How To Disable Overclocking «ESSENTIAL — 2024»

Disabling overclocking is not a single action but a chain of trust from silicon fuses up to OS policy. A robust disablement requires at least two of the three: (hardware), runtime enforcement (OS), and write-protected firmware (UEFI). For absolute assurance (e.g., military, financial HFT), one must also sever physical connections to clock generators and voltage controllers. Conversely, software-only overclocking disabling (e.g., "disable via registry") is trivially reversible. The deep paper concludes that only hybrid hardware/firmware locks raise the cost of re-enablement above the value of overclocking for an adversary.

If you used an application to boost performance, the settings may re-apply every time you boot Windows.

If the PC fails to boot, clear CMOS (see Section 10 below).