PCTech Forums

Hi all! My laptop is unmodified and just too slow. I'm ordering some new RAM from Crucial this afternoon, but I thought as well as that I'd also do a little bit of overclocking... unfortunately, it's been years since I've done this and I can't remember how! Someone please help!!! I feel a failure as a geek...

Many thanks

Jazzman


Specs:

Packard Bell E2560 Laptop
256 DDR PC2700 RAM
1.4 GHZ Intel Celeron M Processor

i really, really, really advise against overclocking a notebook. Notebooks run warm to begin with due to the limited amount of cooling and overclocking will increase that and most likely cause stability issues and possibly damage your processor. It wouldnt be so bad in a desktop but again, i dont think you should do it. Upgrading the memory is the best option and you could possibly run a slightly faster processor but i can promise you will see problems from overclocking it.

Typically, you would overclock by going into the bios and raising the FSB (front side bus) speed but because its a branded notebook you probably dont have fsb options anyway. Often these settings are hidden in branded machines (branded means dell, compaq, HP, etc..) including desktops.

I hope thats helpful

Thanks very much. I will take your advice and not overclock. Do you think a memory upgrade from 256 to 768MB (i.e . adding a 512 in the free slot) will make a noticable difference? This seems the only other option to speed up this 'book.

Many thanks

yes, it will be noticable and worth doing. memory is always a valuable upgrade, it drastically improves access times for opening, saving, browsing files on your machine and really makes apps run smoother.