E4600 OC with Bsel mod!! Dell E520

I just wanted to thank you guys. My pentium D 3ghz was getting pretty outdated But I coudnt afford a new PC. So I decided to upgrade, I had a dell e510 so I didnt have much faith. I started searching and came across this site and discovered the Bsel mod....
I promptly gathered my pennies and bought the e4600 off newegg and in three days I had it in hand. I installed it and got to work putting the new cooler on only to discover it was a no go...after changing the pins in the plug, How do they go back again...hmmm

So with the stock cooler reinstaled and new C2D CPU in I pushed the shiny button....and got the yellow light and nothing else....

Back to the internet seach, Low and behold... E510 mobo doesnt do C2D...
So i have a $140 cufflink maybe.
After yet more searching I find that the dell mobos while using standard ATX PSUs have inverse mobo meaning no other mobo besides a dell will fit.
Luckily on the dell forum I discovered that an E520 mobo will fit and suport
C2D. Not only That but it supports faster memory....
After alot of trolling on ebay I made an offer on an e520 mobo for $70 w/free shipping in a week I had a brand new (refurbished) e520 mobo.

Well it just drops in right....er no it has more audio outputs(gets dremel)
so I made some room(puts dremel away)
Oh the onboard vga out is in a different place....(gets Dremel)
so I made room(puts dremel away)
BTW it also has more usb outputs....DOH! (gives usb ports a judicous tweak)
no dremel needed.

Now it just slides right in and after a clean instal of windows XP SP2 hours updating everything and all the latest drivers.

Instal my 7300gt overclocked to 500mgz .....

I think about getting a 8800 (looks in wallet) I Prepare for an 8800 with
a new PSU and 3gb pc2 800 ram from newegg.

Now everything is a million times better but with further research I find people say yah overclock an e4300 but dont bother with e4600....whaaaat?

So to prove the nay sayers wrong I do the bsel mod as described and push the shiny button...it posts...and...I lose video....maybe there right eh.

After yet more research suspecting maybe theres not enough voltage I find the Bsel mod to up the voltage.... I got straight to the 1.45 setup man those pins are small...

And violla!!! It worky worky. Running at 3.19 GHz stable as a rock!

Oh yah also the E510 uses IDE drives the E520 only has sata ports so a new DVD drive was needed, No biggy though as the dell/LG stop working after the first couple burns.

Cool stuff. Hail the power of the human brain. Thats a BTX board btw?

I think it is... I never seen another BTX case that wasnt dell so Im not sure.

I guess in the long run I could have bought a new PC for a little more.

Nice post Slim. Dell's can be a pain huh? Your next full upgrade should be fun now that you have the OC bug.

Welcome to the forums (proro as well), hope you enjoy your stay.

Yah Dells are pretty tough to upgrade, But with a new Video card it should extended its useful lifetime by quite a bit as I was fed up with the lack of performance and was gonna spend about 1g for a new PC.

I should also note that the dell heatsink has a very rough contact surface with visable lines from machining. I obviously had to sand it with 400 600 and 800 grit paper 8-P

1.45V on the Dell cooler? That's a good but not extreme oc so I'd be willing to bet you could get away with lower voltage. What are the temps like? Find the program 'CoreTemp' and run that with Prime95 to see. I suppose it's a pain to change if you have to pin-mod the voltage though Very cool though that you managed to do so much with the Dell as a base.

It wouldnt work at stock voltage guess I could try 1.4 but, Yah its a pain.

Ill get coretemp running tomorrow and post some results.

I ran 3dmark but it said my setting werent normal I dont know what normal for them is but Im hooked up to a 50" 1080p TV so obviously its not the norm. The Nforce drivers and settings are horrible (w/tv settings at least)
It gave same results as before the upgrades when there is obvious inprovements running. WOW alone went from 6-12 fps to 60fps. overall performance is much better in every other aspect so I dont know whats up with those results

This is a really old thread (over six years), but if anyone is still watching it, I have two Dell E520s, both running Windows 7 64 bit with SSD hard drives, quad core CPUs (QX6800 and QX6700)and 8Gb DDR2 RAM. One of them is equipped with an Afox HD7850 single slot graphics card. It is a really good, inexpensive gaming rig and has required no case mods whatsoever. The BTX format has the motherboard on the opposite side of the case from ATX, meaning that all of the expansion cards are the other way up (the right way up in fact; with the electronics and coolers facing upwards). The BTX format was designed for better airflow dynamics within the case and it is very effective. It is a mystery as to why it didn't displace ATX (a bit like to old chestnut about Beta vs VHS with video cassettes). My first E520 came my way via scavenging at a local council roadside rubbish pick up. The second one I picked up for $AUD30 on eBay. In both cases I have been able to build a cheap, cool running high-performance rig with mostly second hand parts. The limitation is that the Dell BIOS does not allow for any overclocking at all; if you want to OC the rig, you have to use a Windows-based software method. If you can live with that, this rig can still cut it as a low-cost gaming alternative. I can run any of the latest CoD titles at full res with negative effects whatsoever before I start to OC.

I know this is VERY old, but I'm having a difficult time finding any useful info on the BSEL mod for the e4600. I was recently given one and have been trying like mad to do the BSEL mod on it to get a 1066 FSB on my old Gateway system that came with a e4300 (which I did a bsel mod on to bring to 2.4GHz).

No matter what I do as far as silver traces on this chip, I cannot get CPUZ to see it as overclocked at all. in fact it never hits 2.4. It goes to 2.399. big deal...

I tried all the volt mods up to 1.5 with the BSEL mod and it just does not get overclocked. Is something wrong with this chip or is the guideline for BSEL modding different on this chip than the e4300? Someone PLEASE help!

This is on a 945 Intel board btw.

My E520 is far from dead. QX6800@ 3.45GHZ, 8GB DDR2, 240GB SSD, GTX750Ti OC
Throttlestop software gives control of volts and multiplier on C2X chips, and a lot of other things. No pinmods, or BIOS hacks.
Set volts first, it sets multi when selected, not when saved. QX6700 3.2GHZ @ 1.4V. rock solid. QX6800 3.45GHZ @ 1.4625 with heatsinked MB.
Heatpipe coolers needed D9729 bolts in, T9303 slight cover mod cools a little better.
I lap my cpu's and coolers so your mileage may vary, but my QX6800 has seen better days, so you might get more.

Retrorockit said:

My E520 is far from dead. QX6800@ 3.45GHZ, 8GB DDR2, 240GB SSD, GTX750Ti OC
Throttlestop software gives control of volts and multiplier on C2X chips, and a lot of other things. No pinmods, or BIOS hacks.
Set volts first, it sets multi when selected, not when saved. QX6700 3.2GHZ @ 1.4V. rock solid. QX6800 3.45GHZ @ 1.4625 with heatsinked MB.
Heatpipe coolers needed D9729 bolts in, T9303 slight cover mod cools a little better.
I lap my cpu's and coolers so your mileage may vary, but my QX6800 has seen better days, so you might get more.

Click to expand...

You're lucky you don't have to worry about bus errors, because of the unlocked multi!

That's the best Dell I ever heard of! My 2008 Q6600 G0 likes to sometimes give me a hard time, even with a P45!

My bus is 266, hasn't changed. Pinmods never booted for me. PLL software always locked up. No problem with multi it runs whatever the cooling will allow. Actually the used chip I have isn't that good. First core runs 7-8*C hotter than the rest and limits me. I think 3.73 at least for a validation run could be possible. I've finished Unigine Heaven at 3.73, but crashed 3Dmark06. I feel like there may be more in it. I've been posting at OCN "LGA775 club". Pics, and what I'm planning next are there. I have an X6800 (new) that will probably clock higher, but I'm testing cooling right now so I'm sticking with the quads. Thanks for not flaming me for posting on an old thread. I'm trying to get useful info. out there after 10 years of it can't be done form the "experts".

BTW this isn't some test bench freak I built just to prove a point. It's my main computer I use very day.

I just got a CPUZ validation for my E520 @3.72GHz. 14X266 @ 1.5000V. Ran Unigne Valley at that speed 51FPS.

with that much voltage i would be worried about it dieing in the long term. more to the point with that high a voltage and the QX being a quad core your putting alot more stress on the cpu vrm then that board was designed for. in either case if the board holds up the cpu might not or the vrm at some point takes a crap from being overstressed.

be it 65nm quad or 45nm quad, the board needs at min. a 4phase pwm.

as to why the bsel mod didnt work, well that depends on the chipset on the board it self. even though we have bsel settings for different fsb, not all chipsets support all those fsb's stock. first gen core 2 boards supported up to 266mhz/1066QDR mhz cpus then came 333mhz/1333QDR mhz,400mhz/1600QDR mhz.

!.5v. is Intels rated max. V. for 65nm. But I normally run [email protected]. It is first Gen Core2 so 266/1066 is it for fsb. But the E520 does have 4 phase PWM unlike most other Dells. I did have to heatsink the MB to get over 1.45v. But it was designed to run PentiumD 130W. chips, and P4s up to 3.64Ghz, so it's a pretty stout design. When I say I got a validation that's all it means. Some people even disable cores to get a good validation number. The original question was about O/Cing an E520 using BSEL, which is a loser. But the E520 can be overclocked nicely, and if heat is a concern an X6800 should do very well. I'm overclocking a quad to test the cooling system and 3.45 is about the limit for normal use.

I do stand corrected about BSEL. The original post was a BSEL from 800fsb to 1066fsb, which did work since the chipset supports both speeds. I didn't even know 800fsb existed! I was trying 1066 to 1333 which won't work. I gave a guy a Xeon 5080 3.73Ghz and threw in another Xeon I had. He liked the 5030 better because it was 667fsb and he could BSEL to 1066. Also it was an ES chip. He's into LN2, and DICE and likes old P4 era 775 chips. I guess I've got the motherboard that matches those chips.

http://valid.x86.fr/l2j5p1 Dell Dimension E520 @ 3.99Ghz QX6800