A Few Thoughts on Overclocking

No, this isn’t going to be a “How to overclock your CPU” post, but rather some observations on overclocking, and overclockers (myself included).

There is nothing new about the practice of overclocking a computer’s CPU to gain some extra performance. I’ve personally been doing it to my own machines for many years. I have had machines that were absolutely unbelievable overclockers, and some I could barely get past stock, but one thing remained constant for me – I always wanted to get every drop of performance I could out of my PC without putting the hardware in extreme danger, and without getting very extravagant with my cooling.

There are three basic categories people can fall into when it comes to overclocking a CPU.

First, there are those who absolutely will not even attempt to overclock their rig. The way they see it, they bought a chip that runs at a rated speed decided upon by the manufacturer, and that’s where it’s going to stay. They simply do not want to take the risk – the risk of damaging their hardware or of even remotely sacrificing any stability. Often this group will simply choose a quality off-the-shelf PC from an OEM rather than build their own PC’s, even if they have the skills and technical know-how to build their own rig.

The middle group is where I fall. We want to make sure that we get the most for the money we paid for our hardware. We don’t mind taking the time to slowly increase the speed, while carefully testing for stability to ensure we are getting the most we can get. We will generally buy a “better than stock” cooler, some good thermal compound, and a case with good air-flow, but we aren’t putting major bucks into it. We also aren’t going to get greedy with our OC – we want it fast and we want it stable! This is one of the reasons we build our own rigs – we want to have the choice to tweak, and optimize our BIOS settings, in order to achieve a stable overclock.

The third and more extreme group take overclocking to an entirely different level. For them, overclocking almost becomes a sport. These extreme overclockers will put plenty of extra money into specialized cooling (such as Water Cooling) and specialized cases to ensure they can get every last possible ounce of juice that CPU has. Sure, like those of us in the middle group, they do it to make their rigs faster, but there’s also the bragging rights to go along with it.

I’m not telling you to go out and try to overclock your own rig. Be sure you know what you are doing – do your research, start small, and keep voltage increases (and heat) to a minimum and you can get more speed. Many read posts on forums from some of these “extreme overclockers” and instantly go and try to set their own rigs to these insane settings without the proper cooling equipment (and possibly without a quality PSU and Case) and end up causing hardware damage.

Even though I’m not doing a how-to, I do have some basic advice for you:

1. Start small –  Don’t go for the highest possible overclock out of the gate! Start low and work your way up.
2. Keep your voltages in check – Start a little higher than you might think, get your OC stable, and then back off of the VCore until you get it as low as you can while maintaining stability. Too much voltage=excess heat.
3. Keep an eye on your temps – especially early on. Make sure you are getting good accurate readings. If you are increasing your FSB beyond spec for your board, make sure to monitor your chipset temperatures as well.
4. Buy a CPU that is suited for overclocking – If buying an Intel chip, consider a Core2Duo from the e4xxx series or even a Pentium Dual-Core from the e2xxx series. The lower (200MHz/400Mhz Rated) FSB makes it easier to bump up FSB and stay within spec for your Motherboard and RAM. (I have an e4600 Core2Duo). Remember this, a Lower stock FSB+Higher Stock Multiplier=Easier Overclock.
5. Buy quality RAM – Get good RAM…RAM with heat spreaders. Get RAM rated a notch or two higher than what your CPU speed would indicate. I purchased G.Skill DDR2-1066 (PC8500) and it’s still running 66mhz below rated spec even after the overclock.

Follow these basic rules of thumb, find some good how-to’s online, bring a lot of patience,  leave some greed behind, and you can get a successful overclock. Remember, anything over stock is gravy, so just because you see some guy saying he can hit 4GHz doesn’t mean you have to go out and try and do the same – be sane, and be successful.

Here’s what I ended up with – tested 24 hrs stable with 64-bit Prime95 and I’m quite happy. I could probably get more, but I’m happy where it’s at – a 600MHz overclock is amazing over what I could get with a LOT more work with AMD CPU’s. I will say this, these Core2Duo’s (and especially the 200/400MHz FSB models) overclock like mad…unlike anything I’ve ever seen before!