Continued:

The next thing to mention is that Dell somewhat mentions this option on their technical specifications page of their website, but doesn’t heavily promote it, which leads me to believe that they are not actually pricing their desktop higher than they would originally just because users can now run the microprocessor up to 400MHz higher than Dell (or Intel) had originally intended. While I can’t get a confirmation on this, I certainly hope this is not the case. I would like to believe that this is Dell’s way of meeting their customer’s desires and giving them a little bit of free performance, but I could be wrong on this. I personally haven’t see any advertisements of any sort that promote overclocking in Dell’s XPS Gen5 gaming system, but if or when we start seeing those I guess we will know that there was a motive behind the concept of overclocking.

Though I can’t exactly say that overclocking has gone mainstream, since Dell’s high-end gaming desktop is the only system from the world’s largest OEM that have this functionality, it has definitely received a huge stamp of approval. I don’t really expect Dell’s $299 systems to ever have this functionality enabled simply because of the low quality components and Intel’s stance on overclocking. Intel certainly wouldn’t want Dell to heavily promote overclocking, purchase lower clocked microprocessors and retail their systems as faster machines by simply overclocking them. Besides, as I have stated, this feature isn’t really for a mainstream computer user. I still have my doubts as to how many people would actually run their newly purchased gaming system at the overclocked settings, but that’s a completely different topic in itself.

Custom PC builders have been offering overclocked systems and overclocking options in the system BIOS for a long time. Granted the majority of these builders pride in themselves by offering the fastest and the prettiest gaming systems in the world, it was time for the likes of Dell to get onboard, especially if they are on a streak to please the gaming crowd. Could Dell set a trend for other OEMs to start offering overclocking options in the BIOS? I certainly hope so. While it wouldn’t affect those of us who like to build our own systems, it would still give those with limited hardware knowledge a little bonus, assuming companies don’t start charging for this feature.

It’s great to finally see overclocking being looked at as a feature and not as something that can only harm business for the OEMs. While all of this doesn’t sound like much, it gives hope that we might see more changeable BIOS settings sometime in the future. Though it may not happen soon, hopefully we may see standard desktop systems that will be much more flexible and user "tweakable" with the same warranty and quality assurances that novice users demand and can’t get with a home built PC.