The main method used to increase the GPU overclocking capability is to also improve its cooling. GPUs can come with passive or active heatsinks, i.e., with or without a fan.

If your video card uses a passive heatsink like the one portrayed in Figure 14, consider replacing it with a good VGA cooler. Take a look at our first look articles about the Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 6 and Arctic Cooling Accelero X1 VGA coolers for a better idea of what we are talking about. If you don’t want to spend money, you can at least modify the heatsink so that a fan can be added to it.

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Figure 14: Example of a video card with passive heatsink

Even if your video card already uses an active heatsink, you may want to consider replacing it with a better cooling solution, such as the Arctic Cooling products we’ve mentioned.

Another trick advanced overclockers do is to increase the GPU voltage. Increasing the GPU voltage usually helps the GPU achieve a higher clock rate. One way of increasing the GPU voltage is by editing the video card BIOS. We will later discuss how to edit your video card BIOS; however, we won’t go into detail on how to change the GPU voltage.