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temporary overclock

 press a button on your computer's case to give it an extra "boost"!
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Basically, it would be a button fitted onto the front bezel of a computer's case that would temporarily overclock its processor to some astronomical speed for a few seconds allowing it to "melt through" sluggish boot-ups, long loading screens, and intense calculations. I got the idea for it from seeing how some older Pentium 1 and 486 boxes had "turbo switches" on the front that allowed you to toggle between the CPU's main speed, and a slower speed.
—mr_bigmouth_502, Sep 06 2009

An overclocking forum http://www.tomshard...ck-degrees#t1801681
"97% thermal saturation is typically reached within 7 to 8 minutes" [sninctown, Sep 06 2009]

http://totl.net/Eunuch/index.html how to overclock your junk [Loris, Sep 06 2009]

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       I never understood the "Turbo" button. Why would anyone want to turn it off? Are there situations in which it's useful to make your machine slower?
—wagster, Sep 06 2009
   

       In days of yore, PC games were written without using the system clock to pace them, so if you had a fast machine, computer-generated characters and environment might be too speedy to play against/with.   

       And of course non-turbo uses less energy.   

       If you want a speed boost on one of today's machines you can play with the BIOS, shaving a few ns here and there on timings; there are even some programs that let you do that "live".   

       Pruning all the useless and semi-useless processes that run in the background, for instance the one that allows you to Autoplay CD's that checks the drive 4x each second to see if you've put a CD or DVD in it yet, adds quite a bit of speed.   

       Or you can play with task priorities.   

       Of course since a modern computer barely works at all, you can be sure that playing with the settings is just as likely to crash or slow things down.
—FlyingToaster, Sep 06 2009
   

       //Of course since a modern computer barely works at all, you can be sure that playing with the settings is just as likely to crash or slow things down//   

       That made me laugh! I'm currently working on a fairly pricey and very speedy HP laptop that runs on a Core2Duo - which the machine can't really cool properly. It got to 96 degrees yesterday. After a lot of tweaking with SpeedFan and the like, I found the most effective solution was duct-taping a pencil to the underneath which lifts the machine up so the fan can breathe.   

       You shouldn't need to use duct-tape in order to make a new laptop work properly.
—wagster, Sep 06 2009
   

       //You shouldn't need to use duct-tape in order to make a new laptop work properly//
[marked -for -rather -long -tagline]
—AbsintheWithoutLeave, Sep 06 2009
   

       OK, maybe this could boost your speed for a minute, long enough to boot, assuming you're starting with a cold heatsink. See link for relevant info. I'm confident you could do this automatically, in software, though I don't know how.
—sninctown, Sep 06 2009
   

       //You shouldn't need to use duct-tape in order to make a new laptop work properly//

If it can't be fixed with duct tape and cable ties, it probably isn't worth fixing.
—kaz, Sep 07 2009
   

       slow boots have very little to do with slow CPUs. During boot, most time is spent waiting for slow BIOS init, slow hard drive IO, slow device auto-dectection etc. On top of that this feature is kind of baked. Some motherboards come with "AI overclocking" that does what you describe but just behind the scenes with no button for you to press.
—ixnaum, Sep 08 2009
   

       The first time i heard about virtual memory, back in the early 'eighties, i thought it was a stupid idea which, thank God, had gone out with the storage heater. Unfortunately, we're still stuck with it. I'm by no means an expert but surely the problem is massive great lumbering programmes and hard drives pretending to be RAM, isn't it? Methinks if i could run DOSLynx and a PDF viewer on a computer from the mid-'eighties, what's the point of all this crap nowadays?
—nineteenthly, Sep 08 2009
   

       It could work for a matter of a second or two
—Voice, Aug 19 2010
   

       What ixnaum said except that the one I just bought has software that enables you to use the power on/off button as a temporary overclocking booster. So this idea is now truly baked. If you are stillhere, well done mr_bigmouth-502!
—DrBob, Aug 20 2010
   

       The past few motherboards I've used to build up PCs have the option to change the function of the power button to that of an overclock button. Hold it down long enough though and it'll shut down the PC mormally. A seperate button would be nice. However, I don't overclock anything so it dosn't matter.   

       For my work PC, the way to make it go faster would be to shoot the IT department and let a monkey reinstall everything. Even a broken, pile of bits would work better than what they've put together.
—saedi, Aug 20 2010
   

       Well quite. If you feel the need to overclock then you probably need a better processor rather than systematically destroying the inadequate one that you've got. And ditto re: PCs at work!
—DrBob, Aug 20 2010
   

       I don't know why they're not asynchronous anyway.
—nineteenthly, Aug 20 2010
   


 

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