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Let's digress a bit from running around the computer with a fan and a soldering iron, move aside the dewar with liquid nitrogen, cover the old refrigerator coil, adapted for water cooling, or reduce the cooler fan speed to a decent 60-70 dB.) And have a little laugh at people who are considering your computer solely as a symbol of your coolness. Sometimes, to make their system even more impressive, they start overclocking. This work is dedicated to them...
Overview of computer terms in terms of involvement in overclocking and coolness
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This dictionary was compiled on the basis of the author's coolest experience, especially for cool overclockers who want to build or overclock their already cool computer.Mother, mother, motherboard, motherboard - the main device in a computer. It is intended for sticking all other devices and stones into it. The coolness is determined by the price, the friendliness of the manufacturer, the amount of applied precious metal and overclocking capabilities.
Hands are the main tool for overclocking. Toughness is determined by the degree of straightness or curvature. At the initial stage of overclocking enthusiasm, the degree of curvature is increased, with an increase in the number of curved boards, it decreases, which, however, does not exclude the possibility of its repeated abrupt growth.
Stone, the processor is the main object of overclocking. Coolness is determined by the frequency, cache size, manufacturer and degree of overclocking. Has nothing to do with construction.
An overclocker is a user who pushes his PC to the limit. Such an improvement significantly reduces its service life. Even the use of a cooling system does not save.
Overclocker - a person who overclocks CPU several times higher than his passport capacity. You can "overclock" the machine by increasing the supplied voltage, the frequency of the memory or bus, and installing new drivers.
The need for overclocking appears when the car bought a few years ago becomes obsolete, and there is no desire and opportunity to change it to a new one. And then the overclocker artificially improves the performance of his PC. What are the types of "overclocking" At the factory, the manufacturer produces all the necessary components himself, slightly increasing their parameters. Custom overclocking involves the actions of only the overclocker itself. Here everything will depend on the capabilities of the user and his desires. He can choose a minimum of parameters that are responsible for overclocking, or stop at automatic overclocking, acting through software or BIOS. motherboard. Such overclocking involves increasing the frequency of the system bus without changing other settings. With a reasonable method, the user significantly increases the clock speeds without reaching the limit values. In this case, the machine can work for a long time in this mode, and without stopping. Both bios and software methods can be used to bring desires to life. And you can, without further ado, arm yourself with a soldering iron and change the frequency of the clock generator, the multipliers of secondary devices that accelerate along with the bus, the processor supply voltage, its architecture and special options specific chipset. In addition, the frequency can be changed random access memory, depending on the system bus, and timings. Often the resulting "stove" requires a reliable cooling system. With an extreme type of overclocking, an overclocker increases the parameters of the computer to prohibitive values. Here you can't do without a cooling system. For this purpose, freon cooling, liquid vacuum, liquid helium, liquid nitrogen, cascade systems and others are used. But even this will not save the car from the need to replace the burnt iron. The other side of the coin Such a technical improvement requires an increase in voltage. Coupled with an increase in temperature, the life of a PC is reduced in direct proportion to overestimation. Therefore, in a few years, such work will have to be bought new computer.
Greetings! With today's article I want to start a small series of articles on the topic of overclocking. Since the article is basic, we will consider only basic concepts, and we will touch on this topic in more detail in the following articles. And today you will learn what overclocking is and why it is needed.
- What is overclocking?(This article)
What is overclocking in simple words?
According to the already established tradition, I will tell you what overclocking is so that everything is clear to everyone. No fancy phrases.
Overclocking (or overclocking a computer) is a process during which the performance of a PC is increased physically or programmatically.
Speaking about overclocking a computer, it means overclocking three components - the central processor, video card and RAM. This is all done independently and absolutely free, so many users of aging PCs first try to “squeeze all the juice out of it” and only when this is not enough, they buy new equipment (they upgrade the hardware). Read more this year.
The only thing you have to pay for when overclocking a computer is for stronger cooling. Why? Yes, because with an increase in performance, the heat dissipation of overclocked components increases very much. If we neglect the improvement of cooling, then such a computer will not work for a long time, because when heated, the wear of computer components increases. Yes, electronics love comfortable temperatures. That is why, by the way, manufacturers of any electronics warn that direct sunlight should not be allowed on it.
What is overclocking for?
As I said before, overclocking increases the performance of a computer. Accordingly, it is needed primarily by those people who are critically important PC power, but there is no desire (or opportunity) to spend a lot of money on buying new components.
Such people may well be gamers. For example, out new game, which only runs on the minimum graphics settings or slows down a lot. You can overclock your computer and enjoy this game. In addition, it will be possible to save a little on heating the room.
There are also people who simply thrive on overclocking and overclocking everything they get their hands on, and then measure the results with other overclocking fans. There are special forums and websites dedicated to this topic. They overclock even the highest-end processors just to see what can be squeezed out of them. Once you try to overclock your computer, you can completely lose control of yourself and join the society of such enthusiasts. Control yourself. In everything you need to know the measure.
How does overclocking even work?
How does overclocking work? Or would it be more correct to ask the question this way: what resources are used to overclock? And everything is very simple. Manufacturers always include some kind of performance margin in the product so that this product can work out its warranty period without problems.
That is, the same processor can operate at different frequencies, but manufacturers select such a base frequency for the processor, at which the probability of reaching its critical operating temperature is minimized, at which it can burn out.
It is for this reason that it is very important to take care of if you are thinking about overclocking your computer.
extreme overclocking
Conclusion:
If you want to know what overclocking is in practice, then I advise you to stay with us. The following articles will cover special programs for overclocking the processor and video card, as well as other overclocking methods.
When overclocking a computer at home, follow the golden rule "Slower you go - you'll be farther." Otherwise, your enthusiasm for performance gains may be short-lived. Sometimes it is possible to disable not only the overclocked video card or processor, but also the motherboard with the power supply.
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Progress does not stand still, and even yesterday an advanced computer, today begins to lag behind newer rivals. A little more time will pass, and it will hopelessly become outdated, it will be problematic to work on it in modern, resource-intensive applications, and many new products in the world will have to be abandoned. computer games.
Because of this, it is not necessary to buy a new computer every 2-3 years, especially when there are no large funds for the purchase. If desired, a little more power can be squeezed out of a computer starting to lag behind the times. This is where we come to the rescue overclocking.
Overclocking is certain user actions that allow you to slightly increase PC performance.. Its main components are:
- increasing the voltage that is supplied to the computer components;
- overclocking the frequency of the bus or memory;
- updating drivers.
And the most main feature overclocking - this is the absolute free of charge of such a way to increase the power of a PC. You do not need to spend money on all this, just devote a little free time.
How does overclocking work?
Many people ask themselves: processors have one frequency, but they can still, why don't they immediately have such characteristics? In fact, the answer here is quite simple - this is a kind of margin of safety for equipment so that it can work stably and smoothly throughout the entire service life.
Accordingly, with the help of overclocking, we force the hardware of our computer to work at the limit. Therefore, there is a certain risk that the user will overdo it with power and burn something. But if you strictly follow all the recommendations, then this will not happen.
Overclocking in theory
Let's take a closer look at what each of the components of overclocking is. We will start by increasing the voltage on certain parts of the computer. Why higher voltage can increase performance? Imagine a small electric motor, we connect one battery to it, and it rotates, and now we connect two batteries at once, and it starts to rotate many times faster. The same thing happens with the computer. more voltage makes him work much more productively. You just need to understand that a processor, or a video card, is not a simple motor, but rather expensive products. If you apply too much voltage, above a certain limit, they can quickly fail. So be careful and follow all the necessary recommendations. In the next article on overclocking, we will take a closer look at this procedure and show in practice how it is done.
The next method is to increase the operating frequency of the system bus. It is quite simple and at the same time effective method add power to your PC. Here we will change the parameters of the motherboard settings. This type of overclocking has three main areas:
- increasing the operating frequency using a specially designed DIP switch on the board itself;
- overclocking via BIOS;
- use to increase the operating frequency.
In the first case, you need to use a special switch on the motherboard (it is found on all boards). The second method is a little more complicated, here you will need to make certain settings in the BIOS settings. In the third case, you will need to use special utilities, which will help to accelerate the bus. Perhaps this is the most convenient of the listed options. We will look at them in more detail and show them clearly in the following articles on overclocking.
The last way, is to install newer drivers. The main purpose of the drivers is to ensure the correct and adequate interaction between different devices and operating system. Newer drivers tend to be much faster as they fix many of the old bugs and implement more modern concepts. All drivers can be downloaded from the websites of hardware manufacturers.
Don't forget about cooling
Even if you carry out quite reasonable overclocking, the computer will still seriously warm up. If you don't want to reheat breakfast every morning on your system unit and burn all the components ahead of time, then organize good cooling all the frizzy details.
There are three main types of PC cooling: air, water and with the help of special Peltier elements. In general, each computer is already initially equipped with a cooling system and, as a rule, air. It consists of a radiator mounted on a heating element and a cooler that drives air through this radiator. One of the best manufacturers air elements cooling is Zalman. Their products, although a little more expensive, are much more reliable than competitors and have a high level of performance. Very popular among some overclockers water cooling. It is not as reliable and more capricious in operation, but at the same time it allows you to achieve much best results and more efficient cooling. The use of Peltier elements is a very rare and expensive method, among the disadvantages of which is the formation of condensate. So few people dare to pay a tidy sum for such a cooling system and then suffer with its setting.
Overclocking and Android devices
In the world of mobile gadgets, time moves even faster, and when very weighty applications, games and even just HD movies come out for new ones, early models may no longer keep up with the quickness of their more modern colleagues.
One of the most popular mobile platforms has long boasted quite serious features and wide functionality. There are ways for Android to overclock and overclock the processor of a mobile device to higher performance values. But always remember that such an operation is associated with a certain risk for the device. In addition, battery consumption may increase.
The overclocking process for Android is very similar to overclocking a regular computer. At mobile devices processors are more resistant to overheating, they are harder to burn, but still possible, so be careful! Overclocking should be carried out no more than 20% of the power of the device. Believe me, the difference will be noticeable, but as already mentioned, now you have to charge the battery much more often.
The discharge rate will directly depend on the use of the device to its full capacity (during games, for example). This is due to the fact that after overclocking the device, a completely non-constant frequency will be set for the processor, but only its limit value. The device will switch to a higher clock speed only when using very "heavy" applications, games, videos that require more power. In all other cases, the gadget will use the nominal value of the processor performance.
The overclocking process requires certain actions to be performed on the device itself:
- do backup all data on the gadget, and copy the data from ROM;
- we get, on the device, administrator rights;
- install a special firmware assembly designed for overclocking;
- turn off USB debugging.
Also, as tools, we need normal computer, with all the drivers that allow you to work with the device, a USB cable to connect to the gadget and special application for overclocking ( IncrediControl, SetCPU). And most importantly - be sure to fully charge the device, it should not turn off during the entire procedure.
I also suggest watching an entertaining video on overclocking the processor: