Overclocking For Noobs
Noob: (pronounced like “tube”) = A “newbie”. A novice, or newcomer.
Overclocking can give your PC a speed boost–but you have to be careful.
A while back now I rebuilt a machine into an i7, X58, DDR 3, SLI “gaming rig” (the *latest* hardware technologies) and wrote about my experience and conclusions in a rather popular series of articles.
The title of the series was “The Best CPU? “, which in retrospect was not a good choice, as I did not write solely about the *new* i-series Intel CPU’s, nor did I go into much detail about the over-clocking I did to my i7 920. (But it is a good series. Click the links to read it.)
Fortunately for me, Loyd Case recently wrote a wonderful article for PC World magazine that anyone considering ‘overclocking’ should read first (IMHO).
See, Overclocking for Newbies.
“Overclocking your processor can give your PC a significant speed boost–but you have to be careful. Here’s how to overclock your system’s processor without frying it.”
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Today’s (other) recommended reading:
* FREE Software To Open That Zip or Rar File
“Have you ever received an email attachment where the attachment is a zip file or a rar file and you are wondering how to open them? OR wondering what in the world is a zip file or a rar file?”
* It’s Time We Called Cyber Criminals What They Really Are – Terrorists
“While it may be true that cyber crime doesn’t fit neatly into the restrictive classical definition of terrorism, (motivation is a definitive factor), nevertheless, cyber crime’s effect on Internet users’ is arguably similar – intimidation, coercion (think Rogue software), and instilling fear.”
Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved. 
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
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Tech - for Everyone 
Hey Paul,
I read it few days ago and its really a nice article, at least for me as i still consider me as a noob when it comes to over-clocking.
I tried to over-clock my cpu once but i noted that the boot time increased terribly, so, had to rollback.. :P
But i’ll be giving it a second try..
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Ranjan,
Loyd’s articles have taught me a lot over the years…
You did the right thing by rolling back. Overclocking is more the Art than the Science, and much of it is trial and error.. starting small. For the first few years of this series, I made a point of not mentioning OC-ing at all, as I believe it is an arena not suitable for “everyone”, but reserved for Uber Geeks. It has risk, and my experiences were that the gains were too modest to warrant such experimentation.
The i-Series architecture changes that. And I think Loyd’s article explains things well enough for the older hardware/architectures. (I would not bother on older stuff myself.)
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“It has risk, and my experiences were that the gains were too modest to warrant such experimentation.”– That’s the main reason as why people stay away from these stuffs..
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Ranjan,
I think there is a certain point, when progressing from “novice” to “power user”, where the lure of OC-ing becomes .. irresistible, and the person tries it out for themselves. (Myself, and many others I’ve talked to described it this way)
With today’s “unlocked” chips, and modern BIOSes, much of the risk and.. esoteric nature have been eliminated. For example, I made one quick adjustment to my i7, which returned a notable result, and I have no desire to delve into it further than that. I prefer rock-solid to “extreme”…
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