Dell Axes XPS 720 OC

Dell has removed the highest-rated overclock option for its XPS 720 H2C quad-core, watercooled gaming system, the company said today in its official blog. While the system had launched with speeds as high as 3.73GHz, the Texas-based PC builder has found that there are too few of Intel's 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme chips that will run at the rated speed. The choice was made to make sure that buyers had a reasonable chance of receiving a system on time rather than waiting for chips that could pass muster, Dell said.

For now, all water-cooled systems will have to use the earlier 2.66GHz Core 2 Extreme overclocked to a still fast 3.46GHz but with less headroom for further boosts, according to the company. However, the firm notes that the 2.93GHz chip still exists in the normal, air-cooled XPS 720 at 3.2GHz and that the H2C edition has now been shown to overclock successfully to 3.46GHz with the faster stock CPU, which should reappear soon as a custom-order option.

Gamers with orders for the top system have been asked to cancel their purchases and re-order with the 3.46GHz clock rate edition, which starts at $5,939 with a 24-inch display; new orders ship inside of two weeks but will be upgraded to next-day shipping to help compensate for the reduced speed.

By Electronista Staff