Yeah, it says what I am going to say up there.

Having just known about the basics on how it is done, I tried whatever little luck I have on attempting to do some little overclocking on... my laptop. Geh, laugh at me because I'm still a newbie on this, but well at least it's fun having to know that I can do it. Just started and using the most not preferable platform for it (yeah I know typical consumer laptops were not made for it), I tried over and over looking for the most stable configuration. For this, I crashed my laptop over and over (which is a... well, let's just say a ) until I got it.

I'm using my laptop, an Acer Aspire 4520 with 1.5GB RAM after an upgrade, and 120GB HDD. CPU is AMD Turion 64x2 TL-58 running at 1.90GHz for this. The laptop runs Windows XP SP2, though I might consider performing an upgrade to Windows Vista to utilize the full power of my laptop's CPU. But that also means upgrading the RAM and HDD too... since I am not happy with Vista's performance on a 2GB RAM machine I used in one of the labs back in UTM KL.

I used NVidia's NTune software for this... yeah I know OC-ing using a software is not as good as playing with the multiplier settings and voltages at the BIOS, since NTune only allows modifications to be done on the base system clock rather than the multipliers. As it is, since this is a laptop I can't access the multiplier setting on my BIOS for sure, of course (apart from minor shared RAM amount changing for the graphics part of the laptop's motherboard, which means I'll be intending to upgrade my RAM further in order to have enough excess RAM to be fed to my GC, which is an integrated NVidia GeForce 7000M. Yeah I know I should get one with an 8-series GeForce planted in it, but I can't since my financial resources are going to be concentrated on building a new PC).

My system base clock is 200MHz and the default (locked, I guess) multiplier for my CPU is 9.5, so do some maths on it and I'll get 1,900MHz which is the default CPU clock speed of mine. Currently the maximum stable overclock speed I can gain by raising the system clock value is 2,200MHz, but I haven't really confirmed whether my system failed because of the CPU or the GPU (which I currently overclocked along with the CPU). Maybe I'll conduct a test later with my stock graphics card settings, and see whether my laptop crashes or not. Oh yeah, NTune will reset all of the overclocked settings back to its factory defaults after each restart (no matter if it's a hard or cold reboot), so I don't have to worry about facing problems if I make a mistake in overclocking. Just... I need to be careful not to frequently do it.

For the time being, I am currently running my laptop with the CPU speed of 2,193.7MHz, which means I gave around 15.45% of increase in the original CPU speed of 1,900.0MHz. As for my graphics, the original GPU clock for it is 350MHz ( so low...) and 0 for the memory clock ( Well, can't expect much for a consumer laptop, can I?) so I increased them to 500/500. I'd love to push it further and there's one instance I managed to put it to 700/1000 (NTune's maximum limit for my laptop) but the hardware crashed as soon as I attempted to run a game. 500/500 is the maximum stable setting, as how I found that out.

Talking about temperatures, yeah my laptop's idle temperature with the most minimal load possible is 54 degrees Celcius (or 129 degrees Fahrenheit or so I think), but on full load it rises up to a whooping 78 degrees Celcius (or 172 degrees Fahrenheit), which is not something I can be pleased with after looking at the very large temperature gap. In the first place my laptop's cooling system seems to come with a heatpipe without a fan, which is... well.

Simply put, I should've started getting a new PC for the home already and test it to my heart's content, though I should be careful not to overdo it, else I'll get some serious lectures from my parents >_< by the way, though the high temperature rise upon load and unmodifiable multiplier and voltage puts me at a disadvantage in trying to achieve better clock speeds, getting to the current speed of approximately 2,200MHz (rounded up from the current 2,193.7MHz to the nearest tens) from the base 1,900 is already something I should be satisfied with for now, considering my limitations.

Oh, and I just learned that my CPU speed drops to more than half when I use power saving mode (yeah I'm too slow to realize it). Not that I feel much change in processing speeds, though I realize some programs do run slower. Apart from that, there's nothing much.

I'll be looking forward to creating my home's new PC! If only I can convince my dad to look around for the necessary hardware though... and if he doesn't suddenly turn to a "No", which is my current source of worry. >_<