What temperatures do you try to keep components under? I've heard a general rule of thumb is anything over 60C can cause long term damage.

I'm surprised you are only getting 5.3 on the memory. I have stock PC2-6400 on my Dell OptiPlex 745 and it comes in at 5.6 on the experience index.

I am afraid I have to disagree with you on overclocking, I have had some spectacular mishaps from overclocking where the system passed all stress tests I could throw at it. The problems weren't immediately fatal but grew with time. I run Gentoo, a source based distro and what seemingly was happening was that overclocking made the compiler generate bad output from larger compiles, so over time as packages were updated my system degraded to the point that it was unusable. The lesson I learned from that is that there is no stresstest which compares to compiling OpenOffice.

Sure that kind of errors would not surface on other less demanding environments, but what do you need the extra cpu power for then? Even an entry level cpu such as the Athlon64 X2 3600+ which sells for less than 60€ provides enough power for most users. And those who heavy mathematical calulations or rendering should anyways know better than to overclock.

This is exactly the kind of computer I want to move into, as soon as I move out of my mother's basement.

I could not believe you are cluttering your high-quality software blog with the pc-building articles... I am sad :(

I see software and hardware a symbiosis.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000874.html

But if it's any consolation, this series is basically over. I might have one more post on quieting the build, but this is the meat of it.

Can you build me a machine and overclock it, too? Obviously, I would pay you for the parts and labor.

"I'd say saving nearly a thousand bucks is a pretty good argument in favor of overclocking."

Reminds me of an old joke. Son comes home all excited and proudly tells his father: I saved $1 today because I followed the bus home instead of riding it. To which the father replies: you should have followed a taxi home, you would have saved $20.

Whatever, Alexander U.

There is a reason that I read this blog religiously, and articles such as this one are exactly why. Coding Horror does an excellent job of providing detailed information in an easily accessible format, and nearly always about a topic I need. I may spend 95% of my computer efforts writing code, but when I occasionally tinker with my home pc equipment, I definitely refer back to the Coding Horror.

Boy am I glad that I ran all 3 of the programs you mention before I tried to up the FSB speed in BIOS...CoreTemp reports that my processor isn't Intel, but CPU-Z says it is. Regardless, I wouldn't be able to get my processor temp after I overclocked, and might have ended up frying my machine.

Just a warning to anyone else to thoroughly understand what you are doing before you attempt this.

This is a software blog? ;)

Alexander, I'll be taking over the articles series over on my blog when I start throwing totally inappropriate shareware and development tools at it, so the clutter is spread around. :)

If you hadn't bought ValueRAM, do you think this beast could have clocked even hire? :)

Jeff, I actually have really enjoyed this series of PC-building articles. I'm a veteran PC builder myself, but I've still learned a few things (mostly about component selection) from your examples. I think I'll definitely spring for one of those cases when I build my next system, for example.

I'm pretty interested in this, if only to see how someone else does it. Although it is making me a bit sad to think that, now that I pay a mortgage and not rent, I probably won't be building a new super machine this winter, like I normally do every two years.

Sadly, Karthik, you might be right! We shall see!

I think the PC building articles are great, and valuable for anyone who works with computers for a living, even if it's not strictly hardware, software, design. I'm a recording studio engineer, and knowing my way around the computer hardware certainly helps me get things done (yes the studio's running PC). Not to mention keep things running smoothly.

Jim

Software blog? That's where your mistaken. This blog is a steamy bodice ripping love story. Except swap out bodice for Antec case, and swap out romance with a woman with romance with computers.

It's porn for geeks.

i'm salivating over this build. i'm running vista ultimate with visual studio 2005 and resharper on a pentium 4 with 2 gigs of ram and i curse to myself anytime i have to make a change in App_Code...

I agree with the relevance of this article. I've always avoided building my own PC and stuck only to writing code but Jeff has opened my eyes a little bit to this stuff.

I still think that a well constructed class is sexier than the heat sink though... :)

FWIW - according to Intel's thermal specifications for Core 2 Quads (ftp://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/31559202.pdf), the maximum temperature for the Q6600 is 62.2C @ 105 watts.

PS - I am doing a very similar build (Q6600 on an MSI P6N Diamond), and I truly appreciate all the pointers. Makin' me wish I'd picked a different case though. Oh well, at least my Antec Nine Hundred has lots of really cool blue LEDs...

Great write up! Attempting to overclock my old Athlon as we speak :D

How do you determine what is an acceptable temperature for a given CPU when overclocking?

I should probably clarify that the maximum safe operating temp spec I quoted is for the case temperature and not the core temps (so you probably have a little headroom for those readings before you need to get out your heat gun and/or Magic Finger Mark I to measure the case temp).

So, how come computer manufacturers don't just correctly-clock instead of under-clocking in order to make people jump through hoops and void warranties in order to get the best performance?

I'm just waiting for the Athlon extreme overclock processor to be released. http://www.bbspot.com/News/2001/01/athlon_extreme.html

After all, if you're selling pre-built machines, why not overclock them all so your costs stay the same and you can charge a little more - splitting the savings between yourself and your customers?

I'm guessing that thousand dolalrs being "saved" was actually being used to purchase actual reliablility (instead of the mere hope of reliability) and lifetime for the hardware - which may or may not be of value.

You weren't really saving 1000 bucks... as you could generally overclock a 2.93GHz chip even higher.

I've commonly seen QX6800 parts clocked up to 3.6GHz, and sometimes 3.8GHz from the really "hardcore" vendors.

I'm not advocating buying "ultra high end" parts... the price/performance ratio is out of whack. However, if you are being realistic, buying a slower processer and overclocking it doesn't mean you are getting more speed. You can also overclock more expensive parts.

didn't you say you would discuss the "suspicious" memory score? or did I miss that part?

I'm totally a fan of overclocking :)
I don't have so strong PC, but I love it :).
My PC: Overclock 2800+ AMD64 754 @ 2,6 Ghz :) and still with XP
nXqd

It's 95 degrees over here in Kirkland right now ... I've un-overclocked my QX6700 from 3.2ghz to its nominal 2.66ghz, and I've downgraded from my GeForce 8800gts to my older but much cooler running GeForce 7800gtx. Wow. Much less heat that way! And my cat is shedding like crazy, jeez.

If you want a system on the cheap, getting the E4300 for $117 (1.8ghz / 800mhz FSB) and setting it to 1066mhz FSB gets you a 2.4ghz chip instantly and with almost 100% chance of success. These Intel chips just aren't meant to run that slow :) At 1333mhz FSB it will be at 3ghz but of course the probability of success is lower. Or you can keep it at 1.8ghz and just run it cool and quiet like I do on my media center PC in the living room.

Hey, nice to see a Building PC article here! Half the time I don't get anything you say about coding... but this I understand! Heh... the fastest CPU I have at my home right now is a Core Duo T2050. That's good enough for many purposes, I swear.

Still, though, if you 'don't require high end 3D', why TWO 8600s? Why not two, uh, 7300s or something?

"If you hadn't bought ValueRAM, do you think this beast could have clocked even hire? :)"

You're right about that one; also, I have to notice that this chipset (nForce 650i) does not deliver any spectacular OC results.
Here's what people use to get almost 3.6GHz outta Q6600: http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=197872
Notice the Asus P5B Deluxe MBO and the OCZ memory? I like the Gigabyte 965P-DS4 even more, it's cheaper and delivers almost equal results. Of course, RAM-o-choice is Corsair.

In line with Robert, I've found that GCC and any given multithreaded video encoder are much better torture tests than prime95. It's a great starting point, don't get me wrong! But gcc reveals hidden instabilities, because it's memory heavy and works so many different bits of your cpu at once - MSVC might be good for this too, I haven't used it as much. Since gcc's a pain to set up on windows initially, another option is Handbrake or DVD-RB, free dvd encoders, which will exercise the vector and memory/cache units excessively. So many doom9 threads start with "I overclocked but it passed every test" that end with "I lowered the fsb and everything works now!" (But everyone OCs for video encoding, cutting 2-8 hours off is always worth it. Except us poor laptop savages.)

I really don't get the overclocking. The benchmarks show something like a 15% speed improvement. Unless you work with a stopwatch at your side, you won't notice it. Say the overclocking efforts take you two or three hours. A CPU running 15% faster isn't going to buy the that time back anytime soon. (And, as you point out, giving the extra $1K to Intel is a phenomenal waste of cash...)

Did anyone notice that the BIOS warning is actually saying that overclocking is NOT guaranteed to harm your hardware? Quite a relief, isn't it? :)

My un-overclocked CPU was making too much heat (an old one, I've bought it circa 3 years ago). It is an AMD Athlon XP 3000+, which is ~2300 Mhz. Because I'm too g33k to go out to buy a new fan/cooling system or just a new machine, I underclocked it to 1300 MHz! I've lost ~1000 MHz.
And you know what is interesting? I found no differences in speed! It has roughly the same speed, less heat (but when CPU is used it makes still too much heat). I just noticed it once when I played a game, because it lagged a bit, what was a bit unusual, but then I realized, that I threw out 1 GHz out of window, had to timper with the settings. This was the only place where I noticed slowdown. But anyways, I play rarely.
Overclocking may be fun, but I won't risk it, because I guess it voids the warranty if I mess up something (like blowing up the cpu) due to my inexperience and extra 600 MHz isn't that motivating for me at that high speeds (especially if I have 4 processors). Yep, it is true, I don't use CPU-crunching applications, just happily webbrowsing and textediting. :D

1.448V is too much for my taste.
And I find strange too that memory scores only 5.3, I get 5.9 with my overclocked and cheap Kigston value ram 667 ( to 355 Mhz and 4-4-4-12 ).

Take a look to the latencies.

I heartily agree with Jeffs comment on saving money by overclocking, saving a few bucks and gettin a few more cycles is any geeks dream(wet?).

When i overclocked my E6400 (good cpu, shame about the cache) I managed to up the FSB to 333mhz AND Undervolt it, thus increasng speed and decreasing heat, the only thing stopping me bumping the FSB more is that the northbridge on my P965 board gets hot.

A lot of people home building media centre PCs buy processors and underclock them so they can major undervolt for ultra low temps(and hence can reduce amount of fans + fan speed)

I dont think you mentioned jeff, but even if you are using all four slots, it is worthwhile (if you bought paired memory) to keep the pairs together in correct paired slots, especially if they are different brands.

Finally, i think it shows my internet addiction when i see the picture of the cat "helping" i was thinking...'that would make a good lolcat'

Damn you Jeff! You re-kindle my interest in overclocking then I find out my mobo is an overclocking stinker (ASROCK 775DUAL-VSTA).

Hey meccano, I have too my E6400 undervolted ( 1.1625V in Asus P5B ) and running at 355 Mhz FSB :)

This is the article series that make me love this blog!
It's exactly as I am: a developer with HW passion.

Althought I was a PC builder before becoming a professional developer, I still love assembling and tweaking with HW, Router and all those things that are not-strictly-development stuff.

Please, don't hesitate to continue with this kind of post...

Coding horror is THE BEST Blog I've ever read...

Igor A.!

Core Temp only appears to report Core Temperatures (obviously).

You might want to also take a look at SpeedFan: http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
which will report and graph other readings (such as case and NorthBridge temperatures), fan speeds, and hard drive SMART statistics.

More accurate than your "built-in Mark I finger" and (as it's freeware) it's a bit cheaper than a fancy-shmancy laser temperature gun (which I don't think can give accurate readings anyway, as you have to remove the case side panel to use it, thus possibly significantly altering the air flow).

I'm about to build a new developer rig in an month or two so these posts are really useful - good balanced as well, not too techy and not too trivial.

I've really enjoyed this series of articles -- it's nice to know that I'm not the only developer around who likes to (a)understand what's going on under the hood, and (b)have as much control over the hardware as possible.

The over-clocking bit is interesting; I've done it before, but not on any modern system, and the tools have certainly advanced. I'm curious, though, about how much real performance gain you get from the extra 400MHz you've tweaked from the chip -- is it worth the extra heat and noise?

I'm personally in the "under-clockers" category: the bottleneck in my development and testing is almost always I/O (RAM, disk, or network). I've been running an Athlon 2400+ (1.9GHz, IIRC) under-clocked for a few years, and I still only rarely peg the processor during dev activities.

By under-clocking, I was able to reduce the heat output by about 15 deg F: just enough to push the requirements for the CPU fan down. The system is so *quiet* that one can barely hear it running: the noise from the HDD seeks is as bad as it gets (well, except for the occasional use of the optical drive -- those are *loud* bastards).

In terms of performance, I've gotten the best gains from using proper pairs of high-speed RAM, using the RAID-1 feature of my SATA controller, and using quality networking components (esp. good switches).

Hey Dan,
ive got a P5B-e ( :P ) i never tried past 333mhz, what kind of temps do you get reported in the bios, and on what cooling.
I have an artic freezer 7 (not pro) and i max about 53c(reported in bios) with the fan at 800rpm and a couple of case fans.

Also, is your Northbridge REALLY hot?

One thing with overclocking, is that its always really interesting to see what people with similar/same hardware managed to reach, as i now feel small and inferior :(

As a software developer, the term 'irresponsible' comes to mind when reading this post.

There are many cases where you just might get away with overclocking, for certain loads. But you can't conceivably cover every permutation out there.

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/04/12/407562.aspx - some real life information on the impact of overclocking that developers face as a result of doing it. As Raymond says at the end of the article, Moral of the story: There's a lot of overclocking out there, and it makes Windows look bad.

@johnw

the reason jeff was running Prime 95 (on each core) was to check that his oveclock was *STABLE*, the guilty overclockers in that article were the mom and pop stores that were overclocking, then obviously not checking them under load/after a period of time.

Meccano, nice board :) You have to avoid "auto" in your voltages, is the reason of the northbridge going hot.
Fix it to one of the lower voltages and you'll see it works great.

The same with memory and cpu voltages, I have CPU - 1.1625V, memory - 1.9V and chipset ( there is only one option in my board ) to 1.8V if I remember well.

And when going over 333Mhz, you have to fix the memory latencies. I have 4-4-4-12, but I want to go over 400Mhz I have to use 5-5-5-15 and the temperature go out of hand.

Anyway, summer it's not the time to experiment with overclocking :))

@dan

Like i mentioned i do undervolt my CPU, but i will definitly try setting a specific Northbridge voltage :D
Im from scotland, so excess heat really isnt an issue

@radiantmatrix

If you want to quiet down the HDD seek then I recommend a Samsung SpinPoint drive.
I've got a P120 and it's pretty quiet.
Though strangely SilentSeek was turned off by default on my drive and had to be turned on using the HUTIL tool: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/Support_HUTIL.html

SilentPCReview like them too:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article29-page2.html

Jeff, perhaps you could run a programmer type of benchmark to see how valid overclocking is. Something real world like compiling a large project using Visual Studio.

It would be interesting to see what differences, if any would be seen.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the bottlenecks in the system are all I/O related.

But on the positive side I am sure it would give another FPS or two to Quake or Doom, or whatever the current shooter of the day is.

Great 3 part series. It made me want to dabble in the diagnostics and overclocking aspect of building a PC from scratch. I've shied away from it in the past.

And I agree with Davide. For the sake of the development theme of the PC and your Blog, it would be cool to see compile times on a large VS2005 project differ between the overclocked CPU and non-overclocked.

That machine is a BEAST. I'm jealous!

Great articles! Been a fan of your articles for a while now and that intel chip is impressive. I have only one problem with the rig, using a secondary manufacturer for the motherboard. I've always had those things toast very quickly, whereas straight intel on intel motherboards run forever. Is there a reason you chose to go with a secondary motherboard manufacturer?

Anyone heard how to increase the memory rating on the windows experience index?

I have 5.9 for all but memory which is at 5.1.

Jeff, have you done any over clocking on the video boards and using the latest drivers, don't think they are certified yet. You should easily get a 5.9 on the gaming graphics.

Jeff, this series of articles has been very helpful. I've got another build coming up and appreciate browsing your component choices and picking up a couple new tricks.

I second the question about revisiting the "suspicious" memory score. Please. :)

Thanks! -bill

I'd like to take the chance to thank you Jeff for your hardware articles. This Summer I'm saving for my next Computer and planning to make it as economical, green and silent as possible.

I'd welcome a post on silencing PCs, that's something I'm very interested in. Having had a small jet engine in my room through university it would be nice to not be lulled to sleep by the sound of what sounds like a small aircraft preparing to take off!

> I'd welcome a post on silencing PCs

I have one here:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000665.html

I'll do a specific one for this build, too.

Jeff,

Thanks for informing that overclocking isn't as complicated as it sounds (which is what I thought). Now I can overclock with confidence.

I fully agree with your insightful perspective, actually there is a similar thread at Frontier Blog
( http://www.hwswworld.com/wp )

As some one who sold hardware . . .

NO

Excellent article!

I've built many systems, but always been afraid to overclock. I think I'll try it tonight.

Oh, no HTML allowed, Ok, here are the jokes:

In old Russia, two beggars sat next to each other in a district where few Jews lived. One held a sign saying "Please help the war veteran", and the other holds a sign saying "Please help a poor Jew".

People pass by and even those who didn't intend to give money to either of them, give to the first beggar to upset the Jew. Finally, one day a good man passes by, gives money equally to both, and then says to the Jew: "Why don't you change your sign? Don't you understand that nobody will give you any money?" and walks away. As he goes, the Jew turns to the other beggar and says: "Chaim, he would teach us business..."

Abe's son arrived home from school puffing and panting, sweat rolling down his face.
"Dad, you'll be so proud of me," he said, "I saved a pound by running behind the bus all the way home!"
"Oy Vey!" said Abe, "You could have run behind a taxi and saved 10."

Very interesting post. Gamers who are planning to buy a new computer should read this. For me, I don't need that kind of computing power as I'm into programming. My Pentium D 3.4 GHz machine is more than enough.

I whole-heartedly agree this was a very informative article right up there with the stuff from Tom's H/W! I thoroughly enjoyed the read! Didn't know if you were going to play with the memory stepping of the RAM and see if that could be tweaked back up to where it belongs? Definitely, waiting on the silencing part to come.

By the way, Core 2 Extreme processors leave the multiplier unlocked. Great utility for overclocking.

I'm suprised the computer isn't quiet enough for you using the Antec case?
I'm running a similar build using an older Antec P180 case and it's so quiet the only way you can tell it's on is when you insert a disk into the dvd drive since spinning up a disc is the loudest noise it makes!

Sorry if I missed this point (reading from China, where I can't see flikr pics and it's damn slow at times!

Anyway, are you using RAS 3 memory, or RAS 2? I've found that RAS 2 (obviously) gives a big performance boost. I agree it seems the memory isn't optimum for this system.

The memory effect, oddly enough, is due to the Quad CPU.

I took the memory out of my system, which is a Duo running on the same 650i chipset, and it still scored 5.3. In my system, that memory scores 5.9! And it's running at totally stock DDR2-800 speeds in both cases.

There are lots of forum posts from Quad owners wondering why their Windows Experience memory scores are so low. It's probably partly the fault of the benchmark, too.

Great set of articles. What is the sound ouput from the case with all of the parts put in it?

The computer I have now has 4 80mm case fans in it and I can't stand to leave it on at night.

I'd like to build a super fast quiet computer. And I wonder how quiet this computer is?

Some background on the Core Temp program, how it works, and what safe temperatures are for your CPU:

http://www.overclockers.com/articles1378/

As long as you don't flip the fan switch to high or add extra fans you don't have to worry about hearing it at night.
With the three TriCool fans set to medium speed I was unable to hear them over my PSU or heatsink fan. On high speed they are significantly louder, but I never felt the need to run them faster than medium speed, and most times... even while gaming low speed was more than enough.
I'm running 4 drives with 2 being raptors in mine(see specs below) and not being able to hear them at all should tell you something about how quiet this case is.
Intel 6600
Evga 8600GTS
Kingston valueram ddr2 2gb
Asus p5nsli
SB Audigy2
Plextor sata px755sa
150GB and 74GB raptor drive
2x400GB seagate sata drives
P180 case

p.s. The bright blue HDD access light at the front of the case might get on your nerves at night though so you'll have to disconnect it or cover it up.

Beware overclocking.

You can certainly get a faster computer for less $$ if you overclock. Yet, overclocking can undermine the reliability of a computer in ways that won't show up in initial stress testing.

One dark secret of the computer industry is that the switching elements in computers aren't 100% reliable -- sometimes you ask for a "1" and you get a "0". High-end computers, such as Itanium servers and IBM mainframes contain error correction logic, but it simply goes unnoticed on commodity computers.

The rate of errors is small, but some computers are orders of magnitude worse than others. People who build large clusters (1000's of computers) need to deal with errors as a matter of course, but most people just blame software or human error.

Overclocking can increase the bit error rate. How bad this is depends on many factors, including luck. Some people who "successfully overclock" have random crashes and data corruption that they blame on something else.

Years ago I had an overclocked computer -- I thought it was worked great, but I had the little problem that it segfaulted when I compiled the Linux kernel. I blamed the software, I asked about this on the LKML and was told it was a hardware problem... They were right, the kernel compiled just fine when I dropped the CPU speed.

A lot depends on the chip you're running and how well you cool it, but next time your BitTorrent client rejects a bad block it got from somebody, it may well have been flipped by an overclocked computer that works "perfectly well".

I thought you guys might get a kick out of this...
http://www.dailytech.com/Intel+Rolls+Out+Overclockable+Core+2+Extreme+X7800+Notebook+Processor/article8059.htm

Looks like the new Core 2 Extreme X7800 Notebook Processor has an unlocked multiplier.

Jeff, Windows Experience are maxed out in place. 5.9 is the max score that you can receive.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/458117.aspx

A friend of mine directed me to this article, said (why don't you do this) so I enjoyed reading it. I do a lot of high-speed benchmarking under singlestagers or cascades but a lot of the questions are still relevant. For the Core 2 architecture ~1.5 vcore is about tops under aircooling, 1.55-1.6vcore is safe for water, and I've even thrown 1.8vcore while under cascade but I don't recommend it for 24/7 usage. The Core 2 architecture is incredibly resilient, after multiple 4.3+GHz runs with my E6400 with ungodly voltages it still purrs away at 3.6GHz/1.45vcore, not even a hint of electromigration or degradation in performance. In regards to temperatures I'd suggest staying under 70 celsius 100% loaded. Heat decreases a CPUs lifetime however CPUs have lifetimes of something around 10 years or greater. Who cares if you knock off 3 years of the lifetime by running it at 3.8GHz instead of 3.4GHz, do you plan on using current PCs in 7 years or even 3?
One last thing, stability, there's a comment above that mentions "crashes and data corruption". Higher clocks and tighter memory timings contribute to instability while increasing vcore and vdimm helps to counter these effects to a point. Cooling can help to an extent but mainly on processors, GPUs, and chipsets, not so much on memory modules. I personally stability test with Super Pi 32M runs, two for each core, Prime 95 torture test, 1 for each core, along with various Orthos blends running to thrash the CPU and memory subsystem. This sort of testing is done to determine if the system is 99.999% stable for 24/7 operation, there is always the chance that something will go nuts inside the silicon so you have to keep that in mind. Hope some of that made sense, overclocking has become an artform and it's always fun watching it breach to mainstream individuals.

I don't understand these voltage things. How do I know the voltages are at a safe level? Mine are:

+3.3 Voltage - 3.26V
+5v voltage - 5.36V
+12V voltage - 14.55

I overclocked my 3.2 Prescott P4 Intel CPU to 3.24. I guess it doesn't make much of a differnece to overclock so low.

Thanks.

I was into overclocking in the 90s, but is it really worth it to try? Instability can show up at any time, and you can physically destroy chips this way. I managed to burn out an 1200mhz Duron chip a couple of years back

Overclocking your own computer can be a fun hobby, but that's it. Years ago I purchased a 368-25 machine for my wife that only contained an overclocked 386-20. We argued about whether that was ok. She didn't really believe be until she called the manager in charge of the Intel processor production line for 386 and he set her straight. Subsequently she had more respect for my technical opinions. Here is my bottom line. When you buy a machine and it is specified to have a certain speed, it must have parts actually rated for that speed. Anything less is fraud. We argued with the vendor until they sent us a new machine with a "real" 386-25. I am a software engineer and I have worked with hardware engineers before that built microprocessor motherboards. They use logic analysers to characterize the signals between parts to assure the leading and trailing edges are clean and comply with the timing specifications of the parts involved. If computers have marginal timing, the output stages of various parts begin to have driver transistor failure over time from bus conflicts. Real enginees know this. Just because a computer can boot DOS or Windows or "seems to work ok" absolutely doesn't mean that things are ok. Relibility is the "most important" aspect of computing to me. When you pay for a specific speed of machine, you deserve to get it. Don't you think?

Douglas,
I think you are forgetting one thing. Since at least the start of the pentium product line, and perhaps even before that, Intel / AMD only manufactur a couple of different CPU's based on the socket type.

After testing to determine the full performance range these are then binned into different groups based on marketing. So that some are placed the value range, some in the mainstream, and some are for high end. These are the exact same chip with the only difference determined by how many of each the manufacturer can expect to sell in a given marketing segment.

Once Intel/AMD knows how many are destined for a group, they modify the chip through the multiplier settings, or in some extreme cases even physically destroy a part of the chip in order to limit it. AMD laser cut some traces in order to disable use of half the on chip cache for some of their processors in order to sell them in a value market.

The reason for this is simple economics. It is much cheaper to make one processor in the factory and disable features to meet market demands, even if it requires laser etching, than it is to produce multiple processors custom tailored for that market.

Overclocking then is simply getting past these issues and allowing the chip to perform at it's full / originally specified potential.

Having an SLI board, why not use NVidia's NTune to adjust settings instead of using the bios?

"I think you are forgetting one thing. Since at least the start of the pentium product line, and perhaps even before that, Intel / AMD only manufactur a couple of different CPU's based on the socket type.

After testing to determine the full performance range these are then binned into different groups based on marketing. So that some are placed the value range, some in the mainstream, and some are for high end. These are the exact same chip with the only difference determined by how many of each the manufacturer can expect to sell in a given marketing segment.

Once Intel/AMD knows how many are destined for a group, they modify the chip through the multiplier settings, or in some extreme cases even physically destroy a part of the chip in order to limit it. AMD laser cut some traces in order to disable use of half the on chip cache for some of their processors in order to sell them in a value market.

The reason for this is simple economics. It is much cheaper to make one processor in the factory and disable features to meet market demands, even if it requires laser etching, than it is to produce multiple processors custom tailored for that market.

Overclocking then is simply getting past these issues and allowing the chip to perform at it's full / originally specified potential"

I couldn't agree more Douglas

http://www.overclockyourcpu.co.uk

Hi guys.

I am a lot of sad because I own a Q6600 G0 and MSI P6N Diamond with Patriot LL plus 8800GTs in SLI and I can't get more than 1199Mhz on FSB no matter what. What is the problem? Tried increasing everything, but nothing works above 1199...