Old PC Challenge

[Beloit911]

So my buddie and I just picked up two dell precision t3600 towers from and engineering firm that is upgrading their PCs. I do not yet have it as he is shipping it to me.

 

From what I can tell there is a Xeon E-5 1620, a quadro k4000 and 16GB of DDR3 (not sure what speeds yet) Google reveals that they are 4X4GB matched sticks at 1866Mbs, and are in fact ECC.

 

My question to you revolves around our little competition. We are going to see who gets the biggest boost in performance from the start point of these dirty old birds to whatever we can scrape out of them without installing any new parts.

 

Do you think the Bios on these prebuilt towers will allow me any adjustment to the base clock?

 

Would a small ram drive help squeeze any benefit out of the benchmarks?

 

Would lapping the IHS be a worthwhile endeavor?

 

What other tricks can I use to wring any performance this rig? (Besides just cleaning it)

 

The only upgrade we can make is adding new thermal paste to the heatsink.

Edited January 15, 2020 by Beloit911

[Beloit911]

Any recommendations as to some good benchmark tests would also be appreciated. Thanks!  Currently have an identical render file for Premiere, and Cinebench for the basics.