Overclocking or Sniff, Sniff, What Is That Smell?

Whoa! Smoke! Outa my computer! - Or the need for speed by over clocking will destroy your computer if the proper care isn't taken ...

Smell familiar? Ever think of how hot the inside of your computer gets?

Most computers only get to around 110* to 130* F but some of us like ta push the envelope.

Don't know what I am talking about?

Well Grasshopper there is a question that all humans have with computers: "Why is it so slow?"

And then they start tinkering with things to make them faster.

One very popular way to get a faster computer is to make it perform outside of the design specifications.

This is called "over clocking", and sometimes it creates that acrid smell of burning electronics.

Cool, lloove the smell of burning electronics in the morning!

Before you open up your BIOS and start poking around in the Advanced section a little bit of advice:

1. Be sure you can afford to buy a replacement computer or the parts to get yours back working again
2. Insure that the cooling devices in the case are working and can provide enough air flow to take away any excessive heat that will be generated by increasing the clock frequencies of the memory and processor(s).
3. Last thing: If you visit some of the geek or nerd boards you will read about people increasing the voltage to make the processor/memory operate faster. There is a very good chance (99%) that the first time you change the voltage on the processor you will be buying another one with in a few minutes.

One thing I stress in the Self Computer Repair Unleashed! 2nd Edition Manual where the overclocking starts and the Advanced E-Course on Over clocking that until you know what increasing the voltage for the processor and/or the memory does, then don't do it!

Troubleshoot, repair, maintain, upgrade & secure...     With this!

Have I actually smoked a processor? Yes, indeed! I had an old 486 66MHz that was just sitting quietly in the office closet when it said "Woe is me, he has a new Pentium 4 and I am stuck in the dark. Please take me out of here and use me!"

So I took it out of the closet and poked around in the BIOS, I got 73 MHz before that processor went 'POP' and so it goes:

"The magic goes away when you let the smoke out!" ~ GCC Class of '87.

P.S.

I wrote this as a humor article but in reality there are some people that do this at least once and sometimes twice.