Overclocking a laptop?

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trewyn15

Limp Gawd
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May 7, 2013
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I have an HP EliteBook 8560w with the i5 2520M.

I know people generally don't OC laptops due to heating issues, but if I were to want to overclock this machine, is it possible and how would I go about doing so?
 
I'm pretty sure with Sandy Bridge you can't overclock non extreme chips. All consumer laptops except high-end gaming laptops also have locked-down BIOS that prevents overclocking.

You could try your luck with Intel Extreme Tuning Ability, but I wouldn't bet on it.
 
I'll try it out now, the i5 as it is, is fairly quick and a bit more ram over the 4GB I have now will only help, but I figured I would ask anyways :D
 
Okay, I tried and I get the response:

Turbo Overclockable: False

Is it safe to guess there are no ways around this? Intel says I can OC safely to 3.2GHz
 
That's the turbo frequency for one single core. On a desktop you'd go into bios and set the multiplier +4 so it'd always be in turbo mode, but there's no such way on your laptop. You're probably out of luck.
 
Agree with sakerfalcon.... No way to OC your laptop...only few brands comes with unlocked bios... That allow OC... And as much allow 2X-4X multiplier over the stock turbo boost... And others just allow to disable turbo boost and set max multiplier static...
 
I suppose that's alright, the computer gets fairly warm as is anyways lol

Do you guys think going from:

i5 2520, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 64bit, 300GB 5600 RPM or something low like that

to an

i5 2520, 16GB RAM, Windows 8 64bit, 128GB SSD (Sandisk Ultra?) for boot and programs and 1TB 7200 RPM files drive.

Do you guys think that will be a pretty decent step up? Obviously it'll boot quick, but processing power probably also a decent bit better I would assume?
 
Uh... you could save the money on a new laptop and just get an SSD, more RAM and you'll be golden.
 
That's what I'm doing, putting 16GB SSD and such in this laptop and I get windows 8 for free through school

I think that last message was misleading lol
 
Well personally I wouldn't bother with Windows 8.

You wont notice an improvement with 16GB of RAM unless you are maxing out the 4GB of RAM you have now and thus your computer is using it's page file off the HDD. If that's not happening then it will run the same as it was with 4GB. I have 16GB in my system and right now I'm only utilizing ~4GB total. While I think 4GB is a little on the low end, I think you'll see the same "performance" increase if you went to 8GB instead of 16GB as I highly doubt you're using over 6GB total at any given time.

An SSD will boot a lot faster, so will loading programs/software/games and loading levels within games will also speed up. If you even game. I wouldn't go with a Sandisk though; I'd stick to more reputable/reliable companies such as Intel, Samsung and Crucial to name a few.

I also wouldn't bother with a 1TB drive if you're current 300GB drive isn't filled up by now. Obviously you aren't storing enough files to warrant a larger capacity. Granted the 1TB drive will be faster than the 300TB drive, but you wont notice it since you're loading/booting off an SSD which is going to be faster than both. However, for my use I would need the 1TB drive; I'm currently utilizing over 4TB combined on all my computers and need more. :\
 
Why wouldn't you bother with Windows 8? I know plenty of people don't like it because of the differences and such, but I've been getting used to it a bit and it's fairly nice IMO. Plus it's 'lighter' and will load quicker.

I max out the 4GB of RAM all the time lol I do lots of video and photo editing, sometimes split screen with a couple on each screen haha so I could use a bit more RAM sometimes.

I just saw Sandisk with their pretty fast write speeds, I will probably look elsewhere on the site classifieds

I actually have 2TB of externals full right now lol it's kind of a pain having to put that all on externals tho to keep this one fairly free and open.

I usually take everything off of this hard drive and reserve it all for school work, right now I'm only using 60GB on this drive for files, but it's freshly re-imaged due to some OS errors I was having.

But since I do lots of photo and video editing, I would enjoy a bit more space, since I have many 1GB videos and over 1k photos since December lol
 
trewyn15 said:
Why wouldn't you bother with Windows 8? I know plenty of people don't like it because of the differences and such, but I've been getting used to it a bit and it's fairly nice IMO. Plus it's 'lighter' and will load quicker.
Click to expand...

Because there's no performance improvement, yet it has issues with several games/programs and generally worse (immature) stability. So as you aren't likely gaining anything (the "new" stuff is meh too, it's mostly touchscreen junk) it's not really worth the cost or effort for nothing.

The faster startup is from basically saving an image of the OS and loading that instead of doing it properly, and it takes up slightly more HDD space than 7.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Because there's no performance improvement, yet it has issues with several games/programs and generally worse (immature) stability. So as you aren't likely gaining anything (the "new" stuff is meh too, it's mostly touchscreen junk) it's not really worth the cost or effort for nothing.

The faster startup is from basically saving an image of the OS and loading that instead of doing it properly, and it takes up slightly more HDD space than 7.
Click to expand...

I agree that it's more touchscreen stuff, since that's what it was built for really.

I'll see what they have for updates and such in the next month or so, since I can't up this computer until this semester is done
 
Is there any particular reason you're seeking more CPU power? Sandy Bridges are pretty good CPUs even at stock compared to its C2D predecessor. I wouldn't bother with more than 8 gigs of ram, but the SSD is a good investment either way.
 
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