New OC'er, a few questions regarding my rig

[krookedt]

Hello all, I have a core 2 duo e6600 on a Dell manufactured motherboard, model 0cu409 with intel chipset. its a 2.4 ghz but when I check CPU-Z core speed is reading 1596.0 ghz, Is that normal while pretty much just running firefox?

Also Will I have any trouble oc'ing with my mobo? or is there a simpler way to do it other than booting bio's? I currently am running a stock heatsink in a case to small for an aftermarket cooler, But I am getting a thermaltake commander ms-i friday and was wondering what my best options are for an aftermarket cpu cooler and how hard I can push it without having to worry about a meltdown?

Some of my other specs are win7 32 bit, 3gddr2 ram (just stock ram not gaming), 520 watt atx power supply, radeon hd4650 1gig gpu.

Sorry for rambling on, I really hope I didn't leave out any crucial info that may be needed by you to help assist me with this. If you need any more info at all just let me know and I will reply asap. My main goal is I just wanna be able to game and stream without any issues on my rig, So do I just need to scrap this rig and start over with a new everything? Any advice or help is GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks very much.

 

[Rustyy117]

Hi

What you've observed with CPU-Z is Intel's speed-step technology, basically when your CPU is idle (very low load situations like running firefox) it'll down clock to 1.6Ghz in order to save energy and lower temps. It's perfectly normal and nothing to worry about, however if it bothers you, you can disable it in the BIOS.

Dell obviously don't want there customers to overclock (Would cause a much higher return rate because of failed components) so they lock down the overclocking options in the BIOS usually, if this is the case for you then you might be able to use a program in the O/S like clockgen to overclock.

Make sure you read some s775 overclocking guides before attempting any overclocking!

I'm not sure what games you play so I can't say whether you'd be better off just building/buying a new PC, but perhaps overclocking will give you enough of a performance boost to satisfy your needs.