Schoolboy errors with Overclocking

[ac3144]

Hello my learned superiors,
I am reading as much as I can about computers in general and specifically about overclocking with a view to OC'ing my Q6600.

I'm not after specifics or anything like that (great guide Graysky thanks) just your combined wisdom on the schoolboy errors YOU made in your early overclocking careers, so that I may avoid them and stand on the shoulders of giants and bask in uber gigahertz glory

So...what errors did you make, whatever they are, which if you knew then what you know now would never ever have happened.

Yours admiringly
Andy

 

[richardscott]

broke a asus commando by flashing inside windows big mistake asus need to fix that tbh.

never broken anything just made them not last as long by using to many volts

 

[aaronuflaw]

I decided to help my friend overclock his AMD system about five years ago. (Actually, I was the one who convinced him to.) I did this without knowing a thing about overclocking. I forgot the chip he had, but I remember it was locked, but there was a way to unlock it by using a graphite pencil to close a connection between two electrodes on the CPU. We tried this, and to make a long story short, blew the chip and MB. Since I was the one that pushed him, I bought him a new CPU and MB.

Lets just say I came a long way since then. Now I have a stable 33% overclock. Yay!

 

[MaDMagik]

AMD Athlon XP without the coppershin(tried to save few pounds) + cheap but BIG noname cooler with very hard mounting spring(tried to save few pounds) = AMD Athlon XP with crushed core In the end I paid more than 20 times more than what i was trying to save. That was a good lesson.

Never was a fan of multimedia keyboards but ended up with one for one of my PCs. Didint realize taht among countless buttons theres such thing as F-lock and that unless its pressed it stops function keys from working, and if F8 doesnt work you cannot accept Windows license agreement Took some time to figure it out. Nothing to be proud of though

 

[ac3144]

'I did this without knowing a thing about overclocking'

Ha brilliant! I am familiar with this philosophy definitely, not just when it comes to computers either...

I second the annoyance of multimedia keyboards, I have gone back to a basic, small no nonsense keyboard so I cant press buttons with bizarre functions that I have no clue how to fix because I never read the manuals...now I think about it, who DOES?

 

[jsc]

I have been pretty lucky - so far. I haven't fried or noticeably decreased the lifespan of anything. But then, I have been doing this for a few years.
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Overclocking since 1978 - Z80 (TRS-80) from 1.77 MHz to 2.01 MHz

 

[aaronuflaw]

JSC,

I didn't know they were overclocking WAY back then. I think my family got its first PC around 1990-92. I remember it was a 286. But it had this funny turbo button on the front. LOL. If I put it into turbo mode it went from 8Mhz to 12Mhz . . . whoa. So, officially I have been overclocking since then . . . . .