A beginner's guide to overclocking

As a PC enthusiast, my desire to overclock is almost compulsive. Pushing clock speeds must be hard-wired into my DNA, because I can't actually remember the last time my personal workstation ran at stock speeds.

Overclocking isn't for everyone, though; it can be time consuming and frustrating, and it will almost certainly void your warranty. But there's a unique sense of satisfaction to be gained from pushing your hardware to its limits and achieving greater performance than you've actually paid for. For enthusiasts, many of whom have a borderline obsession with deriving the best bang for their buck, overclocking's potential is simply too hard to resist.

To help the uninitiated get their feet wet with overclocking, we've whipped up a handy guide covering the basics. This is by no means an attempt to document every technique associated with turning up your system's clock speeds, but it should be a good place to start for newbies looking for their first taste. We've chosen to focus our examples and advice on Intel's Core 2 processors, since they're a particularly popular choice right now, but many of the basic principles we're exploring apply to any chip you might want to overclock, including AMD CPUs.