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Case 1: Chris Martini

Officer in charge of overclocking: Ben Hardwidge

When Chris originally emailed us the specification of his PC, he described his Compaq Deskpro case as 'a good solid metal case that can take a beating'. However, this didn't quite prepare us for the reality. The PC looks as though it's been completely oblivious to the last decade, and Chris wasn't lying when he said 'beating' either. He told us that the case had been 'modified' to house a 550W PSU, but he didn't tell us that this included battering his PSU into a different shape and then taping it back together.

Nevertheless, Chris achieved a damn good overclock with his modest specification. Using a micro-ATX ASRock 939S56-M motherboard with a SiS 756 chipset, Chris managed to overclock his Socket 939 2GHz Athlon 64 3200+ Venice chip to an impressive 2.5GHz. That's pretty decent for a passively-cooled budget motherboard and a simple Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro HSF.

Chris achieved this by increasing the CPU voltage from 1.35V to 1.425V, and then increasing the front side bus to 250MHz, while retaining the original 10x multiplier. On the downside, however, the pair of unmatched PC2700 Kingston ValueRAM DIMMs restricted the machine's performance.

Our first task was to find out if the PC could be overclocked any further in its current state; it couldn't, at least not stably while running the Prime95 Torture test. The overclock Chris had achieved was already good, though, so persuading the machine to overclock any higher would mean upgrading it.

First on the list was the motherboard, and we decided to opt for an nForce4 SLI X16-based Asus A8N 32 SLI Deluxe, which is a decent enough overclocker, with much more upgrade potential than the micro-ATX board Chris was using, including the ability to upgrade to SLI graphics. It's also passively cooled, so it wouldn't make any more noise than the original motherboard. Next came the RAM, and we generously decided to upgrade it to a pair of Corsair TwinX1024-3200 Pro modules.

We also had to replace the case with a model that would house a full-sized ATX motherboard and PSU without having to hit anything with a hammer. We settled on a Cooler Master Centurion 532, which looks classy and provides plenty of airflow, and paired it with a 500W FSP Blue Storm II AX500-A PSU. We then put the machine together, carefully routeing the cables in order to maximise airflow through the case. We also fitted a 120mm exhaust fan to the back of the case to remove as much hot air as possible.

It was a major upgrade, but it was worth it. After upgrading to the new components, the PC ran stably at 2.7GHz, and didn't even flinch at ten runs of the Prime 95 torture test. This overclock was achieved using the same 1.425V vcore that Chris had used, but we couldn't push it any further, even after increasing the voltage. The machine did, however, boot and go into Windows at 2.9GHz; it just wouldn't do a lot else.

The memory was also happy to be clocked to 250GHz (500MHz effective) at 2.75V, which gave the machine a little more of a performance boost. However, as you can see from our benchmark results, the jump in speed wasn't as big as it was with the other PCs in this feature, as Chris had already achieved a good overclock to start with. Nevertheless, our efforts show that a decent motherboard can make all the difference when it comes to overclocking, and is worth budgeting for when you're speccing up a new PC. With the new case, fans and power supply, the PC is also much quieter and looks much classier.

Officer in charge of overclocking: Ben Hardwidge

When Chris originally emailed us the specification of his PC, he described his Compaq Deskpro case as 'a good solid metal case that can take a beating'. However, this didn't quite prepare us for the reality. The PC looks as though it's been completely oblivious to the last decade, and Chris wasn't lying when he said 'beating' either. He told us that the case had been 'modified' to house a 550W PSU, but he didn't tell us that this included battering his PSU into a different shape and then taping it back together.

Nevertheless, Chris achieved a damn good overclock with his modest specification. Using a micro-ATX ASRock 939S56-M motherboard with a SiS 756 chipset, Chris managed to overclock his Socket 939 2GHz Athlon 64 3200+ Venice chip to an impressive 2.5GHz. That's pretty decent for a passively-cooled budget motherboard and a simple Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro HSF.

Chris achieved this by increasing the CPU voltage from 1.35V to 1.425V, and then increasing the front side bus to 250MHz, while retaining the original 10x multiplier. On the downside, however, the pair of unmatched PC2700 Kingston ValueRAM DIMMs restricted the machine's performance.

Our first task was to find out if the PC could be overclocked any further in its current state; it couldn't, at least not stably while running the Prime95 Torture test. The overclock Chris had achieved was already good, though, so persuading the machine to overclock any higher would mean upgrading it.

First on the list was the motherboard, and we decided to opt for an nForce4 SLI X16-based Asus A8N 32 SLI Deluxe, which is a decent enough overclocker, with much more upgrade potential than the micro-ATX board Chris was using, including the ability to upgrade to SLI graphics. It's also passively cooled, so it wouldn't make any more noise than the original motherboard. Next came the RAM, and we generously decided to upgrade it to a pair of Corsair TwinX1024-3200 Pro modules.

We also had to replace the case with a model that would house a full-sized ATX motherboard and PSU without having to hit anything with a hammer. We settled on a Cooler Master Centurion 532, which looks classy and provides plenty of airflow, and paired it with a 500W FSP Blue Storm II AX500-A PSU. We then put the machine together, carefully routeing the cables in order to maximise airflow through the case. We also fitted a 120mm exhaust fan to the back of the case to remove as much hot air as possible.

It was a major upgrade, but it was worth it. After upgrading to the new components, the PC ran stably at 2.7GHz, and didn't even flinch at ten runs of the Prime 95 torture test. This overclock was achieved using the same 1.425V vcore that Chris had used, but we couldn't push it any further, even after increasing the voltage. The machine did, however, boot and go into Windows at 2.9GHz; it just wouldn't do a lot else.

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