Basic Guide to Overclocking

From TheBestCaseScenario

[edit] Introduction

When overclocking your machine you want to watch various aspects of your system, heat and rise, stabilty can be affected if pushed too far or done incorrectly. Overclocking requires you to tamper with settings in your BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) that when done incorrectly, can permanently damage your hardware.

[edit] What to check

Before you start check your stock specs for all your items, get all details like the default FSB (Front side Bus), Multiplier, Your memory timings.

Once you get your settings check them, for example a 200MHz FSB with a 10x Multiplier will give you 2GHz (2000MHz)

[edit] Where to start

Over clocking can be a tricky process, this will cover the basics, in other words you might only get an extra 2-300MHz, but it varies from processor to motherboard.

Start by running a test like super PI and calculate PI to 4m places, an average 2GHz PC with 1GB RAM will complete this task in about 3min 30seconds.

Restart and load your bios, usually DEL or F2, within the bios there will be a timings/Frequency option, within here you will find the FSB for the system, more advanced motherboards will allow you to lock the CPU from the rest of the system, this has the advantage of stopping your memory from melting itself.

Start by raising the FSB slowly, raise it so your core speed go up by 50MHz, restart into windows/Linux and then run Super pi again, see if its faster, check your system properties to check the speed has indeed gone up, then run super pi to 32m places, this will stress check the cpu.

Also check your temps and make sure they don't go above the working threshold, if all goes well, restart and repeat the procedure, keep going until you get errors, then lower the core speed by 50MHz,

Some times you can gain by raising your multiplier, some CPU's have these locked as default.

[edit] Results

With this view on overclocking you can get a slight boost, and normally without aftermarket coolers also, but ALWAYS check your temps,

I got a AMD Athlon 64 3000 (Stock @ 1.8GHz) to run stable at 2.2GHz with this, using nothing but the stock cooler and good airflow.

[edit] Stability

This is a must, if your overclock isn't stable you can damage the processor, programs like PRime95 and Orthos are good to run for 6hours+ if stable after that then you should be ok, although if you don't have the time then OCCT can do a test in 30mins, it's still recommended that you test on Prime or Orthos for a while though 4+ hrs

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