A few members have asked about overclocking and their rigs so I wanted to make this post and hope others will add to it.

RULE 1: Before overclocking any chip, please do research on your chip and the success others have had overclocking.
Research sites I use:
Overclock Forums - Good forums for serious overclockers
Overclockers Website - Nice site with database of CPU's and overclocks

RULE 2: Before overclocking your chip, make sure that the settings you are about to use will match up with your rig.
Too many times, I've seen people fry their chip because they OC'd to someone elses specifications. That other person ended up having some sort of watercooling system with freon in it. Just because someone else OC'd the same chip, does not mean you can. Is your box too small? Does it have limited airflow? Are the components cramped in the case?

RULE 3: Before overclocking make sure you have a temperature monitoring program.
Do not rely on the BIOS to save you. Have a program that pulls the CPU's temps. Measure them idle for over an hour and then measure them under load for over 4 hours. Take reading ever 15-20 minutes. If you see constant figures without spikes, you have a good stable overclock.

RULE 4: Before overclocking, resign yourself to the fact that you may fry your chip.
Not meant to scare you, but you are going outside the manufacturers settings for your chip. Doing so is at a risk and you need to understand that risk. If you are going to replace your chip anyway, no biggie. If it's a brand new $1000 chip, you might want to take extra precautions.

RULE 5: After overclocking, maintain your system.
Make sure all fans, cooling fins, and interior of the box is free of dust, debris, and functioning properly. Don't forget to take temperature readings every so often and compare them to the readings you previously took. If they start to go up in temps, it is signifying something needs addressing.

I know there are other techies on these forums and probably one or two expert overclockers. If you have any aditional information to add, correct, or clarify, please feel free to do so.

-----------------EDITS---------------------
Ultimate OC FAQ's

Get yourself a good load testing program like Prime95 (Thanks Evilash - I forgot that one). This program is free (if you abid by the agreement) to download and just pulls prime numbers in excess of 10,000,000 digits... So it will peg your processor! Trust Me! Prime95 Wiki

Test your CPU before and after the overclocking to see your performance gain using something like:
Use SuperPi to determine if your overclock did much. It's small, light, and very easy to use (Thanks for the tip Geoff).

Last edited by Bullarky on Mon Apr 28, 2008 11:15 am; edited 2 times in total

dont forget prime95 to test the stability of your newly juiced rig, its also a good tool to help you see what the temps are going to be when stressed

Let me stress these two points:

1) Don't overclock unless you know what you're doing.
2) If you can't overclock by a substantial amount, it isn't worth it.


Use SuperPi to determine if your overclock did much. It's small, light, and very easy to use.

Here are a few things I find very useful for overclocking.

OCCT - Stress testing tool. Built on Prime 95 but with added features and functions.

CPU-Z - Gives you information about your cpu and ram such as speed and timings.

Speedfan - Reads temps and fan speeds of your cpu and other components.

Rivatuner - One of the best overclocking tools for graphics cards. Tons of options.

GPU-Z - Gives you information about your graphics card. Similar to CPU-Z.

**Keep in mind, you can very easily trash your system with some of these apps if you are not careful.

I agree 100% with Bullarky. I'd add a couple of things:

- Tom's Hardware - Good info/reviews/forums

- Anandtech - Good info/reviews, OC forum

- How to Guide to Overclocking

- Coretemp - a good stable temperature monitoring program not mentioned above. Although this program had some difficulty with the new Intel E-series, they seemed to correct it. Last time I built a PC was 2 months ago though.

- If you are a first-time builder/OCer, you'll most likely need to choose an air cooler. Everyone has a favorite, but there is one (as of 2 month's ago) that even a rookie can install RELIABLY. Avoid many hours learning how to lap cooler/cpu, and/or how to apply a 3-molecule thick layer of thermal grease. The Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro is light-weight, inexpensive, gives extraordinary performance, and comes pre-coated with thermal grease - you just snap it in place and it cools

- Read a lot, go slow, dom't bother OCing your memory, keep records, have fun. +10% is relatively easy for a rookie to achieve with just a few days effort