Overclocking ThinkPad W500

[Turnyface]

I was wondering if anyone has had any success overclocking their W500 ThinkPad. Specifically something that follows my current specs:

W500
Processor: T9900 (3.06 GHz)
Ram: 6GB DDR3
Storage: Intel G2 SSD 80GB x2
GPU: Stock

If so, how did you do it - SetFSB (what is the PLL?)? And could you give me some guidance in how to properly do it? Or, if there is a way to do it in the BIOS, that would be great as well. Lastly, do I always have to overclock the processor every time I reboot or does it stay locked until I change it? Thanks for your help and welcoming me to the forums.

- T

[Quicklite]

Thinkpads are business machines, which generally pride itself on stability. Overclocking doesn't exactly help with stability, as result, I highly doubt any Thinkpad would ever include OC'ing function in the bios. Isn't T9900 fast enough?

[Turnyface]

Thinkpads are business machines, which generally pride itself on stability. Overclocking doesn't exactly help with stability, as result, I highly doubt any Thinkpad would ever include OC'ing function in the bios. Isn't T9900 fast enough?

Haha, yes it's fast enough. And I'm going to have to disagree with you on the "business" part. I attend the University of Minnesota and ThinkPads are required for the Aerospace Engineering Program. Not only are they durable, but they are powerful machines, especially when it comes to Mathematica and MATLAB. I also use it for 3D graphics programs - calculating stress, friction, etc. I just read somewhere that a guy OC'd his t9900 to 4.0 GHz and it was completely stable, although he did it in his BIOS. Just wondering if it's possible to do it with setFSB, that's all.

[awolfe63]

My current W500 (T9800) overheats and self-downclocks when running full-speed 3D apps. I have a T9900 model on order so I will see how that does. I don't think a W500 has the cooling capacity to be reliably overclocked. Make sure you monitor temperature if you try it.

[Quicklite]

If OC'ing is your thing, I recommend a Sager 9280. It's a laptop that takes desktop i7 CPU. You can overclock the 3.33ghz i7 975 to 4Ghz via multiplier. The most you see with a T9900 would be 3.5 or 3.6 Ghz, assuming the laptop allows OC'ing. With HT built in, your OS would see 8 threads @ 4 Ghz.

[Crunch]

I was wondering if anyone has had any success overclocking their W500 ThinkPad. Specifically something that follows my current specs:

W500
Processor: T9900 (3.06 GHz)
Ram: 6GB DDR3
Storage: Intel G2 SSD 80GB x2
GPU: Stock

If so, how did you do it - SetFSB (what is the PLL?)? And could you give me some guidance in how to properly do it? Or, if there is a way to do it in the BIOS, that would be great as well. Lastly, do I always have to overclock the processor every time I reboot or does it stay locked until I change it? Thanks for your help and welcoming me to the forums.

- T

Hah, we have almos the same specs. Try overclockers.com. Someone will likely be able to help you. At the very least, you should be able to overclock it to 3.33GHz.