[Desire General] Cactus42:
I thought I'd put this together given the amount of questions and apparent lack of knowledge on what you're getting yourself into with overclocking. While it's a one-click-wonder with SetCPU and JuiceDefender, it's not that simple when it comes to what it's actually doing to the phone.

The first thing you need to know is this:

All devices are not created equal!​

Even when they come off the production line together they may not be capable of even getting close to each other with an overclock. This is down to numerous variables, the most important of which is the processor itself. Processors are manufactured in batches from something called a wafer (basically a big chunk of silicon), that batch is then tested to a maximum stable speed and then marketed at a slightly lower speed for the sake of rock solid stability. Dual/multicore processors may have a faulty core disabled and be marketed as something else (hence AMD's Tri-Core processors). This is the reason overclocking works, and the long and the short of it is just because Person A can get 1.3Ghz running stable, doesn't mean Person B can.

So, now we know that whingeing that my Desire can get 1300Mhz but yours crashes every time you go above 1100Mhz is irrelevant, we can move on to the risks. Overclocking is dangerous. That's not an exaggeration, so let me reiterate...

Overclocking is dangerous, You can potentially kill your phone stone dead.​

But yet again it's not that simple. Yes, in very rare cases a processor will just go bang and give up, but most of the time other things will happen, behind the scenes, that you won't know about until it's too late.

The basic premise of overclocking is to get a faster processor clock speed. A small jump can probably be attained just by upping the speed itself and be perfectly stable. Going higher is where the problems start. If you start getting crashes/freezes/reboots then the next step is to increase the voltage to the processor to make it more stable, but more voltage means more heat, and excess heat is bad. This can either cook the processor as a whole or a group of transistors. This is more of a problem on a device like the Desire as where do you put the extra cooling?

Another problem is that more voltage can fry an IC track, and/or arc across to a track it shouldn't be on. This could do nothing, but it could also kill a single transistor on the processor or other chips in the device, or maybe multiple transistors and it can also lock them open or closed. This takes us back to random reboots, freezes, and crashes - but this time it can't be fixed.

Then theres a twist. Undervolting can also break things. A transistor is either on or off, and if it doesn't get enough power one of three things can happen - it can work fine, it can not work at all, or it can continually switch until it breaks (what an example? go and flick a light switch on and off until it stops - and it might not be the bulb that goes). If it decides not to work when other parts think it should, guess what happens.

So, bear this in mind when overclocking. If you start getting ANY issues test at stock speed. If you still have issues and/or you kill your phone, it's your own fault.

Mods - I've put this here as it's the place most people seem to ask about OCing, please move it if i'm wrong...