Hi all,
Is it a good idea to overclock a laptop? I have a thinkpad T420 with i5 2450m 2.5 GHz. Looking to just overclock a little for a future eGPU project, and for fun. But I fear it might get hot since it reaches ~80 C when rendering CAD stuff.
Any suggestions? Thanks guys.
If there's enough cooling, then you could get away with higher frequencies. But mostly, no. I wouldn't bother to OC a laptop.
I would echo Destryed007's comment.
Laptops tend to have problems with thermal managment sometimes at stock settings. You say your laptop goes to ~80C when rendering (I'm assuming stock settings here), which means that you will have problems running the thing without heat problems if you overclock.
Since you're doing this for fun, I would suggest you get something to help ariflow through the laptop (one of those mounts with fans? Not much experience with laptop accessories here) and run it at a colder room (if you have an AC or something, get the room temp down a few degrees and that should help). Also, return the settings to default when you take your laptop on the go unless you have optimal cooling and know that it will be no problem with the ambient temperatures you're at.
Oh, and don't forget: Test themal and computational stability with Prime95. I would suggest that you try this at stock settings FIRST to see how much heat is generated (monitor closely as this thing will produce the most heat off of your CPU) than proceed with extremely small increments, smaller than what you normally do for desktops, if you had ever overclocked a desktop before.
Thanks y'all for the feedback, seems like it doesn't worth the trouble since I unplug my laptop very often.