How to Overclock Your Computer 101

Voltage Management

Voltages are by far the most difficult and dangerous aspect of overclocking, and so a lot of care and experience is necessary before changing these settings.  With the current safety features in most modern day equipment to prevent self-damage from excess heat, voltage is the only setting currently that is guaranteed to ruin a component if handled improperly.  The basic principles of voltage are:

1. Higher voltage leads to increased stability
2. Raising the voltage creates more heat
3. The more voltage, the more likely the life expectancy of the part will be decreased
4. Too much voltage can fry a component, rendering it useless
5. Voltage damage is almost never covered by manufacturer warranties, and as such damage caused by improper voltage tweaking will most likely lead to the purchase of a replacement component

Now that being said, when and how to increase the voltage is relatively simple.  A good rule of thumb for when to increase the voltage is if you reboot from the BIOS and your system either fails to boot or crashes while loading windows.  As you should only be overclocking one part at a time, it should be incredibly obvious what caused the error, and the voltage to that part can be increased.  It is VERY IMPORTANT to only increase the voltage by the minimum allowed amount at any given time, never jump voltages (i.e. go 1.25 –> 1.35 –> 1.45 through subsequent boots, never 1.25 –> 1.45).

As a personal rule for maintaining part safety, I find that increasing the voltage by 10-15% is about as much as I will consider on anything other than a part that is already obsolete and I am planning on replacing.  For any brand new components, I generally won’t even touch the voltage unless feeling rather daring, and then only by as much as 5%.

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