The Most Memorable Overclocking-Friendly CPUs

[Amet Monegro]

Where the Cyrix MII? I overclocked one from 250MHz to 450MHz on a VIA chipset based Socket 7 mobo (vía jumpers) or AMD K6-II from 350/400MHz to 550MHz on my first PC (with PC Chips motherboard)

 

[mosu]

I made a custom phase change unit just to tame my 1700+ TBred paired with the godlike Abit NF7. I remember the overclock being around 2.6/2.8GHZ which was crazy fast for that architecture.

I've tried that too, also with Peltier elements and blew some chips in the process, the only one that went way over 3 GHz were the last generation, just before Athlons.

 

[madboyv1]

Ah I remember a lot of these... good times. sorta barely surprised the Pentium E5200 is not on this list, but there are a lot of very good CPUs on this list from the same era/family.

 

[Raoul Duke]

Great memories, although I prefer my current computer it seems like the whole computer thing used to be much more fun. Now as mentioned, unless you're a big case modder it is pretty much turn on and use.
I can't help but think of the AMD Athlon. Beating Intel then and how the situation stands now...how times change

 

[Adhmuz]

I've owned 3 CPU's on this list, two of which are still in use to this day, less the overclock mind you. Q6600, E8400 and the single best CPU I have ever purchased full retail the i7 920, the Q6600 is close second but it's usefulness faded far faster than the 920 which can still run any game I throw at it without a problem to this day, I would need to bring it back to 4.0 GHz first however.

 

[HardReset]

Where's Pentium "1"? Quite memorable overclock was Pentium 75 MHz to 120 MHz. I needed to replace tiny heatsink with heatsink + fan combo for overclocking. It was quite rare that time to have CPU cooler with fan

 

[JohnnyStone]

My first experience with overclocking was with a 286 16MHz running at 20MHz. But with the IBM 686 P120+ (100MHz) I was hooked. We had a computer company and we sold system with them overclocked by default to 120GHz. This we did declare to the customers and guaranteed the overclock as well. The reason was because these chips did not work up a sweat ever. The swept the floor in games with the Intel 166MHz. They impressed our customers. Our business was just getting off the ground and these chips bought us a whole lot of respect from customers.

The second chip that you mentioned does come to memory, the Celeron 300A. These things overclocked like crazy and I would rank them no. 1 in the history of overclocking. They became the standard to compare all other overclocks, even if they overclocked better.

 

[Actionman158]

Should have included the Tualatin P3 and the Dothan cores.

 

[ryan29121]

Still have the Q6600 running in my HTPC. What a great CPU that I only remember paying like $200 for.

 

[commanderasus]

Hands down the best bang for the buck was the Celeron 300A, I had three computers at that time all with this chip and all three of them were so easy to overclock to 50% and be very stable. My next pick would be the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 E0 Revision (Wolfdale-6M) of which was another example of easy overclock but unfortunately when I ran mine just a little bit too far and cooked it, they had no more in stock for replacement and gave me a E7600 instead.

 

[ET3D]

Has any change been made to this article or has it just been floated to the top? If the latter, can you please put an 'originally published on December 2014' or something like that?

 

[Alex Voinica]

If the article is up-to-date, meaning December 2017, things do not look so good as the newest processors in the list is from 2009.....Nothing memorable starting 2010 ?

 

[CrazyDave]

Nice walk down memory lane, but no Opteron 165 on the list?

I think the Opteron was the most fun I ever had overclocking. If I recall correctly, I could manage 2.7Ghz 24/7 and could boot windows at 2.9 with some stupid voltage that was absolutely not recommended for air, but was recommended for serious fun.

I had a XP 2500+ too, also memorable. My OC days are over, too much effort nowadays, and too little time.

 

[fktech]

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 indestructible and it still works! Of course its in storage in my attic awaiting a museum curator...

 

[Khanonate]

Celeron 300A at 504mhz ( I think), then stop overclocking after that, just bought powerful CPU's.

 

[Vulcanproject]

All the Core 2 Conroe processors were legendary in my mind. E21xx were very good but they suffered the most from the lack of cache, so the best were the E4xxx series that arrived 6 months after the E6xxx series. The slowest being the E4300 at 1.8GHz and it was around $150 at launch. It was routine to push them to 3.3GHz and beyond. On air.

At those speeds it was already faster than an $800+ X6800.

Installed in a water cooled system you could go even further. 100 percent overclock was perfectly achievable and possible to run stably day to day.

 

[EClyde]

Intel Celeron 300A

I had one

 

[commanderasus]

Those ere the days of lots of fun to see just how far you could push the system The first pc I built myself had a Intel Celeron 300A. It was the only cpu they had in stock at the computer place. This rand for years until the MB just finally gave up and a 450 Mhz all the time. My next system was a Asus Commando MB with a Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 E0 Revision (Wolfdale-6M). Now that was one tough system, I probably went thru 10 sets of ram before I finally found one that would be stable at a 50% overclock. That system served me for many years as a gaming machine for UNREAL and DOOM. The MB packed it in a little over a year ago. We had a few friends over for the cremation service.

 

[gustafson]

The Celeron 300A was a great chip, I had one and got it to do 450MHz... not quite as fun as the pencil trick on the Athlon XP's. Even better was the Intel 386DX-33 which I got to run at 50MHz with a little bit of soldering. I also have some vague recollection of overclocking my 8088 PC-XT from 4.77 MHz to 9 MHz (also with a little soldering and a new crystal.)

 

[Bluescreendeath]

They have missed one chip off the list... The Intel Q9650 3.0ghz, I have one and it is quite happily over clocked at 4.2ghz using air cooler fan sink, and works with DDR3 Ram. I have never had problems running new games using it, due to it having 12mb cache memory. Even on my mainboard I can get an over clock to around 4.6ghz.

The q9650 weren't as popular as the q9400 and q9550, which were significantly cheaper and could overclock just as well.

 

[Knot Schure]

Another great read and stroll down memory lane.

The Celeron 300A was used in the first PC I ever built. Then I went to the AMD Athlon 700 and stayed with AMD to the Athlon64 days.

After a hectic day, I really enjoyed this article. My story, such that it is;

Celeron 300A was my first experience in overclocking also. 450MHz, as I remember it. As we work on the road, it was built into a briefcase to make it portable.

I had an Athlon 2500XP also. Fairly underwhelmed, but light years ahead of the 1GHz Pentium 3 I was using in a Clevo.

FRIED a Pentium D820, and this was my first experience of overclocking going bad. I was using a Chinese no-name PSU, and that was the absolute last time I ever did that. I should have known better, but had gotten away with so much thus far. Like sticking your tongue on a 9v battery, you know its wrong, but you try it at least once in your life.

I almost shed a tear when I saw my Q6600 G0... That was the absolute smoothest Windows experience I had had to date. All the servers I've worked with were Unix-based, so it was difficult to compare subjective UI experiences. But I know the G0 stole my heart.

For fun (it felt free), I had an E2160, based on user-feedback & reviews. I truly lost the 'silicon lottery' that day. Colour me unimpressed.

The 2500K is going strong to this day. Albeit at 4.2GHz, as the Asian heat plays a role here. Ambient temps are >35C on any day of the week. They only fall when at home with A/C on.

Didn't have the Bloomfield 920, but had the mobile version, i7 920MX (renamed Clarkdale?), Intel's first true mobile quad core. Missed out on the first quad mobile extreme, but did have the QX9000, (dual & unlocked) which carried me through.

Then 3920XM, and 4940XM. Ivy more stable, Haswell faster / flaky.

I'd like to tell you about a 6-core mobile, but I do not want another Pascal GPU, so my next laptop purchase has to wait. And it can wait. After having seen Volta, amazing things are inbound.

 

[Knot Schure]

I expected to see the FX 6300 on this list. Stock 3.5 and OCs to 4.5-5. With 6 cores, the performance close to i5 2500k for a third of the price.

One has just fallen into my hands.... I'll see what I can do.

 

[Knot Schure]

I seem to recall running my Pentium 90 a bit higher than norm (100MHz?) but the P166 was my first properly overclocked chip (though not that extreme)

Wow, I forgot all about my P100... I had just finished saying 300A was my first OC experience, but I am drinking (oops). I got a small O/C out of that too... so I contradicted myself dog dammit.

 

[trgz]

Where's Pentium "1"? Quite memorable overclock was Pentium 75 MHz to 120 MHz. I needed to replace tiny heatsink with heatsink + fan combo for overclocking. It was quite rare that time to have CPU cooler with fan

Go back to page 2 - I oc'd both my P90 and my P166

 

[moral hazard]

Wow, I'm getting even older than this article. I remember overclocking my Radio Shack Color Computer using Peeks and Pokes!