Overclocking, techniques for increasing your computer's performance

The main problem is that the computer simply may not work. Increasing the speed of a processor is not magic: It may work, it may not. If we push the processor too hard, normally it will refuse to start up, there will be occasional crashes or some programs will not work, etc. Besides this, when it does work the first time, problems may arise later with the processor owing to three features of the electronic circuits:

1 Increase in heat: on raising the operating speed, we increase the amount of electricity flowing through the circuit and, consequently, the heat it gives off. This can cause faults or even permanent defects in the chip if the heat is excessive 2  Electromigration: This is a rather ambiguous concept. We know that faster operating speeds cause a kind of ‘erosion’ in the processor’s circuits. This erosion may in time create defects while, evidently, making a processor work at a higher frequency may greatly accelerate this process. It is not clear, however, whether this process is decisive in the (short) life of a microprocessor.

3  A change in the overall configuration of the machine: Stretching the frequency of the processor in many cases involves increasing the frequency of other components: memory, motherboard, video card, etc. 4  Machine guarantee: Overclocking the processor or changing the factory configuration of any of its internal components implies the automatic loss of guarantee. As a result, it should be remembered that it is possible to seriously damage the computer by making it work beyond its capabilities.

Cooling techniques  

  1 What is overclocking?
  2 Where does the process begin? 
  3 Before starting
  4 Jumpers and BIOS
  5 Changing the voltage
  6 Problems
  7 Cooling techniques
  8 More about cooling
  9 Cooling for software
10 Examples of overclocking
11 Pushing other components
12 Graphics cards
13 Utilities
14 Overclocking forum
15 Links

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