First thing you need to do when Overclocking is make sure you know we are entirely un-liable for any damage you do to your pc, yourself or the national power grid in the process, don’t let that put you off though, I overclock all the time and I haven’t died once.

Next thing you need to do is find out exactly what sort of Motherboard you have, because no two motherboards are the same its important you find out specifics from your manufacturers website before you start. An easy way to find out what sort of motherboard you have is to open up your case and look, the model is usually written somewhere on the PCB and sometimes it’s even on a nice idiot proof sticker.

Sadly some motherboards can’t be overclocked at all, sometimes this can be rectified with a bios flash, a fairly simple procedure which I won’t go into now because this is an Overclocking guide and not a bios flashing guide. Some motherboards do have an automatic bios flashing utility such as the Asus a7m266.

Some motherboards can only be overclocked by jumper settings while others use a mixture of jumpers and bios settings. There are two ways to overclock, the first is to change your FSB (Front Side Bus the system that your pc uses to have all its components communicate with your CPU) and the second it to change your multiplier which is the number by which your FSB is multiplied to achieve the internal clock speed of your chip. For example a 1 GHz CPU could be running using a 100 MHz FSB and a 10x multiplier 100x10=1000MHz ß your clock speed.

Overclocking your FSB puts extra strain on all of your components due to the increased speed at which they are required to communicate. Because of this the amount by which you can up your FSB is very much dependent on the quality of your components RAM, your motherboard, and even soundcards can all limit the amount to which it will increase. Overclocking using the multiplier is less dependent on other components but is not as fruitful as the FSB because it is only the CPU which runs faster rather than the entire pc. The optimal setup is of course to find the ideal balance between multiplier and FSB in order to obtain the highest performance without sacrificing stability.

The best way to change your FSB if you can is through the use of the bios. Most newer motherboards have this feature in their bios setup screens. For example on the Asus a7m266 you have to select a user defined fsb (the other options are 100mhz and 133mhz) and then simply keep adding to it until you reach your desired fsb, With the Epox 8k7a or 8k7a+ you have to enter the frequency’s sub menu and simply type in your new FSB. If your motherboard only allows for jumper fsb selection then your options are usually limited to 100 or 133fsb which isn’t really of much use. For people in this situation the only other options are to use multiplier adjustments (assuming those aren’t locked) or a program called SoftFSB which you can download from the downloads section of the website.

Adjusting the multiplier of your motherboard is usually done through the use of dip switches on the motherboard itself. Refer to your motherboard manual itself for more specific information on this. However you cant up your multiplier unless your CPU in ‘unlocked’. As far as I know all Athlons above 1.33 GHz are factory unlocked but don’t worry if yours doesn’t fall into this category because you can unlock it yourself with our unlocking guide and a little time.

For a first overclock I wouldn’t be to enthusiastic, it’s best to slowly work your way up testing at regular intervals for stability and temperature. I recommend MBM for temperature monitoring, which should be in our download section and United Devices which you can get from www.ud.com which loads your CPU 100% to simulate heavy usage so you can test for stability while researching a cure for cancer. First try an overclock of around 5mhz FSB or 0.5 more multiplier and slowly increase from there until you get to a point where the system becomes to unstable or where you aren’t happy with the temperatures. Once you reach this point there are three things you can do.

1. Stop Overclocking and chill

2. Buy a bigger and better heatsink to deal with high temperatures

3. Supply more CPU voltage in order to achieve more stability

Most motherboards have a setting somewhere (although irritatingly it’s usually a jumper) to supply more voltage to the CPU in order to help it run more stably, look at your motherboard manual to discover its whereabouts, and if it isn’t mentioned you can always try your manufactures website, remember though more voltage means more heat so if your heatsink isn’t up to it be prepared for higher temperatures than usual.

Thanks for reading my guide and I hope you liked it. (Unless you skipped straight to the end just to read this bit in which case go to hell)

Good luck and happy Overclocking

Freddo