How to overclock

[PizzatheHut06]

I'm a first time computer builder, and I have a few questions about overclocking:

<1> How do you go about it? Is it a manual process, like adding something on to the CPU?

<2> Which components can be overclocked? All I'm familiar with is the CPU being overclocked.

<3> Does overclocking shorten the life of the product? If so, by how much?

<4> How much does overclocking help? What type of functions does overclocking help the most? Do you need a really good motherboard to do it?

Thank you in advance.

 

[bubba0315]

I'm not trying to be mean, but there are so many threads on overclocking, already. You can search, and you'll find plenty of threads that will most likely answer your questions. If I'm wrong, then somebody else more helpful can fill you in.

 

[GameGURU]

ill answer what i can. I dont know how to OC, it is a utlilty in your bios tough...The cpu can be OC'd as well as the chip on a graphics card. It will shorten the life of the product depending on how much you do overclock it. And oc'ing can help a bit, mobos should be designed well to OC. OC'ing helps the speed of the puter. Lets say you have a 2.0 GHZ and you want it up some. You raise it to 2.3 GHZ. You need a good heat sink and fan etc. for it though.

Hope that helps some...

 

[Gl\l0m!$h]

any thing that runs at a certain speed can usually be pushed beyond it the most common ones are memory cpus and gpus (video cards) You can set how fast the cpu goes usually in the bios but some cpus are locked so they cannot run at higher speeds. In terms of life it all depends on how much you choose to raise the speed if you take a 1ghz cpu and raise it to 1.2ghz it will probably do fine for the rest of its normal life but if you take a 1ghz and raise it to 2ghz you will need extra cooling of else it will fry itself. Do not try to oc more than 2ghz and thats only with extreme cooling otherwise it will vaporize just because it is to fast for the processor.