Anyone know how to overclock PC stuff?

[rachzane]

On 5/24/2014 at 10:05 AM, DazzleHP said:

I haven't owned an AMD CPU for quite a few years, but there are many guides around the net on how to do things for your particular board. Your BIOS might (likely will have) have a safety feature to throttle your CPU if it gets too hot enabled. Any kind of overclock can dramatically increase your temps which i will give you some general tips/words of warning.

Firstly, before you do any alterations you should benchmark/stress test your system with default settings. You should have a system monitor app running the whole time so you can take note of/keep an eye on your temps, fan speeds and the like. A popular one is MSI Afterburner, though in all honesty i can't remember if it shows CPU temp which is a very important stat to know when overclocking! If it doesn't show your CPU temp (it most certainly shows your GPU temp which you should also keep a very focused eye on) then i've always found that CPUID delivers here.

To stress test your hardware, you'll need some benchmarking software. These softwares will push certain parts of your hardware (CPU, GPU, RAM) and give you detailed statistics for you to compare when you make any changes. There are many many of these programs out there so here is a small selection, and here is another.

If your system is hitting high temps under default settings then i wouldn't even consider any overclocking till you get some better cooling. The mistake newbies often make is that they read on a forum that some guy with the same CPU got theirs to run @4.5GHz, get all excited and go put theirs straight to the same level! DON'T do that! You could outright fry your bits. Everyone's system is completely different and should be treated as such. That guy who got his to 4.5 probably had an expensive cooling system - not 2x stock case fans!

You should always go steady, upping settings by small increments. Benchmarking while keeping a close eye on everything, do it for a while to make sure your hardware doesn't start flipping out, then do another small increment. Overclocking, if you want to do it safely, is a slow process. If you rush any of it you're likely to be making a "desperate plea thread" asking if anyone has the magic skills to revive a dead CPU

Goog luck! And be patient

1. CPU-Z

CPU-Z will essentially provide users with a complete rundown of your PC’s hardware specifications, particularly concerning your CPU.

It also provides specifications for your motherboard, RAM, and graphics card, making it a great all around program to visualize hardware makes and models. You can even save a TXT file of the information via the Tools option.

2. HWMonitor

HWMonitor not only visualizes the make and model of hardware components in your PC, it also displays certain parameters live.

These parameters include power consumption, fan speeds, utilization percentage, clock speeds, and temperature. This benchmark software can be crucial, as issues like an overheating component in your PC can lead to frequent PC shutdowns.

HWMonitor’s simple interface also makes all values easy to view and understand. Of course, you can also save this information for further troubleshooting via the File option.

3. SiSoftware Sandra Lite

SiSoftware Sandra Lite is a fully-featured benchmark suite which is aimed at users who are very well informed about the inner workings of their computers, and for businesses which need to perform a detailed analysis on multiple computers.

Want to test your computer’s memory bandwidth? No problem. Want to benchmark network performance? Sure. Want to benchmark your computer’s power efficiency? Yes, Sandra does that as well.

Another useful feature of SiSoftware Sandra Lite is its online reference database. SiSoft Sandra will benchmark your component or online connection and then compare your performance with other similar processors to give you a better idea of how an upgrade may or may not help you.