umm ok i am not computer smart so all this talk of overclocking makes no sense to me, why woulld we want to do that? and if it is risky why even tell people about it?

The concept is simple. Make your computer go faster than its rated for. The risk is also simple, the faster it goes the hotter it gets. If it gets too hot, it dies permanently. Fortunately, theres a built in safety feature. Before it gets hot enough to die, it will stop working, and at that point you clock it down a bit. In general, you wont cause permanent damage if your careful, and if you arent going to be careful dont do it at all.

Here you go! All kinds of good info! ;)

http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/cg...&f=10&t=015055

Also, theoretically, a processor (properly cooled and cared for) will last decades. All the other circuitry is more likely to fail first. If you resonably overclock the processor, you may knock years off it's life (even 50%) but you still have much more CPU life than you need, it'll be *very* obsolete before it fails.

When a manufacturer rates a CPU they do so at the speed at which they can 100% fully guarantee stability and compatibility. That's not to say that the CPU can't run faster. Many manufacturers are also guilty of "underclocking" chips: Marking a chips speed down, to reduce the amount of faster chips available, thus increasing the price.

Overclocking can be dangerous though, so if you're not sure what you're doing don't do it. My secondary box is a 1.2GHZ T-Bird that's been running at 1.6GHZ quite comfortably now for almost a year.

XP1700+ @ 2000mhz @ 1.75v
Spire FalconRock II

^^ that is what a guy at another forum i go to is running his cpu at, the fan is a $40 australian dollar fan, the chip a $125 australian dollar chip, a total of $165. A chip clocked at 2000mhz costs $225 over here. Overclocking is a cheap way of getting high performance. The above is only an example, you can do better or worse pricewise depending on what you purchase....

some people also just do it for wank value, ie. people who buy vapochill units...