Up until recently, overclocking, a practice of running your system components at higher than specified speeds, was considered only for the enthusiast community. The concept of overclocking has been popular ever since people started building their own computers instead of purchasing from the likes of Dell or HP. Thus far, the practice of overclocking was an industry taboo that the majority of companies despised, and frankly who could blame them? Purchasing a less expensive piece of hardware and cranking the speeds up with just a few BIOS settings and meeting or exceeding the performance of a much more expensive part appears to be dreadful for business.

Overclocking has always been considered something that only the high-end and adventurous computer users would engage in. Typically, these users know what they are getting into and the risks that are involved. The reason that Intel, AMD, Dell, Sony and numerous others don’t allow their systems to support overclocking is the risk to components and the reliability, which is quite understandable. We all know someone who doesn’t exactly know the inner workings of their computer, yet will alter the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) settings without knowing what might happen. Although experimentation is good and encouraged by the overclocking community as a way for the novice to gain knowledge, it gets dangerous when the system itself is placed on the line. Obviously enough, larger companies are aware of this situation and don’t want to deal with situations where users accidentally burn their components and demand replacement because of warranties. I know OEMs like Dell have always done their best to discourage such practice and can easily state: "Overclocking the system will void your warranty." in their manuals. This may take care of the legal issues, but who reads these warnings anyway?

Now that we have established a general feeling on overclocking from a computer hardware and a computer builder’s perspective, I believe Dell’s recent step toward embracing the world of overclocking may change the way other OEM’s look at the subject. Quite possibly, overclocking will go mainstream sometime in the near future, at least that seems to be the way Dell is headed with its Dell Dimension XPS Gen5 gaming system.

Although Dell was never much of a competitive player in the gaming market, this has all changed after the world’s largest PC seller (according to a research conducted in Q3, 2004 by market research firm Gartner) introduced its new desktop and notebook gaming systems a while back. Dell apparently realized the sales potential of the gaming market segment and launched its gaming systems in order to capture its part of that market share. I don’t know how successful Dell has been with the sales of its gaming systems, but they must be doing well for the giant in order for it to continue offering them after numerous product refreshes.

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