Here’s a really great article and video from PC World and writer Martyn Williams entitled ‘How I went from zero to overclocking in 30 minutes’. Martyn attended an Overclocking workshop at last week’s HWBOT World Tour event held at Computex 2016, sitting down with Workshop leader Xyala to learn the basics of how to push a CPU and increase system performance. After learning the ropes, Martyn, along with other Workshop attendees, then had chance to tweak then tweak a Core i7 6950X processor on his own, pushing the chip to score as highly as possible using the XTU benchmark.

Martyn explains how raising the base clock and multiplier results in higher CPU clock speeds that may then require more voltage. In the video you can see him increase the voltage of the i7 6950X from 1 volt to 1.30 volts, pushing the multiplier from 42x from 35x, giving him a clock speed of 4.2GHz and an improved score of 2,577 marks XTU.

“If you think overclocking is something that only hardcore PC enthusiasts can get into, think again. At Computex in Taipei last week I got the chance to try overclocking Intel's latest processor, the 10-core Broadwell-E chip, and it was a lot of fun.”

The story really does a great job of outlining and framing the mission of the HWBOT World Tour. As a person with a general interest in technology and PCs, Martyn found that after just twenty minutes of exposure to overclocking, that he could feel the pull and allure of competitive overclocking as a sport.

“Thanks to Intel's XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility) overclocking app, doing some basic overclocking was easy. But beware: If you're the type of person who likes a challenge and enjoys tinkering with computers, it can get addictive fast.”

Make sure you check out the full article here on PC World where you can also watch a video of Martyn suddenly running in to the issue of blue screens!