PCDOCPRO: Turbo Charging Your Box

Turbo Charging Your Box

Just like turbo charging a 4 cylinder engine in a coup, you, too, can push your computer’s CPU—central processing unit, the brains of your PC—to faster speeds; the more data your CPU can process in a given interval of time, the faster and smoother CPU intensive programs will run—think video games, video editing software and suchlike. The vendor supplied factory presets of your CPU and GPU—graphics processing unit—can usually be altered, overclocked to jack up your CPU’s performance, yet still run comfortably and in a stable state.

Bearing that in mind, realize then that you don’t need to break the bank, shelling out thousands for a new gaming box, as one can often achieve the same results of a newly assembled gaming PC simply by overclocking your existing CPU and graphics chip, and the price is certainly right: free! Before you decide on upgrading your existing processor or graphics chip, try bumping up the clock speed to see if you can squeeze a little more juice out of your current hardware; you may be very happy with the results and end up saving a pretty penny.

The Art and Science of Overclocking

If you’re nervous about voiding your warranty, overclocking may result in more anxiety, as most manufacturers toss the warranty out the window once you start tweaking around with their hardware, pushing it past its factory presets; but if you exercise a little prudence, you’ll be able to overclock your PC without hitting any snags, and you’ll gain a more intimate rapport with your PC because of the hands-on time you’ll invest in overclocking it.

It goes without saying that the faster something works, the more heat it’ll probably produce as a result of the increased speed. This is certainly true about your CPU: the faster you push it, the more heat it’ll need to let off to cool itself down. You definitely don’t want your processor to go up in a caustic burst of binary; keeping your CPU nice and cool is a simple procedure that’ll greatly extend the lifespan of your CPU. Maintaining a cool processor is paramount and must be considered should you decide to overclock your PC.

Meet the Multiplier

There are basically two methods for overclocking your box: stepping-up your PC’s FSB—front side bus—frequency, or increasing your CPU’s multiplier to achieve the same results. Altering your CPU’s multiplier can be done without even opening up your PC’s case; however, most modern CPUs have their multipliers locked. If your CPU’s multiplier can be changed, you’ll need to go into the BIOS to find and crank up this setting. This is how your CPU’s multiplier works: say your FSB is clocked at 200 MHz, the multiplier at 10; your CPU is now clocked at 2.0 GHz, as 200 x 10 is 2000; upping the multiplier to 12 will then set your CPU at 2.4 GHz. This process usually takes a little trial and error to achieve desired satisfaction and stability.

FSB: Push the Bus

Pushing the FSB past its factory preset is the preferred method of overclocking considering most modern processors have their multipliers locked, but this method has an advantage too: not only does it boost the CPU’s clock speed; it also increases the rate in which data migrates between main memory and CPU. Always exercise caution when calibrating your FSB’s clock speed: crashes usually ensue when first tweaking out your FSB, so you may need to experiment with memory and voltage settings in your PC’s BIOS to stabilize your system.

Overclocking your PC is a great way to squeeze every bit of performance out of your CPU; after all, you paid for it; why not get what you paid for?

Give Turbo Charging to your pc box with pcdocpro.