[Daveskater]

If you're reading this then you must be considering overclocking your PC. What I have written is basically a few things you should know and be able to answer about the workings of a PC.

Disclaimer: This is not meant as a guide on how to overclock a component, just information and a guide on what you should know before you do overclock.

First, some basic information:
In case you didn't already know, overclocking is when you run a piece of hardware above the manufacturer's rated/standard speed. This is the opposite to underclocking, which is when you make the hardware run at a lower speed, but I won't go into that now.

Methods of Overclocking
Let's say, for example, you want to overclock your CPU. The two main ways of doing this are raising the FSB (Front Side Bus) or increasing the multiplier. The method that you choose can depend on the processor that you have, as some come with unlocked multipliers aimed at PC enthusiasts, to make it easy to overclock. As you overclock your CPU, you may need to adjust the its core voltage. You would do this to control the temperature of the core, or to adjust the stability of the CPU.

Cooling
When you overclock a component, it is going to run hotter than it does usually. This means that you will need adequate cooling for that component. Some CPU's come with a good stock heatsink that you can overclock with slightly, but most of the time you will need third party cooling.

The three types of cooling are:

• Air
• Water
• Passive

Air cooling is when you use a fan or a heatsink and a fan to cool a component, and is what is most commonly used in standard systems. You can get good third party air cooling systems, such as Zalman or ThermalTake branded ones. There are lots of reviews on the Internet, so you can find the best one for your processor/socket.

Water cooling is when you have an external reservoir of water that is pumped over the components in your case, e.g. the CPU and/or the GPU. You will generally achieve higher speeds with water cooling, as it is more effective than air or passive cooling.

Passive cooling is essentially putting a heatsink on a component. There are no fans with passive cooling, as these systems rely on air passing through the case to keep the heatsink cool. You can get good passive coolers, but I would recommend air or water cooling if you want to overclock a CPU or GPU, however high spec RAM comes with heat spreaders to keep themselves cool.

No matter what method you use, you will want to use Arctic Silver thermal paste between the cooler and the component, if you are OC'ing a processor. This is because Arctic Silver has much better cooling abilities than standard thermal paste that you will receive with your kits, as it contains mostly silver, which is an excellent dissipater of heat. For instructions on how to apply arctic silver thermal paste, see the instructions included with the paste, or see this website here.

Also, as a guideline, you do not want your processor to go above 60C. Some processors may be able to tolerate a bit more than this, but it is best to stay away from what is considered the maximum, as it can damage the processor. Having a good amount of airflow through your case, keeping your heatsink clean from dust and using Arctic Silver thermal paste are the three easiest ways of helping keeping your CPU temperature down. There is a list of maximum temperatures for processors at Heatsink Guide (click CPU temperatures on the left hand side), but it does not have the latest processors on there, such as Intel Core 2 Duo or the AMD Athlon 64 X2 series.

Some things you should know before overclocking
You should know about processor multipliers and FSB's if you wish to overclock your CPU. In short, you multiply the FSB by the multiplier to get your clock speed. For example, my CPU's multiplier is 15 and the FSB is 133MHz, so 15 x 133 = 1995MHz, so basically I have near enough a 2GHz CPU.

You should also know about the Front Side bus. This Front Side Bus is the same as the CPU FSB. The FSB of the CPU is actually the speed of the motherboard's Front Side Bus, and what I am talking about here is what the Front Side Bus actually does.
The main purpose of the Front Side Bus is to connect the RAM and the CPU together. The FSB also connects just about everything else on the motherboard, including the PCI slots and AGP/PCI-e slots. Because the PCI slots are connected to the FSB, the speed that they operate at will increase as the FSB speed is increased. This does mean that your PCI devices may not function properly under the higher speeds.

GPU overclocking
Overclocking your graphics card is different to your processor. This is because it is not done in the BIOS, but with software. Some cards come pre-OC'd, wuch as most BFG cards or some XFX ones. However, if you want to make them even higher, you can use RivaTuner or ATITool to do so. Be warned that you will definitely want after market cooling to do this and you may not see much difference, depending on how high you decide to go.

First time overclocking
When you first overclock, it is best to do it on components that you are about to replace, in case anything goes wrong, otherwise you'll end up getting new components anyway.

PC stability
When you increase your CPU's performance, it may affect the PC's stability. Quite often, if you have a good overclock and do it correctly, your PC will run fine and you can enjoy your new found performance. However, if you get into your operating system and the PC freezes for short periods of time, or even freezes completely, you will need to reduce the speed again to when it was stable. It is also possible that if your cooling isn't good enough for the speed you go up to, the CPU may overheat and shut down, or even fry itself in the worst case scenario, which will result in you needing a new CPU.

Having a good overclock
To get a good overclock, you will need a good motherboard and good RAM. There are plenty of motherboards out there designed for overclocking, so will work better than a cheap motherboard and some Generic, Value RAM. Some BIOS's don't even allow a change in the multiplier or FSB speed so if you are going to buy a new board especially, do your homework first.

When not to overclock
If you have to ask what section of your BIOS the settings for overclocking your CPU are, or even what a BIOS is, then you should not overclock. This is simply becaues you are not knowledgeable enough in how a computer works. But remember, the more you think you know, the less you actually do. Unless you are very experienced and wrote the rule book. See Jason's note at the end of this post.

If you go too far
If you overclock your CPU and after exiting the BIOS and saving, the PC doesn't boot again, you will need to reset your CMOS. You can do this by moving a jumper across on your motherboard and then back again, or removing the CMOS battery, waiting a minute, then putting it back again. This will reset your BIOS to the default settings so you will have to start again from the beginning. Before doing any of this, however, you must ground yourself, preferably with an anti-static wristband. Otherwise you risk damaging your components via static electricity.

Conclusion
This is just the beginning to the world of overclocking. There are many more things to learn before you overclock, and gaining experience always helps (However, this doesn't mean clocking 6 CPU's so high they melt to the motherboard then calling yourself a seasoned veteran).

I hope this has given you an insight into overclocking and I wish you success if you decide to OC any of your components

Notes

Josh: Remember. When testing the stability, use stress test programs such as PRIME95 or Orthos which will give your processor a full stress test and find even the slightest instabilities for a perfect, stable overclock.

Jason: Remember, overclocking isn't for everyone; it can be very time consuming and frustrating, but, if you get through it all and get a stable overclock, you'll definitely want to do again! Beware; overclocking will void your warranty!

I forgot to mention, before you even attempt to overclock your cpu ect. you should backup all important data before hand. You could use Norton Ghost, as that does a complete image disk of your boot partion. Many problems can happen during overclocking, such as loss of data ect.

Obviously, everyone makes mistakes, that's how we learn. But just make sure you backup all your important data because we cannot be held responsible for any damage caused to your hardware during an overclocking attempt.

Regards Jason