You don't have to spend a pile of money to give your system some of the cutting-edge features of superfast gaming and graphics PCs costing $5000 or more. A few frugal upgrades can bring your PC's performance to a new level.
For starters, you can get a no-cost speed boost by racing the clock--no, not on a quarter-mile track, on your motherboard. Overclocking boosts performance by pushing the CPU and the graphics chip to run faster than their factory presets. Most CPUs can operate comfortably at frequencies higher than PC vendors use.
If you're cautious, you can overclock a PC with almost no risk. Your CPU will run hotter, but monitoring and controlling your system's temperature is easy (see "Stay Cool"). Keep in mind, however, that overclocking usually invalidates your warranty. Also, you may not see any performance boost, in which case it's best to revert to the defaults rather than turn up the heat for no reason.
If you bought your motherboard separately or purchased a PC that uses an off-the-shelf motherboard (as in enthusiast systems and boxes from vendors such as CyberPower), you may have a Windows utility that lets you overclock without resorting to your PC Setup program. Otherwise, open PC Setup, usually by pressing the key you're prompted to use as your system starts but before Windows loads. Look for settings in your BIOS for the system clocks and frontside bus (FSB); the section may be labeled 'Advanced Chipset Features'. Remember that names for settings and sections vary from BIOS to BIOS.
The only way to find your CPU's top speed is through trial and error. Still, you can learn a lot before you start by reading about the successes and failures of other overclockers. The forums at Extreme Overclocking are an excellent place to start. EarthWeb Hardware's Sysopt.com has a database of users' overclocking experiences that you can search by CPU and motherboard, as well.
You have two ways to overclock your CPU: Increase the CPU multiplier to boost its frequency, or jack up the frequency of the system clock (or FSB), which controls the RAM and motherboard. Changing the multiplier is the easier method. For example, if your PC's FSB runs at 200 MHz and its multiplier is set to 14, the CPU would run at 2.8 GHz. Crank the multiplier to 16, and the CPU runs at 3.2 GHz. However, except for high-end CPUs in AMD's Athlon FX or Intel's Extreme Edition line, all modern processors come with the multiplier locked. That's why most overclockers must instead raise the speed of the FSB, a trickier procedure.
Increasing the FSB speed affects not only the CPU rate but also how fast data moves between memory and the CPU. Tweaking this timing can cause your PC to crash, so you may have to adjust RAM and voltage settings in the BIOS as well. You'll find help at the forums mentioned above. Be careful with these settings, however--a mistake can be disastrous.
To find out how much faster your system can go, nudge the clock settings in its BIOS up one click and then use your PC for a while to see if it crashes. If it doesn't, increase the setting one more notch, and keep on until the system fails. At that point, push your clock back one (though you might want to give yourself a little safety cushion).
The procedure may sound intimidating, but it really just boils down to trial and error (mostly trial, I hope) until you find the fastest stable settings.
High-performance systems usually have high-performance cooling. The stock CPU fan that shipped with your PC probably doesn't provide the cooling power that overclocking requires. Fan-based CPU coolers cost less than $30 online, but I recommend spending a bit more for one from a top-flight vendor such as Thermaltake or Zalman. In fact, Zalman's $50 CNPS9500 cooler turned my noisy and red-hot overclocked Pentium D box into a cool, purring kitty cat.
Many gamers and power users opt for superefficient liquid-based PC cooling systems--smaller versions of the radiator that keeps your car from overheating. The devices include a simple pump, tubing, a radiator, and a "heat block" that draws heat from the CPU. One I recommend is Thermaltake's $100 BigWater SE.
If the thought of water coursing just millimeters from your PC's expensive circuitry makes you nervous, avoid the worry and install Vigor Gaming's $130 Monsoon II Lite cooler. The waterless Monsoon II provides excellent cooling by combining a fan with a powerful Peltier cooler; the device is easy to install, and it takes up less space inside your case than many high-powered CPU cooling fans do.
Graphics cards have their own processor and RAM, each of which you can speed up via software utility programs. RivaTuner 2 from 3Dguru has long been the overclocker's program of choice for easy graphics tweaking, but overclocking has become common enough now that leading graphics board vendors ATI and nVidia include overclocking programs with many of their graphics cards. In fact, in some situations, using ATI's Overdrive utility for overclocking doesn't even void the card's warranty. You may need to unlock nVidia's Coolbits utility; consult Jim Aspinwall's "Secret Tweaks" for instructions (scroll to "Video Overclocking Made Easy").
Much of the advice that goes for overclocking your PC applies equally to graphics cards: Check the overclocking Web sites referenced earlier for the procedures for your card, always increase clock rates in small increments, thoroughly test a given speed before making further increases, and watch like a hawk for overheating.
If you're worried about your graphics card overheating, monitor its temperature with the $15 Digital Thermal Probe from HighSpeed PC. If the heat gets too high, dissipate it with a graphics card cooler such as Antec's $20 VCool.
The most effective way to improve your PC's graphics performance is, unfortunately, also one of the most expensive: Buy a faster graphics card.
Inexpensive PCs with their graphics processor built onto the motherboard can slow to a crawl when running fast-action games or editing videos and other big graphics files. Since many of these computers use your system RAM for both graphics and general processing, installing a graphics card into one of your AGP or PCI Express slots--if you have one in your PC--can vastly improve your video experience. To find out what kind of graphics your machine uses, look at the back of the case: If its VGA or DVI graphics port isn't located in one of the expansion card slots, your PC has integrated graphics.
Before buying a graphics card, make sure the system-board graphics can be disabled. On some PCs this happens automatically when you install a graphics card, but on others you have to change a setting in the PC Setup program. If you can't disable your machine's on-board graphics, consider buying a new system, or at least a new motherboard, to make the most of your favorite applications.
A two-year-old graphics card will choke on the latest games, especially at high or even moderate screen resolutions. While you don't need to drop $600 on an nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX, you should spend as much on your new graphics card as your budget allows. See "Best PC Upgrades" and "How to Buy a Graphics Board" for additional information.
Many $5000 gaming PCs include two SLI or CrossFire graphics cards--usually dual $600 boards--that operate in tandem. Cost-conscious upgraders, however, are better off purchasing a single SLI or CrossFire card first (as long as their motherboard supports the technology). If your motherboard does not support dual SLI or CrossFire, upgrading to one that does will permit you to add a second such graphics card when prices drop.
A RAID 0 array configured with two hard drives is standard equipment on any top-flight graphics or gaming system. RAID 0 spreads data across the drives, theoretically reducing the amount of time the PC takes to fetch big files. With RAID you'll definitely see a speedup in loading digital video, game levels, and other large files into RAM, but you probably won't notice a difference when playing games.
Your motherboard may already have a RAID controller built in; many midrange and high-end system boards do. If yours lacks such a controller, RAID adapters that snap into a PCI slot cost between $80 and $100 from such vendors as Adaptec and SIIG. Putting that money toward a new motherboard with RAID and SATA support built in may be a wiser investment.
RAID requires at least two hard drives. If your budget allows, spring for two new drives instead of pairing your existing drive with a new one, as identical drives usually offer fewer configuration hassles. Plus, you can use your old drive for backups, which is useful since RAID 0 increases the risk of data loss: If one of the two RAID 0 drives fails, the files on both drives are lost.
For step-by-step instructions, check out our RAID installation video.
If your system's current motherboard doesn't support such modern technologies as PCI Express graphics, SATA hard drives, RAID, and dual-core CPUs, it's really time for a new machine. If you're not ready for that, you can see if swapping out your motherboard, CPU, and RAM will save you some money. Motherboards using nVidia's 650i chip set support the latest graphics cards, hard drives, and other components, all of which you can migrate to your next PC when you're ready to buy. For example, for less than $150 the Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard supports PCI Express and includes two SLI graphics slots, SATA hard-drive connectors, and on-board RAID support. If you don't need SLI, EVGA's nForce 650i Ultra motherboard is a bargain at only $120.
Both boards support Intel's speedy dual- and quad-core Core 2 Duo CPUs as well as Socket 775 Pentium 4 or Celeron chips. If you wait until Core 2 Duo prices fall a bit, you may be able to reuse that CPU in your new machine as well.
Keep your finger on the pulse of your overclocked PC with these free utilities.
Kirk Steers
