ExtremeTech has published an overclocking guide for those who want to get every last drop of speed out of their computer. I liked the fact that the article talks you through how to work out which components in your PC are overclockable, and then goes on to explain how to do an 'overall overclocking' of all those components.

But I do have to giggle at an article which starts off saying: "Once upon a time, overclocking was considered a risky and dangerous thing to do... Now, it's almost insane not to." and then goes on to issue warnings like:

"When you overclock a PC, it's never truly stable. The PC was not designed to run with different things at different clock rates that aren't necessarily compatible with each other. What you gain in performance you lose in piece of mind: This thing could crash at any moment."

I guess it's horses for courses. I don't want an Top Gear car which might get insane speeds for a whole 60 seconds before turning into a cartwheeling fireball o'death.. nor does overclocking really appeal to me. I don't have high performance needs, and I don't want to sacrifice reliability. Your mileage may vary, of course. If you overclock I'd be interested to hear why, and how much it affects your system reliability.

ExtremeTech Overclocking Guide

 

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