Chips from the manufacturer are not set to a specific speed for no reason. Your 1.6GHz chip probably has a max clock rate of around 2GHz if not higher. They are underclocked and then locked by the manufacturer. They underclock them for many reasons, heat generation and stability being the biggest two.
Now, if you unlock the chip you can increase the amount of voltage that the chip receives, and a few other things (e.g. FSB) to get a higher throughput from the CPU.
Given that this is a laptop, my advice is simple; don't.
The laptop may have sufficient cooling for the amount of work being done by the chip in its current state, but an increase of even .1 GHz can quickly change the cooling workload. It can also cause instability and crashing. Also, your assessment of your cooling is probably not after an hour of full CPU load.
An AMD chip core, with no cooling, will physically crack after 10 seconds (I've done this, and not on purpose) meaning no more chip. If the CPU gets hot enough, quick enough, the temperature controls won't be in place to send the kill switch fast enough.
The above is an absolute extreme worst case, and the probability of it happening to your laptop is next to nil. However, it is still possible that you change something so drastically that permanent damage is done.
My advice not to is simply driven by the fact that your laptop sounds to be your primary PC. If this is your first venture into Overclocking, I suggest going on ebay and buying some old crap PC. The older chips (2000-2004) were a little harder to unlock, but you learned a lot in the process. Plus, if you dork it up, it's just a crappy old PC off ebay.
I encourage you to do some overclocking as it is quite challenging and intellectually stimulating, but I would STRONGLY advise against using your main PC as the science experiment.
Now, if you unlock the chip you can increase the amount of voltage that the chip receives, and a few other things (e.g. FSB) to get a higher throughput from the CPU.
Given that this is a laptop, my advice is simple; don't.
The laptop may have sufficient cooling for the amount of work being done by the chip in its current state, but an increase of even .1 GHz can quickly change the cooling workload. It can also cause instability and crashing. Also, your assessment of your cooling is probably not after an hour of full CPU load.
An AMD chip core, with no cooling, will physically crack after 10 seconds (I've done this, and not on purpose) meaning no more chip. If the CPU gets hot enough, quick enough, the temperature controls won't be in place to send the kill switch fast enough.
The above is an absolute extreme worst case, and the probability of it happening to your laptop is next to nil. However, it is still possible that you change something so drastically that permanent damage is done.
My advice not to is simply driven by the fact that your laptop sounds to be your primary PC. If this is your first venture into Overclocking, I suggest going on ebay and buying some old crap PC. The older chips (2000-2004) were a little harder to unlock, but you learned a lot in the process. Plus, if you dork it up, it's just a crappy old PC off ebay.
I encourage you to do some overclocking as it is quite challenging and intellectually stimulating, but I would STRONGLY advise against using your main PC as the science experiment.
Last edited:
