these require, you may also have to get a beefier PSU to cope with the demands of the hardware. As for Overclocking, most of it is done in the bios, like this : 1) raise the FSB slightly 2) stress-test using prime95 or Realstorm or similar 3)raise the FSB a little further 4)test again eventually you will begin to get errors in your stress testing application. 5) lower the FSB to the last stable speed you had and test vigorously Has that been any help? you can also just search on google & see what you find. . . works for me . . . :-) Oh, and my friends don't stab me at all ;-p Merry Christmas Never argue with the fellow that packs your parachute

I need a micro ATA mobo (I think) because I have one of those short stumpy systems. Do you have any recommendations for a board/vid card? Will i have to change out my Ram? One last thing...what is FSB? srry for being a newb, Cyclone Real Friends Stab You in the Front

"PCI-Express motherboard" PCI-Express is, IMO, too new to even consider. "If you do however you may have to dump your RAM for faster DDR2 RAM that these require" There are PCI-E boards that do not require DDR2. Back to the question, well if you intend on trying to overclock the Dell, forget it, the only way your gonna be able to do that is with a software overclock, and believe me, you don't wanna do that. As for dropping a new motherboard in, you may find that the PSU has a propriatory ATX plug, therefore thats not an option and if you are going to buy a new PSU, you may as well shell out a little more and get a new case. You should be have no probs using the rest of your parts (CPU, RAM, HDD etc.). FSB = Front Side Bus. Computer nut since 1985 and still loving it...

I stay with what you have for a year or so...only weak link I see in your system is the video card and then only if gaming is important to you. Save the overclocking advice for a non proprietary system and talk to people who have had their 'chute packed by Valu before you make any rash decisions. Skip

I did say "you MAY have to" about the RAM. As for PCI-Express being too new, I don't thinks so, ATI and Nvidia have both got a full range of cards from entry level to hard-core gaming cards. However you should always consider any upgrade for a long time as they acn be very expensive! Merry Christmas Never argue with the fellow that packs your parachute

Valu, "Go for the better Motherboard quick!" is what set me off here. To begin with, Cyclone has a Dell 2350 that isn't that much of a slouch. PC2700 memory is just fine for that rig, the power supply may use non-standard pinouts, an off the shelf motherboard may not fit the case and the stripped down bios used in most proprietary maachines may not allow any front side bus changes. As for pci express, I feel there is more to consider than just a few good video cards...like the availability of more motherboards to plug them into. The nforce4 boards and ati boards haven't hit the streets yet (to my knowledge) and I think it's prudent to wait until the bugs are sorted out. Much of the pci express platform is gonna call for some pretty expensive motherboard, processor, memory, and video card combinations just to build a working machine. Availability is rising and prices are dropping for pci express...I just don't believe it's time to jump on that wagon yet. IMO, that Dell still has a lotta life in it. Skip