By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net
TAIPEI, Taiwan–The Computex 2007 IT trade show featured hundreds of PC peripherals from nearly all of the major brands with blaring signs and hundreds of marketing materials. However, in one corner of the sprawling event was a small group of tech geeks who were putting computer components into various levels of stress tests.
The group, calling itself XtremeSystems, is arguably the world’s biggest and most well-known overclocking organization, recognized even by the component manufacturers themselves.
For the novice PC builder, overclocking is the process of pushing a computer part to run beyond its intended speed. This is usually done by tweaking through software or changing the settings through the BIOS. While this enables a PC component to run much faster, a wrong configuration would burn the component itself.
Overclocking can then be likened to putting nitros in a car to make it go much faster, but at the cost of blowing up the engine.
Heading the XtremeSystems group in Computex is Charles “Fugger” Wirth, one of the more prominent overclocking experts in the organization. He and a few of his colleagues have set up two of the most extreme overclocked computers ever and in one setup, he uses liquid nitrogen. That’s a pic of Wirth.
In an interview with Tech Addicts, Wirth said overclocking has been around as early as the days of the first computers. That is because research and development divisions of the first computer companies would try and push their components to run faster.
In their setup in Computex, Wirth explained that they are using Intel Core 2 Quad processors with two gigabytes of the latest memory modules. One of the setups uses a regular cooling system that can be bought from computer shops.
The other, however, uses a nonstandard system composed of a tank of liquid nitrogen that cools the processor to negative 196 degrees Celsius.
“We were able to push the processing speed of the Core 2 Quad from 2.3 Ghz to 4.7 Ghz. The fastest we’ve recorded for this particular system was 4.9 Ghz,” Wirth said.
As crazy as it sounds, Wirth said overclocking is an activity done by almost all computer developers. Because today’s computer parts are highly configurable and are actually made of readily available components, do-it-yourself enthusiasts are given opportunities to speed up the processing power of these components.
But even if it is nothing new, Wirth said electronics manufacturing firms do not fully support overclocking and will not cover the insurance of any component that burns out. Incidentally, some manufacturers would put the word “overclocking” in their marketing kits implying that their products are good enough for the most enthusiastic DIY fanatic.
Ironically, many computer parts manufacturers rely on overclockers to test their machines prior to being sent out to the market. Manufacturers then get information from these testers and make the necessary changes to the components. The bonus for this is that professional overclockers will get a chance to test out many new components even before they reach the market.
“Some of us even become consultants to the manufacturers and we’re among the few people who ever get into highly secure laboratories. I’ve personally been inside the secure R & D laboratories of component makers and I share information to them on how a PC should work from a user’s point of view,” Wirth said.
He added that the goal is to encourage component manufacturers to develop their products to be compatible with the rest of the industry. “Overclockers may be geeks but they tell the industry what can be done.”
Wirth said the overclocking community is becoming stronger by the day. “There are thousands of overclockers worldwide, some are occasional and others are professionals. In XtremeSystems, we have 53, 000 members and we’re growing our membership by 100 per day,” Wirth said.
For the novice overclocker, Wirth said they have to be ready for the consequences. No overclocker has ever experienced a perfect record of good overclocking. In fact, overclocking can be very expensive as burnouts can happen quite often.
“This is what we do and we spend on time and money to just make components run a little faster than normal. However, the rewards can be more than worth the expensive risks.”
(Editor’s note: Check out Alex Villafania’s Tales of the Nomad blog entry for a look at some of Taiwan’s tourist attractions.)
