hsf posts

I must not overheat.
Heat is the chip-killer.
Heat is the thermal death that brings total obliteration.
And when it comes, I will turn the fans on to speed its path.
Where the heat has gone, there will be processing.
Only my FPS will remain.

Last week, we talked about the importance of feeding enough watts to your components to allow them to perform their best. The other side of that coin is dealing with the waste heat that is a byproduct of all that high-speed math. Heat's pretty much as far down the entropy scale as you can get -- most of what we do turns organized energy, one way or another, into heat. The problem with this state of affairs, at least for electronics, is that they are happier the colder their environment is.

We here at Big Download naturally assume you like free stuff. That's why we've got that enticing heap of files up there, batting its eyelashes seductively at you (or maybe I need to switch to decaf that isn't laced with wormwood). But, chances are, free (as in beer) stuff is lurking on or under your desk right this moment. No, not the cans with the five cent deposit. No, not that copy of Daikatana you forgot to take to the pawn shop, either.

Unless you're already at the bleeding edge, got exceedingly unlucky, or are highly risk-averse, there's extra performance to be had out of the components you've already got by running them faster than their rated, factory-set speed. This practice is known as overclocking, and has grown from a lunatic fringe cottage industry into big business, frequently with the tacit approval of component manufacturers, and occasionally engaged in by some brands themselves.

In a nutshell, overclocking allows you to get the performance of a more-expensive part -- CPU, video card, or RAM module -- out of a less-expensive one by the strategic application of brains, willpower, voltage, cooling, and luck.