The Cheapskate's Guide to Supercharging Your PC

You don't have to spend a pile of money to give your system some of the cutting-edge features of superfast gaming and graphics PCs costing $5000 or more. A few frugal upgrades can bring your PC's performance to a new level.

For starters, you can get a no-cost speed boost by racing the clock--no, not on a quarter-mile track, on your motherboard. Overclocking boosts performance by pushing the CPU and the graphics chip to run faster than their factory presets. Most CPUs can operate comfortably at frequencies higher than PC vendors use.

If you're cautious, you can overclock a PC with almost no risk. Your CPU will run hotter, but monitoring and controlling your system's temperature is easy (see "Stay Cool"). Keep in mind, however, that overclocking usually invalidates your warranty. Also, you may not see any performance boost, in which case it's best to revert to the defaults rather than turn up the heat for no reason.

If you bought your motherboard separately or purchased a PC that uses an off-the-shelf motherboard (as in enthusiast systems and boxes from vendors such as CyberPower), you may have a Windows utility that lets you overclock without resorting to your PC Setup program. Otherwise, open PC Setup, usually by pressing the key you're prompted to use as your system starts but before Windows loads. Look for settings in your BIOS for the system clocks and frontside bus (FSB); the section may be labeled 'Advanced Chipset Features'. Remember that names for settings and sections vary from BIOS to BIOS.

The only way to find your CPU's top speed is through trial and error. Still, you can learn a lot before you start by reading about the successes and failures of other overclockers. The forums at Extreme Overclocking are an excellent place to start. EarthWeb Hardware's Sysopt.com has a database of users' overclocking experiences that you can search by CPU and motherboard, as well.