Easy CPU and GPU Overclocking with SetFSB

If you have an old computer or laptop, it most likely stays pretty cool and does not draw much power from the psu. I have an old 2005 Dell Optiplex 320 with a 3.2ghz Pentium 4 processor and because of these optimal conditions, I wanted to significantly overclock the CPU.

Image from the SetFSB homepage http://www13.plala.or.jp/setfsb/

When booting into the BIOS, I noticed it had very limited capabilities and I was unable to edit any of my processor's settings. I then looked into other methods and discovered SetFSB, a program which allows you to change both the FSB and PCI-E frequencies on your motherboard. Increasing the FSB frequency will overclock your CPU and increasing the PCI-E frequency will essentially overclock any PCI-Express devices such as a graphics card. The benefit to increasing these frequencies is that the voltage going to your hardware is not changed so a bad overclock will result in Windows rebooting itself or a freeze which will require a hard reset.

SetFSB is not for beginners. Use "SetFSB.exe" at your own risk.

In order to use SetFSB you must find the PLL or the Clock Generator of your motherboard. You can either do some research on Google or find your motherboard on the site. You can then press the GetFSB button to retrieve your motherboard's current frequency values. The top slider increases the FSB frequency and the bottom slider increases the PCI-E frequency. I highly recommend increasing the sliders at very slow rates and setting the FSB every 5 or so clicks on the sliders.

In order to find the limits of your overclocking ability, use programs like CPU-Z to very accurately monitor the CPU speed and HWMonitor to make sure your components are not overheating.

Free Gift Cards and Rewards!

Many people use Google as their search engine because it is very straight forward and clutter-free. Until recently I used Google on a daily basis and swore by the engine, but converted to Bing because of its awesome rewards program.

Screenshot of https://www.bing.com/rewards/redeem/all

In order to help convert Google users to Bing, Microsoft released a rewards program for Bing in which users earn points every time they search with the engine. Users can earn 2 points per search up to a maximum of 15 points per day by searching on a desktop machine and 2 points per search up to a maximum of 10 points per day by searching on a mobile device. There are three account tiers, and avid search engine users can easily reach the gold tier to receive discounts on rewards.

These points can be used in order to enter Microsoft sweepstakes or buy gift cards. A single point is the equivalent of about a cent in US dollars. My favorite two rewards are the $5 Amazon Gift Card and a $5 Rixty Credit. A gold tier user who reaches the maximum number of searches per day on both desktop and mobile can purchase a $5 gift card in exactly 19 days. Making the switch to Bing was free, easy and it pays for a few video game memberships every month.

If you want to check out Bing Rewards, you can sign up with my referral link: Bing Rewards

Atom: Awesome Text Editor! Free Sublime Alternative.

A few months ago I heard about an editor called Sublime Text which totally changed my ideas about text editors. Sublime Text is awesome because of its dark theme (which is great for the eyes), auto character closing and indenting, and even text suggestions similar to an IDE. While Sublime is awesome, it is not free. Sublime can be used for evaluation for free but a $70 license must be purchased for continued use.

It was then I began a search for a free text editor similar to Sublime, with a cutting edge feel and smart features.

Image from http://www.atom.io

I came across an editor called Atom, an open source text editor developed by GitHub. It has an amazing 21st century feel and looks great. It shares many amazing features with Sublime but lacks the IDE-like text suggestion feature which in most cases is not really necessary.