Basics of Overclocking

Ready to make your machine go monstrous huh?

Let's make sure you get what you at least need to keep it alive.

In the process of overclocking, we increase the speed of the machine, the further we go from the default speed, the hotter the chips run. As we all know, too much of things bring us no good. The "thing" we are talking about now is HEAT.

So how do we go around it? We will need to have these must haves before you can actually initiate the things you will tweak.

First - we need a proper ventilation for the whole system. To have a big intake and a quick outtake auxillary fans will be of a necessity here. Personally, I position a pair of 80mm fans in front as intake fans and a 120mm fan on the side. I make sure that the air circulates to hit the chips and capacitors. In order to initialize airflow, I put an 80mm fans on the upper side the CPU case, and another 80mm on the rear side.

Second - cooling systems. Redundant? Could be, correct me if I am wrong but I personally classify these things differently. I will be referring to the cooling systems as the ones with heat sinks. Usually, we can buy a good aftermarket heat sink fan (HSF) at around $ 99.00. These are gigantic alloy materials especially designed to absorb and dissipate the heat from the chips. HSFs come as CPU HSF, the North/SouthBridge HSF and lately we are seeing RAM sinks. Some enthusiasts who wants more usually goes for a Liquid cooling system and even nitrogen.

Third - good chips. While we all want to save some costs in buying expensive stuff, thus we overclock, this does not necessarily mean that we'll always have to settle for the least quality. In choosing the right stuff, you are getting the better choice if not best. Solid capacitors are among the basic parts you'll consider over ordinary soft capacitors.

Fourth - Flexibility and upgradability. This is the most subjective aspect in choosing what you are about to overclock. Of course, you will want something that can last up to at least the next two generations of technology.

That's it for now folks! Happy hunting for good parts!