AMD engineer Shyam Sundar S K submitted Linux kernel patches for an 'AOD' WMI driver that exposes Ryzen overclocking controls through sysfs. The initial driver lets users set Package Power Tracking, Thermal Design Current, and Electrical Design Current limits, toggle SMT at the platform level, and read supported ranges and memory clocks, with changes taking effect after a reboot rather than in real time.
linux.slashdot.org
· 2026-10-21
AMD has submitted patches to the Linux kernel introducing AOD (AMD Overclocking Driver) support for Ryzen processors, as reported by Phoronix. The driver exposes tuning functions like SMT toggling, memory clock monitoring, and power controls through the standard sysfs interface, replacing reliance on reverse-engineered firmware hooks or ACPI workarounds.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-21
Electronics hobbyist Blighted Agent bought a 2x16GB SK hynix DDR5-5600 SODIMM kit for $120 and transferred its memory chips onto blank desktop DDR5 PCBs bought from AliExpress, creating a working 2x16GB DDR5-7800 desktop kit. Total parts cost came to about $175, including PCBs, heatsinks, and reballing materials, with the process involving desoldering the chips with hot air, reballing them, and remounting them onto the new boards along with the SPD and BIOS chips.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-20
GitHub user Panchovix has published a tool that lets Nvidia RTX 30-, 40-, and 50-series GPU owners modify VBIOS settings without physically flashing the firmware chip. Instead, the configurator stores a modified VBIOS image in the GPU's register key, which the Nvidia driver loads on startup, and it works on both Windows and Linux.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-19
Overclocker Luumi set a new HWBot world record for the Intel Core i5-4670K in Cinebench R11.5, scoring 10.8 cb on a multicore run and dethroning a record that had stood for 12 years. The Haswell-era quad-core chip was pushed to 6,301 MHz using liquid nitrogen cooling on an ASRock Z97 OC Formula board with 4GB of XPG DDR3 and a Corsair AXi 1600 power supply.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-18
Tom's Hardware reviewed Gigabyte's X870 Aorus Infinity, a limited-edition 40th-anniversary motherboard built for extreme overclocking with a two-DIMM layout, onboard voltage read points and OC buttons. The board includes eight rear USB ports, three M.2 slots, four SATA ports, 5 GbE networking and Wi-Fi 7, and Gigabyte lists support for DDR5-11400 with manual tuning. In testing with a Kingston DDR5-6000 kit, it delivered average-to-above-average results in productivity and gaming benchmarks.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-16
Modern CPUs and motherboards now use automated algorithms—such as Multi-Core Enhancement and AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive—to push clock speeds beyond advertised base and boost frequencies based on real-time thermal and power headroom. This replaces the older manual process of adjusting core multipliers and testing for stability by hand.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-11
YouTuber Bits und Bolts repaired a 25-year-old Intel Celeron 1200 (Tualatin) chip that had a missing data pin and destroyed pad, which prevented any system from booting with it installed. By exposing underlying copper layers, applying solder mask, and grafting a donor pin from a separate broken Tualatin chip, the creator restored full function to the CPU. After the repair, the chip was successfully overclocked by 33%.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-19
YouTube modding channel TecLab rebuilt a Galax RTX 5090D HOF OC LAB XOC by removing its dual 16-pin power connectors and soldering in three 8-pin PCIe connectors directly to the power regulators, rewiring sense pins to remove power limits. Using liquid cooling, they pushed the card from 400W up to 900W, drawing over 120A and hitting clock speeds of 3,400 MHz, all through hardware changes alone with no BIOS or software tuning.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-10
Hypertune has publicly released its Gaming Performance Engineering platform, an automated overclocking tool built on Intel's XTU SDK and developed with Intel's involvement. The software tunes CPU and GPU settings, Windows configurations, and network and game-specific parameters based on an individual system's hardware rather than applying generic profiles. Hypertune's own benchmarks show gains ranging from about 4% to 28% in specific games, far below the marketed 60% ceiling.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-09
HWiNFO64 is a diagnostic tool that tracks live data across CPU, GPU, motherboard, RAM, drives, and sensors, presenting it through a system summary, full report, and active sensor windows. It supports logging, custom alerts, and can display VRM temperatures when motherboards expose that data, though its fan control feature is a secondary function rather than its main purpose.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-08