How to Overclock Your Laptop
July 23, 2009 at 02:09:35 AM, by Blair Mathis
Note: By overclocking a laptop, you run the risk of damaging or destroying your computer. Following this tutorial will void your warranty. Perform at your own risk; Laptop Logic is not responsible for any damage resulting from this tutorial.
Risks
Did the warning above scare you? It should, because choosing to overclocking a laptop shouldn't be taken lightly. By doing so, there is a definite chance that you'll cause your processor to overheat and become damaged, though an informed individual will mostly be able to avoid the danger in overclocking.
By increasing the frequency of your CPU, you're increasing the power consumption and the temperature of your system. The increase in temperature can cause a lower lifespan for processor, and if you overclock your system too much, you'll not only generate a lot of heat, but could overstress other components, such as the motherboard and hard drive, and cause them to fail.
What is Overclocking?
We touched on what it is in the previous section, so if that all the more you want to know, skip to the next section to get started. If you're curious about why and how we can do this, however, then here's a little info.
When companies, such as Intel, create a processor, it is an inexact science, and the resulting CPU will, in all likelihood, be capable of a slightly higher frequency (1.8GHz instead of 1.6GHz, for example). The company will fix the the chips at a certain frequency and place them in computers. The chips that are capable of handling higher frequencies (2.0GHz+) are given higher prices and are put into higher-end machines. The chips that are only capable of lower frequencies are put in lower-end, cheaper laptops.
Because they can't predict the number of high-frequency capable CPUs they will produce compared to what they need, some high-end rating CPUs will end up placed in low-end laptops and set at a frequency lower than what they're capable of. By overclocking is called such because you're altering the speed at which a component tells the CPU to process data. If you're one of the lucky individuals to purchase such a laptop, then you'll be able to increase your processor's power without paying for a CPU upgrade.
"So," you may say, "Can I just crank it up to whatever its max is?"
No.
While the processor is capable of a certain frequency, said frequency is a multiple of the Front Side Bus (FSB), which can't be increased by more than 30MHz without serious risks. If you set it higher than this amount, you will, in all likelihood, experience hard drive failure, as well as RAM, PCI, and other components.
An example we like to use when demonstrating how this works together is such:- 1.5GHz CPU & 100MHz FSB = 15x
- 100MHz+20MHz=120MHz
- 120MHz(15) = 1.8GHz
That might seem complicated, but it's not, and the software we're going to use will do the math for you, so don't worry. Just remember, knowledge is power, and by having a (basic) understanding of what is going on, you'll be able to make informed decisions.
Getting Started
You tuned in for an overclocking article, not a math article, right? Well, then lets get started. In this tutorial, we're going to overclock a Dell Latitude D620 laptop.
1. You'll need to download the following three programs: Prime95, SetFSB, and CPU-Z. All three of them are free.
2. Run CPU-Z to find out what motherboard your laptop has. Do this by running the program, then selecting the 'Mainboard' tab.
3. If you haven't already, download SetFSB.
4. Restart your computer and shut down any programs that you might have set to run automatically. Finally, before continuing, backup any files you can't afford to lose (it's not too late to turn back).
5. Start Prime95, choose the button that says GIMPS, and then navigate to Options > Torture Test, which will stress your system to see how stable it is. Ideally, you should let the program run for 12-24 hours, but to start, you can run it for 30 minutes to an hour and see if it results in any errors. If it doesn't, move to the next step. If it does return errors, then your system can't handle the stress of overclocking, and doing so would be dangerous.
If your system freezes, immediately do a hard reset (shut it down). The icon will be red while this is happening. If the icon switches to yellow, the torture test has failed and you'll have to stop it by navigating to Test > Stop.
##ADSENSE##6. Start up SetFSB and, from the dropdown menu, choose your chipset. If your chipset isn't listed, as mine wasn't, choose the closest one, then press the GET FSB button and make sure it gets the correct speed of your CPU; in our case, it was 1662.2MHz.
If your computer proved to be stable under stress when you ran Prime95, then click the right arrow button next to the frequency slider to increase the FSB a slight amount; click SET FSB button to make it final.
7. Now that you've increased the speed slightly, you need to run Prime95 again, this time overnight, and see if it produces any errors. If it doesn't, then you can safely increase the FSB a little more. You can repeat this process until you Prime95 reports an error, but note that if you take it to far, your CPU will freeze, so use caution.
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Comments
Scott at 01:08, April 27, 2010
Im not sure what my mother board is, im using CPU-Z and i dont see anything similar to what it says on SetFSB. It is made by Winston and the model is 30d6 Chipset and Southbridge are both NVIDIA nForce560. Also when I open SetFSB it says chipset error and I cant push the get fsb button. The CPU speed is correct though.
wisgator at 14:32, February 01, 2010
Michael, it's a software OC. It won't stay. If you want your OC to stay final, you'll have to do it through your BIOS.
Michael at 08:57, December 13, 2009
Tried this on my Dell Inspiron 1300. intel celeron mobile 1.6 ghz. i managed to get it to 2.023 ghz but when i turn my computer off and back on again it resets back to 1.6, am i missing a step please help.
Michael at 08:57, December 13, 2009
Tried this on my Dell Inspiron 1300. intel celeron mobile 1.6 ghz. i managed to get it to 2.023 ghz but when i turn my computer off and back on again it resets back to 1.6, am i missing a step please help.
Michael at 08:57, December 13, 2009
Tried this on my Dell Inspiron 1300. intel celeron mobile 1.6 ghz. i managed to get it to 2.023 ghz but when i turn my computer off and back on again it resets back to 1.6, am i missing a step please help.
Michael at 08:57, December 13, 2009
Tried this on my Dell Inspiron 1300. intel celeron mobile 1.6 ghz. i managed to get it to 2.023 ghz but when i turn my computer off and back on again it resets back to 1.6, am i missing a step please help.