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Gareth Ogden

Customised - Clocking on

Posted at: 1st November 2007

For those of us who have been overclocking our PCs for so long that pumping up the FSB and vcore is practically an instinctive act performed immediately after the operating system has finished installing on a new build, it's easy to forget that it's quite a daunting task for overclocking virgins.

Despite the fact that motherboard manufacturers have continued to develop and include software overclocking utilities in the box, these tools can't compete with the flexibility of the BIOS, or the combination of BIOS tuning and more advanced Windows utilities, such as ClockGen. They may be n00b-friendly, but generally, they're also pretty crap and do little to encourage an eager, wannabe overclocker to dabble in the dark arts, never mind actually achieving good overclocking results.

The simple fact is that if you want to successfully overclock your PC, you have to get your hands dirty in the BIOS. Herein lies the problem for newcomers to overclocking, as the vast majority of BIOS screens are extremely intimidating. The chunky white text evokes memories of good old-fashioned DOS screens (for those old enough to remember DOS), and is in stark contrast to the luxuriously shaded 3D environments and GUI interface of Windows Vista. Basically, to the uninitiated, the BIOS is a terrifying place that only exists to completely destroy your PC. If someone decided to produce a map outlining everything related to the computer, then the BIOS would be the area labelled 'Here be Dragons'.

Overcoming that fear is the first step to overclocking your PC and, with this in mind, we've produced an introductory guide to overclocking your PC in this issue, including the basic theory behind it and a step-by-step guide to overclocking a Core 2 processor.

The good news is that due to the continual focus on overclocking by many motherboard manufacturers, and the fact that Intel seemingly can't produce a poorly overclocking CPU at the moment, overclocking has never been easier. As our guide shows, boosting the clock speed of a quad-core processor by a massive 1.2GHz is a straightforward process involving a mere handful of BIOS settings. What's more, most motherboards are now forgiving of overambitious overclocks. Unless you're particularly careless or over-zealous, or have used inadequate cooling, there's little or no risk to your components.

The performance benefits from overclocking are obvious, and the example in our feature is a perfect case in point. We used a G0-stepping Core 2 Quad Q6600, which is a quad-core processor that costs around £170 and runs at a fairly sedate 2.4GHz - well below the 3GHz frequency of the mighty £650 Core 2 Extreme QX6850. However, by the end of our overclocking exploits, our £170 chip was running at a massive 3.6GHz, a speed that humbled even the QX6850 - a chip costing nearly four times as much. If that isn't a good enough reason to load up your BIOS screen then I don't know what is.

Overclocking may be a daunting prospect initially but, by following our guide, you'll be able to boost your PC's performance to the same level as significantly more expensive systems, and all it will cost you is the price of a decent cooler.

Once you taken those first few steps and acquired a taste for overclocking, you can read our two-page 'Extreme Overclocking' guide, in which some of the UK's best overclockers (including [EP-UK] Mr Dizzy, the top scorer on our benchmarks leaderboard at www.custompc.co.uk/benchmarks) outline their ten top tips for taking the performance of your PC to even headier heights using water and phase-change cooling.

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