What is Overclocking?

Overclocking is the science of pushing a computer's hardware to perform faster than it normally would - very much like bolting a turbocharger onto a car. If done properly, overclocking should not effect the stability or lifespan of your hardware.

 

 

How does it work?

When a new CPU chip is made, the manufacturer frequently doesn't know exactly how fast it will go until it's tested. The standard procedure is to test 100 chips, working up in 5MHz increments until they begin failing - then back off 10% and you've found the safe rated speed.

Many of the chips from any given production run will be able run significantly faster. The rated speed is calculated to ensure 100% stability and a very low rate of failure, and is not calculated for performance.

At your request, we'll overclock your system to find it's true optimal speed.

Overclocking has almost become a lost art in recent years. Many motherboard and system manufacturers provide software "overclocking tools" which allow you to modify some of the system settings and push the chip a bit faster. However, these utilities are critically disabled; they will not let you adjust some of the most important settings such as CPU core voltage and multiplier. The software is set-up that way so that you can't harm your PC, but it also makes for very limited overclocking results.
We do all of our overclocking in the system's BIOS, testing each individual component to find it's "sweet spot" where it operates at peak performance while still maintaining stability.

Generally, one of the biggest factors limiting how fast a CPU can go is heat. By keeping a CPU reasonably cool (say, below 100F under full load) you can extract much more performance from it. We offer large air-cooled heatsinks such as the Thermaltake Big Typhoon (pictured right) and even more exotic cooling options such as water cooling.
Other factors limiting performance can include the memory (which must be able to "keep up" with the CPU's speed), the power supply (which must be able to output enough power to feed the system under it's increased load), and various other factors.

 

 

What's the catch?

Overclocking does, unfortunately, come with it's disadvantages: It voids the warranty on the CPU. However, the warranty on all of the hardware remains unchanged.

If the overclocking work is done carefully and by a skilled professional, it should not effect the lifespan of your PC's hardware.

 

 

How much performance gain can I expect?

Depending on the CPU and hardware, we can generally get anywhere from 10 to 30% additional clock speed from a system. Here are a few recent overclocking jobs we've done:

• AMD X2 6000+ Dual 3.0 GHz cores to 3.6 GHz each with air cooling
• Intel CoreDuo 3.2 GHz Dual cores to 3.8 GHz on air cooling
• AMD Athlon64 3700+ Single 2.2 GHz to 3.2 GHz on water cooling

 

 

How much does it cost?

We'll overclock your new PC to find the "sweet spot" at which it runs at peak performance without sacrificing stability for $149.99. We'll only overclock computers we've built.

Contact Us if you're interested.