Laptops and Overclocking

[Martini]

I'm used to overclocking the celeron in my desktop but i just got myself a compaq presario notebook with a PIII 1.2ghz and 256 pc133 ram. There are no options in the bios (I mean 0 options other than time and boot order) and I was wondering if anyone had much expierience tweakin laptops. I don't wanna just rush in cuz with my luck I'd turn it into a very expensive paperwieght.

Thanks

[genesound]

Depending on the chipset, you might find a utility to work it.

Not for me though, I don't need an expensive paperwieght either My Toshiba P4 hasn't crashed anything even once on XPPro, and I want it to stay that way!

[Midknyte]

Overclocking a laptop is not a wise thing to do. you don't have the luxury of adding a big heatsink/fan or adding case fans. the manufacturers calculate how much heat a cpu would normally put and create their cooling design accordingly.

[x51out]

Outside of maybe TweakXP (if yer running XP) or Cacheman, I wouldn't attempt it. You could max out the RAM (put in as much as it will take). That will always help.

[rmanet]

Originally posted by Midknyte
Overclocking a laptop is not a wise thing to do. you don't have the luxury of adding a big heatsink/fan or adding case fans. the manufacturers calculate how much heat a cpu would normally put and create their cooling design accordingly.

Midknyte's right and I haven't seen many laptops with the ability to overclock anyway- even if you found something like SoftFSB or whatever, you don't want to mess with it - even if you have (like my Dell) a fan that monitors temperature you're messing around with killing your machine for what - a better benchmark score?

if you're running w98 (or probably XP) go have some fun with those tweaks - lots out there and they do make a difference

[shark_megabyte]

Originally posted by Midknyte
The manufacturers calculate how much heat a cpu would normally put and create their cooling design accordingly.

But every once in a while, someone who's feeling adventurous decides to improve on the manufacturer's cooling scheme

I don't know about mobile PIII's, but desktop Pentiums have seemed pretty heat-tough even as far back as the PII. The stock CPU fan on my old PII 300 just wore out and died after a few months. I kept getting crashes soon after boot and couldn't figure out what was happening for a few days. Finally the guy who built it for me replaced the fan which was still under warranty, and I used that computer for another two and a half years with no more processor problems.

You might create a toastie chip if you fail at OCing, but you might also get lucky and have something left after you have to back off.

[Martini]

Yeah, the risks far outwiegh the possible benefits... I'm not gonna try but it's nice to know it's possible. But I ran into a prob that needs immediate attention (probably ANOTHER reformat grrrrrr). Let me jsut say that I will NEVER install any PGP Versions <8. I instlled 7.0.3 on my XP Pro install and it f'ed up my dial-up connection and virus scanner to the point of having to reformat but get this: Some problems came back even after the reformat!!! Ahh well... I guess that's what's good about being unemployed: Lots of time to clean up after your own mistakes... Maybe it's time to say good-bye to WinXP and go back to good ol' Red Hat...

[causticVapor]

Really, if you have liquid cooling installed like toshiba, then you have a little headroom for OCing. All I know is that a 700MHz P3 laptop emits air hotter than the Sahara desert on June 31.



Next article: OCing a palmtop.
Followup: Palmtop watercooling mod.

[Martini]

I did it. I over clocked my laptop from 1.2ghz to 1.37 and the fsb to 153 from 133 and it was stable but the fan never stopped so I decided that it's prolly running like a block heater and i set it back and returned it to factory settings. If you attached a self contained fan to the normal fan outlet that'd cool it down faster for dirt cheap right? Like I've run standard little cooling fans that I leached from a 486 off 9V batteries. So hook that up to the heat outlet and then maybe overclocking could be viable but the only benefit would be bragging rights for the most part.

To sum it up: It's possible but useless.
Next Project: KB modding. Glowing keys

[OpK Chowdy]

hahah watercooling on a palm...defeats the purpose of a palm, doesn't it?