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When you fall for a tech 4chan post that says you can unlock your CPU if you do this one thing to it (infosec.pub)

submitted 3 weeks ago by TehBamski@lemmy.world to c/veryrealtechpics@lemmy.world

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[–] truxnell@aussie.zone 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean, we used to be able to unlock CPUs by drawing on it with pencil in the right spots...

[–] moody@lemmings.world 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

We used to overclock them by setting the FSB speed and multiplier by drawing on them. It's crazy to me that they designed them that way with such an easily exploitable flaw,

[–] ApatheticCactus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

It wasn't really even a 'flaw' or 'exploit'. It was more a matter of 'if your chip can handle it, go for it assuming you have good cooling and know what you're doing.

Everything was more or less running at a "safe" speed so that the largest number of chips would be stable at, though it was known to pretty much everone that you could easily overclock for a little more performance.

I mean, there were boards built specifically to overclock, but they were more spendy. Sometimes you could get a cheaper board to overclock with a trick.

It wasn't until overclocking became widespread enough that chipmakers would try to limit it to sell some chips as higher speed and premium pricing. That's when it started getting locked down.

Was a sweet time when you could buy a budget chip that was identical silicon to the faster chips and just tune it to get the same, if not better, performance for cheap.