How did you learn about overclocking?

[Son1990]

My friend, Blaine, kept asking if I planned to OC my first rig. After I asked what this "Overclocking" was, he quickley explained wat it was then pointed me here. You guys did the rest of the damage

 

[Alchemy1]

I started reading the forums and slowly, but surely I bought the parts for the AMD rig in my sig. The rig was okay to learn the basics on, but my ram sucks. So, getting a uber OC was never possible unless I upped the multi. Now years later I have a decent rig that can oc and play games fairly well...lol Today I will start a new quest...water cooling. My parts are "on truck for delivery".

 

[Electron Chaser]

A very long time ago in an age before Windows, when DOS ruled with an iron fist, The modem was king and the internet was in it's infancy and was just getting started in public use with something called Prodigy.

In these dark ages of communication the computer savvy of the world used something called a BBS (Bullitin Board Service) to share ideas and software. It was here that I learned about Overclocking. My first OCed rig was an 80286 12MHz that I changed the crystal in and bumped it to 16 MHz. I had my memory maxed out, with all the SIPP chip banks filed so that I had an entire 2 MB of RAM and a huge 40 MB HDD that I had to partition and format into several drives because of it's size. So yeah it was a long time ago.

 

[Sir. BOBSONATOR]

this lovely site.

 

[larva]

I have a hard time remembering a time when OCing wasn't an issue. From changing crystals on an Apple][+ clone to today's 4GHz P4, if it's run from a clock generator I'm looking to up that frequency.

I also used to use ~30-35 CPUs weekly in my work as a system builder. Plenty of opportunity to play and learn. I can't even begin to describe just how much OCing experience I gained in the 10+ years I worked in the PC biz. A dream job, at least while it paid well.

 

[-_{MoW}_-Assasi]

i forgot, it was nearly a year ago

 

[Beginner]

i was in a bookstore and saw a magazine that had articles on the breakdown of a pc. it had recommendations to maintain optimal performance and it had a little paragraph that said about "overclocking the cpu cycles". then it gave a link here with a disclaimer that doing this may void equipment warranty, etc. etc.

i put the mag back and for the longest time tried do remember the link, www.overclock.com didn't work, for a couple of weeks nothing. then i was recommended google and i found this site

i love this place

 

[ghettocomp]

Like, how did you discover whan overclocking is? .

From an article in BYTE magazine on OCing an old Commodore 64, A good old fashioned volt mod, and later replaced the keyboard

 

[Captain Slug]

I learned about overclocking while researching upgrading options for my second rig which was a Pentium II 233 on an Intel AL440ZX. The BIOS had to be upgraded in order for a slotket to be used and the fastest processor you upgrade it with was a Celeron 533A, the older model with a heatspreader.
Needless to say the jumpers on the slotket were fun to play with.
I slowly got it up to 575mhz, which made more of a difference than one would think.

And then I got into playing with Durons.

 

[four4875]

i got started when talking to my older brother about how to make the sims play better, he had read somewhere that it is possible to overclock some computers, where you turn up the bus speed on the motherboard, thats all he knew, and i found an old article in the ms help file format. i read that, and the first thing i OC'd was a P1 75 to 133. then a P1 120 to 133, and a few after that. the best one i got back then was a K6-2 333 running at 500. i think i was running far too much voltage, that thing ran hot as a mofo...

then i came across overclockersforum.com (now the EOC forums) stuck around there a while, made some bad choices and got banned shortly after glock chose to leave there, went to ocmodshop with him, stuck around a while, then i came over here and this has been my home since.

 

[delman]

I found out gradually off of an other set forums because of other people asking about it and no one would answer them with the answer like it was a secret and then I decided to look it up for my self and that is how I found out.

 

[the garynator]

dicking around with my 333mhz cyrix II or whatever... doing stuff myself and mainly overclockers.com/ocforums.

 

[Dan Derrig]

I remember the first time I got interested in OC'ing I was like 11, lol, a few years ago and my parents had a Celeron 333. I was surfing the net... on aol.. and I saw this ad for secrets to computer preformance. I clicked it and it was all "Secrets Intel Doesnt Want You to Know" and crap, so I downloaded it. lol, it was a DOS app and it told me the celeron 333 was running at 900 something MHz, and I was all excited, thinking I had the fastest computer ever made and remained that way for a day or so until I figured out I had been tricked. (I was actually not that stupid, just didn't have any experience)
Anyways, I wasn't interested until a while later after being interested in computers for a while, I built a Celeron 2.0 northwood comp out of a barebones from TD... lol... Two years later, I was interested in upgrading my computer (I wanted to play the FEAR demo when I heard about it.) so I figured I'd upgrade my CPU, RAM, and video card, since it needed better than a geforce 2 ultra. I was reading online, learning about my options (I forgot a lot that I knew when I built the comp) and came across something about overclocking, and got interested so I googled overclocking and came across some of the guides on this forum. I checked my BIOS (thank God I built my own PC) for FSB options and yeah, I had some! I cranked it straight up to 130mhz feeling careless, and bam, I had a 2.6 celeron! I posted on this one forum that has a computer section and showed them a screenshot of System Properties or something, asking "Did I do this right?" I was really excited (though I couldnt play FEAR yet) and some people confirmed my new speed. I read up on overclocking a lot and learned a lot about it. My dad decided to get my sister and I laptops, but I had no use for it and I wanted to get something with decent graphics for FEAR, but I was still an Intel fanboy and thought MHz were everything. Someone explained to me how an AMD can be equivalent to an Intel at higher speeds and I looked up gaming benchmarks and stuff and I decided to get an AMD Venice 939, 1gb DDR3200, a GeForce 6600 and a Gigabyte nForce 4 Ultra motherboard. I did overclock this, but it's not that drastic anymore, I used to have it at 2.5ghz but it was hot.

Was that a detailed description of how I learned about overclocking? I can still elaborate. lol
NOTE: I am not an AMD fanboy. I'd get an Intel chip if they were cheaper, and better for gaming. Dothan doesn't seem like any upgrade from my A64, but yonah might be nice. If it's cheap.

 

[PWatterson]

I was reading some computer article about installing an optical drive ( I was scared to do so, it seemed so hard then....LOL) and the word overclocking was mentioned and there was a short description. I read it and tried to do it. One motherboard and processor later and a reformat due to no PCI lock at a later time, and bam, I found these forums to help my noobish problem. Now, I learn something new about computers every day it seems, and without these forums, it would not be at all possible. And to think, if I had not found these forums, I would most likely be typing on a Dell right now.

 

[Dan Derrig]

hahaha, dell. I might have been on a freaking mac! lol

 

[leezfix]

This past summer the integrated video on my ol' 933 Gateway was on the blink. I decided that being a poorboy I had better start reading and build my next PC if I wanted some bang for buck. Coinincidently alot of what I came across included overclocking. Now I know enough to know how little I know.

 

[Avg]

I purchased a mobo from ebay and while reading the manual(hell froze over that day) I came across something about overclocking so then I searched for it and here I am today.

 

[MEMex]

When I had my Intel 466mhz Celeron system, i was going nuts trying to play Natural Selection at 11-28 fps (a half life 1 mod). I heard about overclocking from one of my brothers friends and googled it. I stumbled onto overclockers.com and my life was completed

 

[scott d]

Back a two years ago when all the hurricanes came through FL, I lost power for a week and a half. I stayed with my girlfriend, since she had power and water. Unfortunately, I left my apartment windows slightly open because it was so hot out, and didn't come home from a football game until late, only to find my crappy computer and everything else of value had been stolen.

I was pretty much broke, so my friend offered to help me build a computer since he said it would be cheaper, helped me order my parts, then disappeared when it was time to build it. I had to teach myself and the obsession began. I started reading up on all this stuff, then RMAed most of what I'd already gotten in favor of more overclockable hardware. I went almost 2 months without a computer, but the wait ended up being worth it.

The funny thing is, the original idea was to buy the cheapest parts possible, and this has ended up being an expensive hobby

 

[palee72]

I actually learned about overclocking here. I had an unrelated computer question, did a google, found this site. It answered my question (and many more). So I joined and badda bing, badda boom, here I am today.

Since then, I have gotten my MCSA, A+, Net+ and am currently working on my MCSE. I am also the Systems Admin for my company now.

Thanks OC Forums!!

(That sounded kinda cheesy..)