Hack #22. Which System Boards Are Hackable?

Read the box and online reviews to determine if your system board might accommodate hacking the system and CPU clock speeds.

Determining if a system board is hackable—that is, whether it supports overclocking of the CPU—is not obvious. Here are some clues to the hackability of a specific board.

  • Most boards for do-it-yourself system builders, also known as "white box" or generic products, support customizable CPU clock values.

  • Check the technical specs for support for a range of CPU types and speeds, such as those indicating "AMD Athlon Thunderbird through Athlon XP CPUs," or "1.8-3.3 GHz" speeds. Motherboards thus labeled often provide the ability to change system speed settings.

  • An Award BIOS is usually a good bet. Most Award BIOS versions implemented by system board vendors provide some parameters to control CPU and bus speeds.

  • Look for a system board that includes jumpers or switches with obvious marking as to CPU clock frequencies and CPU clock-multiplier settings.

  • If the motherboard instruction manual mentions selectable CPU clock settings, multiplier values, and/or different Front Side Bus (FSB) frequencies, it's somewhat hackable.

Check the usual sources for information about the hackability of various system board products:

  • Ask another "PC junkie" for recommendations.

  • Search Google for "overclock" and your motherboard model.

  • Browse through overclockers.com, motherboards.org, sysopt.com, tweaktown.com, ocia.net, anandtech.com, pcguide.com, ...

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