Theoretical Issues

Don’t skip this section! I realize it’s boring and uninteresting to search for and digest information. You just want to know the magic buttons you should press in order to get the necessary result – an overclocked PC. But such universal buttons do not exist! They are different in every situation and you have to have some knowledge in order to find them.

After all, if you don’t want to do any overclocking, you shouldn’t probably be reading this at all. And if you do, you will anyway have to learn everything from your own experience sooner or later, so why now learn it right now? You don’t want to pay for your knowledge with burned-out or damaged components and with wasted time and money when there is information waiting for you to apply it to your purpose.

Collecting your system info

First of all, you need to know what you will be dealing with. If you have assembled your PC with your own hands or at least taken part in choosing the configuration, you should already know what components it consists of. If you don’t, you should identify each component first. Learn your PC and its parts, browse through your mainboard manual. Run informational programs and a few performance tests and write down the technical characteristics, temperatures and voltages under load and in idle mode. This information is going to be helpful afterwards. Knowing the exact configuration of your system, you can make a precise enough guess at the possible level it can be overclocked to. The performance data will show you how your system performance has increased after overclocking. Sudden fluctuations of the voltages and temperatures are indicative of dangerous situations you can identify and avoid. With these preliminary tests you can also make sure that your system is stable in its normal operating mode.

List of useful software

Every overclocker has a wide range of software tools that fall into a few groups:

• Informational/diagnostic
• Monitoring
• Overclocking
• Stability check
• Performance benchmark

There is no sharp separating line between the categories. Informational utilities can often benchmark performance while monitoring tools can overclock as well.

Informational & diagnostic utilities can accurately identify your system configuration. The two most advanced suites are Lavalys Everest and SiSoftware Sandra. Their capabilities are not limited to reporting the configuration, though. These software suites can perform monitoring functions, benchmark performance, and test the system for stability. However, you don’t have to run these voluminous suites, especially as only a part of their functionality is provided for free. There are many less known programs of the same type, e.g. WinAudit or PC Wizard. Instead the universal suites you can use a set of small, free-of-charge special-purpose utilities. For example, overclockers make wide use of the CPU-Z utility that reports information about your CPU as well as mainboard and memory. For more control over the memory timings you can use the MemSet program.

The best of universal monitoring tools have always been developed by enthusiasts, by independent developers. Unfortunately, this is the reason why they are usually short-lived projects. MBProbe was the first abandoned program and then we lost Motherboard Monitor. Today, SpeedFan is the most popular monitoring tool.

The CPU should better be overclocked using BIOS options. If you can’t find them in your mainboard’s BIOS, you can try the universal Windows-based ClockGen program. You can also look up on the CD enclosed with your mainboard for any exclusive program that can overclock from Windows, control the fans, and provide monitoring options.

The range of programs for overclocking graphics cards is broad as well. RivaTuner is perhaps the best in its class, but you may also want to use PowerStrip, NiBiTor, ATI Tray Tools, ATI Tool, etc.

Neither program can give you a 100% guarantee of stable operation of an overclocked CPU but your chances grow up dramatically if you use two or three such utilities. The stability check can be performed with OCCT, S&M, Prime95 or any other program that can load your PC heavily. You can even run your favorite 3D game for that.

As for performance benchmarks, there are hundreds of them that can test the system at large as well as single components. The BenchmarkHQ website offers a long list of useful utilities.

Overclocking related materials

We touch upon overclocking issues in most of our reviews. If you are regularly reading our news and reviews, you should have already accumulated enough knowledge to guide you in your practical experiments. The CPU overclocking statistics can give you an idea of what you can achieve. You can also refer to our forum for discussions of overclocking related problems.

You can also refer to our forum for discussions of overclocking related problems.

You can read one of the latest articles called CPU Overclocking Guide. And you shouldn’t ignore an article if it doesn’t mention your specific CPU model. There are universal overclocking basics and if you’ve got a clear understanding of how to overclock a Pentium III, you will easily overclock any modern CPU.