Tutorial - Over Clocking

If you are reading this you probably have heard the term overclocking and are familiar with its meaning. Overclocking, when spoke of in relation to a PC, means gaining extra performance from your hardware. Quite simply, overclocking is changing the settings on your hardware to make it run faster than the manufacturer intended. All hardware has a certain margin of speed that it was designed to run in. Therefore, overclocking pushes the hardware past its limits. For this reason, you can sometimes run into problems. Before we begin you must understand that overclocking can damage your hardware. Under certain circumstances when overclocking your system may refuse to boot and you will need to reset the cmos, if you are unsure about doing this, refer to your motherboard manual. In this tutorial I will focus on overclocking a CPU. Basically your CPU has to variables which define its clock speed, one being the multiplier, the other being the front side bus (fsb). For example, a 2000MHz chip may have a multiplier of 10 and a fsb of 200. 10*200 = 2000MHz Recently chip makers have begun to lock the multiplier on their CPU's, this means the only option we have for overclocking is infact the front side bus. If you intend to overclock your CPU by a subtantial ammount you will be best having a motherboard which allows AGP/PCI locking. Without this, as you higher the fsb, the AGP/PCI clock will also, this can cause damage to the hard-drive and can cause video card errors. Another important aspect of your setup is your power supply (PSU). A poor powersupply can cause problems when overclocking and limit your overclock, with modern hardware I would suggest at least a quality 350w PSU from a top supplier such as Enermax or Globalwin. The most important hiderence to overclocking is heat, heat is your enemy. Do not attempt to overclock unless you have sufficient cooling. Be it a watercooling setup, phase-change or air cooled. I recommend at least having one case fan and upgrading to a new heatsink and fan from the CPUs stock cooler. If you decide you would like to overclock there is a few pieces of software which are needed. A quick google search will provide you with download locations. 3DMark2001se : A benchmarking program which stresses your hardware and provides you with an overall result in the form of a score. Prime95 : Stresses the memory and test stability of a system. When overclocking you can often have stability issues. Motherboard Monitor : Displays case and CPU temperatures. Often a temperature monitor software package is bundled with your motherboard drivers. Once you have accuired these program you are ready to begin. Assuming your multiplier is locked we are left with the only option of pushing the fsb. To begin with you will want to lock the AGP/PCI. After this slowly increase the fsb clock in increments of 5-10. Boot into windows and run 3DMark2001 to test stability. Once we start to encounter stability issues, return to the bios and increase the Vcore by 0.25. Benchmark the system again to check for stability issues, if issues continue try raising the Vcore slightly more. Be warned, as you increase the Vcore and overclock your system you must take not on the temperatures. Realistically, you do not want your CPU temp rising above 60c. Increasing the Vcore should allow a higher fsb is most cases, a Vcore about 1.9 should be avoided on air cooling. Increasing the Vcore will shorten the life of your chip, usually only by a few mnoths approximately. If you are running your

Vcore under 1.9-2.0 your chip life should be fine. When you find you can no longer increase the fsb without issues such as windows refusing to boot, 3DMark2001 crashing, go back to the bios and lower the fsb by 5, or return it to the last stable value. For example: 10*166 = 1660MHz 10*176 = 1760MHz 10*180 = 1800MHz Stability issues, increase Vcore by 0.25 10*185 = 1850MHz 10*190 = 1900MHz Stability issues, increase Vcore by 0.25 10*195 = 1950MHz 10*200 = 2000MHz Stability issues, increase Vcore by 0.25 10*200 = 2000MHz Still issues, lower vcore and return to last stable setting. During this process constant monitor of the CPU temperatures is required. Once you have found a stable clock in 3dmark2001 then proceed and boot up Prime95. Leave prime95 running on one of its various tests for many hours, if you recieve an error within 3-10hours, lower your fsb by another 5 and repeat. Stability is person preference, but usually the more stable, the more safe your hardware is. You must remember some chips will overclock greatly, yet other simply will not, no matter how much voltage you push through it. have fun