Here’s an interesting article that just caught our eye. Writing for Digital Trends, Jayce Wagner has put together an article which actually makes a great case for overclocking your PC. He first outlines the general scope of the mission followed by a pretty straight forward step by step guide first using Intel XTU, then AMD Overdrive. It’s a solid guide for any beginner wanting to dip a toe in the OC ocean:

“That old machine you built with your bare hands or plucked off a shelf at Best Buy might be holding out on you – through no fault of its own. Chances are your computer isn’t running as fast as it could – and not because of all those browser extensions and background processes. Nope, your PC might not be performing at its peak because it may have been hamstrung by manufacturer set speed limits. How do you cast off those oppressive shackles keeping your CPU from its true potential? You overclock it.”

“So manufacturers like Intel and AMD test the chips and slap a speed limit on them based on a lot of different factors. Performance, supply quotas, and marketing all play a role in determining how many chips of a certain speed each manufacturer ships to retailers. That’s where the fun comes in. By doing some tinkering, you might find that your humble CPU is hiding some serious horsepower. You could very well crank a 4GHz processor up to 4.5GHz or 4.6GHz for instance. With some serious cooling power, you might even push it to 5GHz. But your mileage will vary, because like we said, no two chips are alike.”

Check out the full article here on Digital Trends.