Who Overclocks?

[Cuog]

I have been ind of curious as to if anyone here overclocks their computers.

If you do what sort of setup do you have?

Mine has been going strong for a while:
AMD Sempron64 3000+ stock 1.8 GHz 1.4vcore @ 2.4GHz 1.5vcore
1.5GB Adata VSeries RAM stock: 400 MHz @ 440MHz
Geforce 7600 GT KO
core stock: 580 @ 640MHz
mem stock: 1400 @ 1600MHz

[JBotAlan]

Meh, who needs overclocking when all you do is run MPlab and Winamp and the occasional game of Pocket Tanks/StepMania/Super DXBall?

But seriously, I'm on a Dell laptop that a) I'd be really afraid for my...umm...lap ( ) if I overclocked it, and b) serves its purpose. I don't game. At all. Who has time when you are the programmer?

JBot

[Protronie]

I tired it once... its was very very ugly!
Never again!

[Cody Carey]

I currently have my working computer overclocked to 2.8 from 2.2 ghz. The Radeon 9800 that I have in there is also core overclocked up about 150 Mhz.


My real OCing is done on my "clunkers"- a collection of pentium 3's and twos that I have sitting around. I have one of the celerons overclocked from 500 Mhz to 933mhz, which is a bit of a jump for that old of a processor. The rest of the clock jumps are pretty low... in the 20~100Mhz range, but I can still say that they are overclocked

Right now I'm kinda getting into overclocking the older ones by jumping pins on the processor, but I haven't had any success stories yet...


We'll see.

[Mike]

I'm underclocked for battery life

[Kingofl337]

If you have an Athlon 64 With Cool and Quiet / Centrino / Core 2 Duo the CPU automaticly under clocks the CPU to save power and reduce heat.

I overclocked my Athlon X2 3800 from 1.8GHz to 2.5GHz.

Can't overclock my MacBook PRO CPU

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by Mike

I'm underclocked for battery life

I do the same except when rendering or when I am plugged in.

[randalcr]

Does anyone know about some good overclocking software? I'm kind of a novice when comes to OCing but I really want to get some experience with it.

[JesseK]

I plan to get a Phenom II 955 and overclock it to 965 speeds. Doing so should make up for the overhead caused by the southbridge chipset raid I will put on the 2 60GB SSD's coming in for that system. Past that, I intend for this system to last 5 years like my current one has and thus don't see the point in risking stability or longevity of the system.

Seeing that this is an old thread, I'll respond to the one who revived it -- usually the motherboard you purchase for overclocking comes with some sort of overclocking software. Additionally, there's the old fashioned method of doing it manually in the BIOS. You'd be surprised how much more you learn by doing it that way, but just be sure to do it in small steps. There are also other ways to overclock, such as upping the voltage and clock rate of the RAM, or decreasing the CAS latency of the RAM. Check out www.tomshardware.com (OC section) in order to get started.

[Cuog]

I would say you are worrying far too much over longevity of your system. That sempron I have listed way up there I finally retired over winter break. It didn't die, it was just so outdated I couldn't play new games on it anymore so I upgraded to a quad core phenom. So I got 5 years 05-10 out of it and it was still going strong with a 33% overclock on cheap components. I didn't even get better cooling. It was all on the stock heatsink with a bigger fan put on it.

Clock your machine as far as it can go while staying stable no matter what. Then check the temps under max load, if they're within safe operating ranges you're good to go and never have to mess with it again.

Don't use overclocking software, go through the bios there are more and better settings there, and you're less likely to get data corruption from the computer becoming unstable while working with the harddisk since you're not using the harddisk at all during BIOS. You will need some software for testing. I used CPUZ to see what my current settings were, and Folding at Home as a benchmark and stability testing(my sempron also ran this 24/7 for the five years of its life)

[randalcr]

Well if I shouldn't use software to OC can someone give me a guide or tutorial on how to get the locked clock settings unlocked so that I can OC through the BiOS? It would be much appreciated! And thanks for the info guys!

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Cuog

I would say you are worrying far too much over longevity of your system.

Being that it's my main system used for DVR, CAD, and light gaming, even a week of downtime isn't worth the risk. I've fried some processors in my time (first one ever was an ESD'ed 486 ) yet nowadays it's just not worth the hassle to push it to the limits. I also like my computer SILENT since it's in the living room, and don't want the hassle of water cooling; so a $40 120mm 17dB fan/heatsink setup needs to do the trick.