Thread: Overclocking

Im well out of date with computers now! I use an athlon xp desktop at the office and a celly 450mhz laptop at home. So my answers might not be quite what your looking for! Im only answering cos I saw a magazine in a shop the other day saying "everything you need to know about overclocking" I thought "bollocks"

My answers are more along the lines of giving you something to think about.
Do you actually need to overclock? Overclocking dosnt make it so you can play that new game or run that massive program you just downloaded. If done moderatly and properly it will improve stability when using programs which really hammer your resources.

Cooling..... Depends on how much you overclock. Simple as that. I dont know what temps are like in computers anymore but generally if you want an overclock to boast about or will make noticable speed hikes then upgrade your cooling.

Testing..... uhh. Can of worms!
Memtest86 was good for memory and will also flag up cpu errors too. Everything is linked so if you keep getting crashes whilst running a cpu test suite it could be your ram, cpu, chipset, harddrive, pci etc etc.

The best way is to do a small overclock and then use your computer the way you usually would for a week. Yes, a week! If all is ok bump it up some more and so on. Whats the point in testing your car tune ups at 8000rpm when your never gonna rev over 4000rpm? Does your car run without error at 8000rpm before the tuneups in the first place? Remember that most 2ghz chips are the 2.2ghz rejects.

Remember that most damage is caused by bumping up your bus too much without testing properly. You must test each clock for a long time. Dont overclock, bootup and test for 2hrs and then overclock some more. You'll end up with a system that wont run stable even at stock.


I used to be a big overclocker and my overall conclusion is "dont bother!" Especially nowadays, hence my first point.... do you actually need to?

Sorry for a shite answer, im just getting old and bitter. Im one of those fishermen who try to catch moderate fish on the lowest rated line possible instead of trying to catch sharks with shock cable!