~Toughbooktalk~

Has anyone successfully overclocked their toughbook?

I mostly buy the semi-rugged line directly from Japan. Primarily the CF-NX series and just ordered the CF-AX2. I have the old T, W, R, Y models as well.

Toughbooks and overclocking do not mix.

Overclocking by definition is running a computer faster than it was designed for. That shortens the lifespan and decreases stability. That is the exact opposite of the definition of a TOUGHbook.

I disagree - I have successfully overclocked a number of PC's with no damage or problem. In fact on some PC's the PC performed much better being overclocked as bus speeds were increased along with clock speed. I have rarely ever heard of anyone damaging their PC unless they push it to far (Back 10 years ago I accidentally had ice form on my CPU using a peltier compound on a hot summer day when too much moisture started to develop on my heatsink - but that would have happened even if my CPU was running standard clock speeds). I am not looking to do anything crazy, I imagine the parts inside the laptop probably run very warm but I think some of my laptops could benefit from the 5-10% increase in bus speeds).

I tried on some of the pentium M models I had, 73 and 50 model. I never got that far or into it. I was trying to so it with software. The bios is locked down so I just focused on OS and driver tweaks.

Reckless wrote:I disagree - I have successfully overclocked a number of PC's with no damage or problem. In fact on some PC's the PC performed much better being overclocked as bus speeds were increased along with clock speed.

Man they were the good old days...never did like the Intel cpu's back then but AMD you could overclock them babies untill the sun come up .

Reckless wrote:I disagree - I have successfully overclocked a number of PC's with no damage or problem. In fact on some PC's the PC performed much better being overclocked as bus speeds were increased along with clock speed. I have rarely ever heard of anyone damaging their PC unless they push it to far (Back 10 years ago I accidentally had ice form on my CPU using a peltier compound on a hot summer day when too much moisture started to develop on my heatsink - but that would have happened even if my CPU was running standard clock speeds). I am not looking to do anything crazy, I imagine the parts inside the laptop probably run very warm but I think some of my laptops could benefit from the 5-10% increase in bus speeds).

I am sure you did. I overclocked a desktop or 2 in the past. Laptops are not the same as desktops. If free speed increases are available without any penalty then the manufacturers would do it to increase profits. Pushing the speed does increase HEAT. That does shorten the life of the components. That is basic electronics. Toughbooks have the lowest failure rate of laptops. That's the way they are engineered. Stability and durability before speed. The bios's lock things down VERY well. The only successful "overclocking" I have heard of is on 1 model of the cf51 and that is a cpu swap. And that did increase the heat. After the swap the fan ran constantly.

I may not have choose the best words in my first post.

I agree with you there Shawn, a desktop you can add a bigger fan or more power but a laptop you are stuck with what you got and I don't plan on frying any of my Toughbooks

Why do you feel the need to overclock? Just for fun or to see if you can do it? The best performance gain you can get right now is SSD. It really wakes the machines up.

the only reason I see, is for playing (once in a while) games. And for that, there were topics here or on NBR about integrated Video card overclocking (modified drivers, INF files); which actually means re-setting the GPU clocks back to Intel specs (Panasonic underclocks them, actually - for cooler operation and increased battery life).

I felt that Panasonic is under-clocking things as well probably for a good reason. I just felt that in some environments like a highly air conditioned office it wouldn't hurt to run it out of spec. I design consumer products for a living and heat is one of the things I am constantly aware of. I always felt they were under clocking the bus as well which was my bigger concern than processor speed. Processor speed is more important for applications that require raw power but most of the applications we use day to day (chrome, outlook, word, acrobat, etc) would benefit from the increase in bus speed.

I was looking to do it via software without any hardware modifications. I have used SetFSB for my other laptops with no harm. Unfortunately they don't mention anything about the Panasonic chipset so I did try monkeying around to figure out which chipset to set it to but nothing worked for me.

This thread is supposed to be less about why and more about how. I am sure there is some genius out there who has figured this out.