Vcore, or core voltage, is the voltage that is supplied to power your CPU. The amount of power the CPU uses and the amount of heat generated are tied to the amount of voltage it draws. The voltage identification definition, or VID, determines the amount of voltage your CPU needs to maintain stability at the default clock speeds.
If you want to push your CPU to the point where it begs for mercy, you're going to need a good cooler. Like most PC components, there are different options for those with different wants and needs. We've rounded up what we believe are the best in each category by taking into account performance, price, noise levels, and design.
Today we'll be overclocking AMD's Ryzen 3 2200G to the max with a $20 air cooler. Now, you might be questioning the idea given this is a $100 APU that already ships with the more than decent Wraith Stealth. However, we've been keen to see how much more can be extracted from the APU...
After our last CPU roundup, we made sense of the numbers and the processors that brought the best value when overclocked. We decided then to make a more straightforward shootout – this was also the most demanded by readers – putting an overclocked Ryzen 5 1600 against the Core i5-8400.
Gigabyte's enthusiast gamer brand, Aorus, never skimps on hardware and the brand new Aorus X5 v7 is no exception: we're looking at an overclockable quad-core i7-7820HK CPU, GTX 1070 graphics,a high-resolution G-Sync display, 32GB RAM and for storage comprises an M.2 SSD and a hard drive.
We walked away impressed by the speed of Intel's new Skylake-X chips, however thermals were a severe letdown. The Core i9-7900X is too hot to handle even when paired with an AIO liquid cooler. But we think the 10-core/20-thread beast deserves a more robust cooling solution to match it so we can properly overclock it. Read on.
In overclocking circles it was recently noted that BCLK (base clock) overclocking might become a possibility in Skylake processors, but it would be up to motherboard manufacturers to circumvent Intel's restrictions. Last night Asrock contacted us with an updated BIOS that enabled this. We jumped at the opportunity and have already tested and benched a Core i3-6100 Skylake CPU with a 1GHz overclock (4.7GHz) on air cooling.
Water cooling systems – whether they are a custom loop or an AIO – all follow the same basic principles. You have the reservoir, the pump, the radiator, the fans, some tubing, a block (for either the CPU, GPU, or both), and the water itself. After years of working with water cooling kits, here are some important tips to help you get the most out of your system.
