Manufacturer overclocking - likely cause of system problems?

[Spiderfarmer]

Hiya gang,
I'm trying to track down what could be causing all of the various problems that I have with my Dell Dimension 8100. Now, I realize that some of the problems stem from the fact that I bought a Dell.

But, I was describing the problems to someone, and he said it sounded like the system had been overclocked to run at the advertised speed...and the overclocking was causing heat problems that may be causing other parts of the system to fail. Now, keep in mind, he suggested that without taking the system apart, just based on symptoms he'd heard.

Anyway, short of taking the system apart to read the code on the chipset, is there a good way to check to see if a system has been overclocked? I've run diagnostics programs, which tell me what speed it's running (a little slower than advertised speed, but not much), but I don't know if that shows the original configuration of the chip, or just the current performance of the chip.