To operate a CPU or other digital logic device at a rate higher than
it was designed for, under the assumption that the manufacturer put some
slop into the specification to account for
manufacturing tolerances. Overclocking something can result in intermittent
crashes, and can even burn things out, since power
dissipation is directly proportional to clock
frequency. People who make a hobby of this are sometimes called
overclockers
; they are thrilled that they can run their
CPU a few percent faster, even though they can only tell the difference by
running a benchmark program. See also
case mod.