Overclocking: Why you should and should not do it

Arcticsid asked the

Overclocking: Why you should and should not do it

Arcticsid asked the Answer Line forum to explain overclocking, and why it is, or is not, a good idea.

When you overclock a hardware component–usually the processor–you trick it into working faster than the manufacturer’s recommended maximum speed. Every processor is packaged and priced to run at a particular clock speed–for instance, 3100 MHz.  But that speed is an estimate, and usually a conservative one. You can usually bump it up a bit without causing problems. Sometimes, you can bump it up quite a bit.

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You may also be able to overclock other components, such as RAM or your graphics processor. But the term generally applies to the main processor, and that’s what I’ll be discussing here.

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