It's not that 'dangerous'...Ok...In a laptop, yeah that's nuts

For the desktop it's a different story as long as you take precautions.

I've had my 2.53Ghz clocked to 2.9 for almost a year and it's smooooth. I guess it is like driving a car 100 miles an hour 'All' the time but by the time it does die it will be too out-dated to care.

The real winner for overclocking that I've found is the Intel 1.8a...I built a machine a little less than a year ago for a buddy...It's clocked at 2.4Ghz At around $120...It's a real steal and fun to push

To understand overclocking, one must understand how processors are made.

Processors are not made identical. That are made in a long strip that is afterwards cut in individual pieces. Each piece is somewhat different.  One by one the processors speed are tested for its optimal stable speed. That's when this processor is labeled a 2.3, this other one a 2.6, this other one a 2.5, etc.  When you overclock your processor, you are going above what the manufacturer's test decided under which speed it was the most stable.

Although manufacturer's optimal stability is pretty conservative in some of these chips.

They didn't leave much room in the 2.53. It isn't much of an overclocker...I would have been better off with the 1.8a, a lot cheaper and 2.4Ghz is a gimme even with the stock sink and fan

I would advise you very strongly against overclocking your laptop.

First of all I really don't think it can be done. Modern mobile processors are multiplier locked and you most likely don't have access to the FSB settings. I suppose you could try SoftFSB if you wanted. http://www.geocities.com/enigmadeadsouls/softfsb.html#softfsbdown

I wouldn't do it, no way. My laptop gets incredibly hot anyway without overclocking.

#27 by paxx To understand overclocking, one must understand how processors are made.

I used to work in IT at Jabil Circuit who was a beta site for Intel and AMD. It was also a job shopper site for testing and certifing CPU's. At one point in time they used to also Beta dn test Cyrix CPU. I used to get a real kick out of watching them test a CPU and find it did not perform at the rated speed so they would drop it down a notch and test it there ( 1.6 ghx, no work, 1.3 ghz testd, worked, labeled 1.3 ghz )

With laptops there are so many considerations that you do not come across with a desktop. Heat being the number one CPU killer. As I mentioned before, Laptop cases and mother boards are designed in such a way to maximize cooling, and with one laptop running at one speed a CPU might be located in one area, and in a totally different are for a different speed rated CPU.

My T-22 had the RAM located a little off center and to the upper right hand side/bottom of the mother board. My R-32 has the ram off center lower right, my T-20 is located in the same place as the R-32, but the modem/nic is located in a totally different place. Plumbing for heat exchange is the main reason for such things.

Even if the Mother board in that Dell will take the higher rated CPU, it could very well cause a heat issue in some other hardware causing intermitant lock up's, system hang's, or actually fry a component...

With a deaktop, you can add cooling which will let you push a CPU (heat is what causes the failure in fault testing for the most part) a bit higher. Personally I refuse to overcloak anything and also refuse to work on anything over clocked because I am not about to have someone tell me "Well yeah it is running 600 mhtz faster than rated, but you worked on it and then a moneth later if fried" and the whole time they heard a fan chattering and screeching...

anyway...

Just wanted what I paid for. Weighting the risks and rewards, I don't think I'll overclock. Sure, I'll get .2 or .3 more, but will I be able to tell the difference? I doubt it. Just buy a couple of more fans to cool it down and it'll do.

It is safer to upgrade the CPU. It would seem difficult to add extra cooling to a laptop. You can probably get a 2.6 Ghz CPU overdrive. I did that years ago to boost a PI 100 to a PI 200. More RAM helps too.
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I'd go out on a limb and say that the average person, using average software, probably couldn't tell the difference between a 1.6g and a 2.4g processor anyway. I think 90% of the difficulty in hardware sales now is fooling people into thinking they actually need the extra speed. Browse through the software section and look at the minimum requirements. Most software is like 1/3 the average machine.

So if upgrading isn't getting you much noticeable effect, frying your machine certainly isn't worth it. You can stay a full year behind bleeding edge and never tell the difference, imo.

As with the most powerful Formula One engines built, sure you could get 1200hp from 1500cc .....but only for two or three laps.....a sort of 5 minute controlled detonation. [Brabham BMW qualifying engine].Needless to say, the engine capable of surviving the full race length was limited to around 900hp.

More or less OT.
Errrr .... just a small point Jafo.
The 1.5T iron block 4 actually wound the BMW inhouse dyno off the clock under testing but the telemetry readings in the 1986 Austrian GP showed Gerald the Burglar's Bennetton B186 BMW running up around 5+bar .... which translates to some 1300+bhp in race trim!
These were the 'old' upright engines at that, not the Factory 'Laydowns' used by Brabham, maintained by Heini Maader.
Not too many of those grenaded .... but the rest of the car was pretty stressed!
Remember them at Adelaide '86 .... bloody awesome in the true meaning of that much abused word.
OK ... I'm being pedantic!
Now those were REAL F1 cars and drivers.
As for overclocking a laptop ..... not on my watch.
M-E-L-T-D-O-W-N bigtime!

wombat.....I have the dubious honour of having been virtually underneath one of them....while the engine was still ticking over.....Warrick was being a pain so I told them to crane him off....Turn 5, Adelaide....he was still in it...and pretty pissed off when he stormed past me afterwards......silly prat had done the same thing in Japan...[though that time he didn't go up in the crane]....

Thems was the dayz when cars expired with monotonous regularity.....eg, losing 20 out of 26...and any time they stopped, the burned.....[bloody turbos]...

I want to get rid of my single Turbo 280 ZX and get a dual Turbo 300 ZX

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