How To Overclock Raspberry Pi 4

Overview

You have the Raspberry Pi 4, and you want to overclock it. Right? It is not a difficult task. However, you need the proper guidelines to keep you on the target without hassle.

Raspberry Pi 4 is one of the best single-board computers available today. The ARM Cortex-A72 CPU is the heart of Pi with the base clock speed at 1.5 GHz. This guide will show you how to reach 2.147 GHz.

Why overclock your Raspberry Pi?

There are some practical reasons to overclock the Raspberry Pi 4. One of the primary reasons is to increase the base speed from 1.5 GHz to 2.147 GHz. But this speed increase depends on the cooling system that you provide to your Raspberry Pi 4.

Benefits of overclocking

Retro gaming: Overclocking improves performance, especially for Nintendo and Sony PlayStation emulation
Desktop experience: Better responsiveness and multitasking
Windows 10: Enhanced performance when running Windows 10 on Pi 4
Live video streaming: Improved performance for streaming applications

How to overclock the Raspberry Pi 4

Important: Overclocking may damage or crash your Pi operating system, microSD card, and more. Take a backup of your data before proceeding. If programs start crashing, you must reduce speeds and return to default settings.

Preparation

Check the Raspberry Pi 4, cooling solutions, SD card, and power supply. Ensure it has the official power supply and installed SD card. The cooling solution is essential to help the Raspberry Pi 4 reach high temperatures safely and keep it under control during overclocking.

Update your Raspberry Pi 4

Update for better performance according to the latest version:

sudo apt update\nsudo apt dist-upgrade\nsudo reboot

Check the default speed

Check the default speed of your CPU:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq

Commonly this terminal will result in the base speed of the CPU, which is 0.6 GHz.

Overclocking the Pi

Overclock the Raspberry Pi 4 by tweaking the config.txt folder under configuration settings:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Change the config settings from default and save the file by clicking CTRL + O. Then restart your Pi.

Overclocking to higher speeds

You can progressively overclock to 1.75 GHz, then 2 GHz, and finally to the maximum level of 2.147 GHz by re-editing the config.txt file with the required arm_freq and overvoltage settings. Test stability at each level before proceeding to the next.

How to recover from a failed overclock

If you face crashes or failing boot, don't worry. You have two options:

SHIFT key method: Click and hold the SHIFT key during boot. This will disable the overclocking process temporarily and allow the Pi to perform typically. Once booted, edit the config.txt file to reduce settings.
SD card method: Remove the SD card and attach it to another PC. Open the config.txt settings file and adjust the settings properly.

Follow your suitable process to recover the failed overclocking and restore your data.

By Lauren Rose Eddy