Most components are designed with a margin of safety to deal with operating conditions outside of a manufacturer's control examples are ambient temperature and fluctuations in operating voltage. The trade-offs are an increase in power consumption (heat), fan noise (cooling), and shortened lifespan for the targeted components. Normally, on modern systems, the target of overclocking is increasing the performance of a major chip or subsystem, such as the main processor or graphics controller, but other components, such as system memory ( RAM) or system buses (generally on the motherboard), are commonly involved. The purpose of overclocking is to increase the operating speed of a given component. Many device warranties state that overclocking or over-specification voids any warranty, however there are an increasing number of manufacturers that will allow overclocking as long as performed (relatively) safely. An overclocked device may be unreliable or fail completely if the additional heat load is not removed or power delivery components cannot meet increased power demands. Semiconductor devices operated at higher frequencies and voltages increase power consumption and heat. Commonly, operating voltage is also increased to maintain a component's operational stability at accelerated speeds. In computing, overclocking is the practice of increasing the clock rate of a computer to exceed that certified by the manufacturer. This corresponds to an overclocking of the FSB by 11.3% and of the CPU by 36%. Front side bus (FSB) frequency (external clock) has been increased from 133 MHz to 148 MHz, and the CPU clock multiplier factor has been changed from 13.5 to 16.5. Overclocking BIOS setup on an ABIT NF7-S motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP processor.

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