Everyone nowadays building their own computers and over clocking them. In fact you’ll read about over clocking all over the message boards of computer aficionados, so it’s become somewhat of a sign of skill and a rite of passage as a true tekkie to be able to say, “I got to over clock my motherboard!”

So we thought we might give people some pointers on how to choose the right over clocking motherboard so you won’t have to replace your motherboard once you find out that the motherboard doesn’t have the over clocking features you require. Let’s begin!

Before you try to buy the motherboard, you should always download the motherboard’s manual from the manufacturer’s website and read it thoroughly. By doing this, you will be able to see if the motherboard you are interested in contains the over clocking features you want. The thing to look for in a motherboard is access to the over clocking controls such as front side bus options (FSB), vcore which allows the user to add extra voltage to the CPU. And if you are really hardcore overclocker then you would want to have the control over AGP vcore and dram voltage which allows users to give more juice to the RAM. Don’t try to over clock a motherboard that doesn’t have these features, as you’ll only meet failure (and possibly have to buy a new motherboard altogether!)

Because over clocking your FSB increases the speed of your PCI and AGP components, you might suffer instability problems caused by these devices. Therefore, we suggest that you buy a motherboard that has a PCI/AGP divider, what this divider allows you to do is lock the PCI/AGP Bus Frequency in place.

Over clocking success can also be traced back to a motherboard’s design layout and power dynamics. Some boards can take more electrical stress than others. To find the right over clocking motherboard there is a lot of research involved. Go to messageboards and see what other users like about the particular models. See what kind of results are they getting with their motherboards. Ask your friends if they are into computer hardware.

Sometimes when you over clock the motherboard you’ll experience a computer error during the POST (Power On Self Test), which is performed every time the system is powered on. Fatal errors, which prevent the system from continuing the boot process, are communicated through a series of audible beeps.

If you find that there is no system display after the power is turned on, you may diagnose the problem according to the number of beeps from the following table.

• DRAM refresh is not working.
• Parity circuit is not working or parity status bits are not cleared when parity is disabled.
• First 64k memory test failure. Address line test (A0..A15) failure.
• System timer is not counting properly.
• Processor register/flag test failure.
• 8042 keyboard controller gate-A20 error.
• Processor exception error encountered.
• Display memory R/W test failure (NON-FATAL)
• ROM-BIOS checksum error.
• CMOS Shutdown Register R/W error.