Australian technology news, reviews, and guides to help you
Australian technology news, reviews, and guides to help you
A gamer playing on a gaming PC

Intel releases overclocking tool for desktop chips

If you find yourself cursing that your new computer isn’t fast enough, a free tool could just push it even more. You just need a recent chip.

We can always want more speed and power from our computers, but it’s not always easy to grasp. Computers tend to come with a finite amount of power, and while that amount is usually totally acceptable for most people, folks who want to get more out have to resort to overclocking.

Overclocking is one of those things you won’t typically do on laptops because of the heat problem: when you overclocking, it increases the power and heat output, which means you need to put that heat somewhere.

But desktops, well, they definitely can, and depending on the processor and cooling setup, you may be able to automatically set up some overclocking for your system.

Just recently Intel released a tool for Windows PCs that enables an automatic dose of overclocking, supporting a range of Intel 9th generation Core chips for the desktop.

If you’ve recently upgraded to a Core i5 -9600K or KF, Core i7 9700K or 9700KF, or have the meaty Intel Core i9-9900K or 9900KF, you can try this technology in the Intel Performance Maximiser, a sort of auto-overclocker that boosts performance specific to individual setup. You don’t need to know anything necessarily technical to engage this form of overclocking, and Intel basically handles it for you, working it all from the tool itself.

While we’re not sure everyone will spark an interest in an auto-overclocker, one of the most interesting points is that Intel says a notebook version is coming, “scheduled for release later this year”.

That has the potential to be a very interesting edition indeed, because not only will the system be able to overclocking and boost laptop performance, but it should be able to do it within the confines of notebook cooling setups.

While Intel hasn’t confirmed anything to Pickr about this beyond its expected release timeframe, our guess is that the Intel Performance Maximiser for notebooks will more than likely be something that works on gaming laptops overall.

On gaming machines, specifically gaming notebooks, there’s a greater chance for manufacturers to engage in some hardware tweaking and processor boosting, not to mention more of a likelihood for slightly more extravagant cooling setups under the hood. These computers tend to be a little crazier in design, and as a result may end up having something special inside them to deal with a processor boost, making them the likely target for a notebook version of the tool.

That means when the Intel Performance Maximiser does come out for notebooks, there’s a good chance that it will be targeted at the machines made by Alienware, Razer, HP Omen, Asus Republic of Gamers, MSI, Gigabyte, and Dell’s gaming models, as they would probably receive most of the benefit.

However if and when that happens, we’ll be sure to let you know. For now, desktop owners of Intel Core 9th gen chips can get the Intel Performance Maximiser tool and try it for themselves without having to resort to anything overly technical.

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