pi3g | PiCockpit: How to overclock any Raspberry Pi (including Pi 400!) @pi3g | Uploaded December 2020 | Updated October 2024, 2 hours ago.
How to overclock your Raspberry Pi
In this video I will show you how to overclock your Raspberry Pi using a simple web-based tool:
picockpit.com/raspberry-pi/overclock-raspberry-pi
You'll need to know which Raspberry Pi model you have, and how to edit a text file on your Raspberry Pi. That's it - no further knowledge is required.
Head on over to picockpit.com, click on Blog, and "Overclock your Raspberry Pi" in the Raspberry Pi Tools section.
This page contains the web-based tool you need to get started with reasonable overclocking settings.
First select your Raspberry Pi model. Let's say I have a Pi 400, so I select the Pi 400.
Click on next step.
Now you'll see a screen asking you to select how much you would like to overclock your Raspberry Pi.
You've got a choice between medium booster and maximum performance here. The medium booster one is the best choice for most people, so let's go with it.
Click on Next Step.
Now you'll get an overclock preset recommendation, tailored to your Raspberry Pi.
Click on the Download button to obtain a text file of these settings.
Now we need a file manager with root rights in order to copy the file into the boot partition.
Click on the Raspberry Pi menu icon and select run. Type in "sudo pcmanfm" and press enter or click ok.
You'll see a little indicator icon showing you you are in super user mode.
Click on boot.
Now drag and drop the overclock.txt file into the boot partition.
Check that it's really there.
Next, locate the config.txt file. Open it by double-clicking on it.
Locate the all line at the very bottom of this file.
Now add include overclock.txt in a new line at the very bottom of the file.
Save the file and close the editor.
Before rebooting, we'll check the current maximum clock speed using PiCockpit.
In PiStats, you can see the current CPU load and SoC temperature.
PiDoctor shows you the current CPU frequency and voltage. Note the values of 1800 MHz, and the current CPU voltage 0.9500 V here. Also check the under-voltage, ARM frequency cap and Throttling indicators. Ideally, they should all be in the OK state.
One last thing before we reboot: we'll install stress-ng to test the overclock stability.
Open the console, and type
sudo apt-get update
then write
sudo apt-get install stress-ng
Run stress-ng to see the current state, and the impact on the clock speed and SoC temperature:
stress-ng --cpu 4 --cpu-method fft
This will run stress-ng on four CPU cores, using the fast fourier transform method.
Check the instructions on the picockpit.com overclocking page for more details and options.
In PiStats, you'll now see a load of 100 %, and the SoC temperature will be slowly rising.
The Pi 400 has a very good built-in aluminium heatsink, so it copes quite well with this load.
Note that the CPU frequency, as seen in PiDoctor, still stays at 1800 MHz. It's the current limit on this Pi 400 - we haven't rebooted it yet, so the new settings aren't active yet.
Let's do it now. You can actually use PiCockpit to reboot the Pi:
Go into PiControl, and click Reboot.
If you don't have PiCockpit, you can of course reboot your Pi using the usual method.
After the reboot, your Pi should feel a bit snappier.
Let's check the current frequency situation using PiCockpit.
In PiDoctor's System module, you'll see that the Current CPU frequency is higher than 1800 MHz. It will go as high as 2200 MHz, depending on load.
In PiStats, you can check the current CPU load and SoC temperature.
Let's run a stability test on the Raspberry Pi using stress-ng which we installed before.
Open the console and run stress-ng by typing
stress-ng --cpu 4 --cpu-method fft
This stress test will show you whether the overclock is stable or not - it should run for an hour to give you somewhat reasonable confidence in your settings.
On my Pi 400 it crashes after a couple of seconds, so now I would start to adjust the CPU frequency down, by editing overclock.txt.
As a Raspberry Pi engineer told me on the Raspberry Pi Forum, if they could have made the stock Raspberry Pi overclock rate higher, they would have done it.
So your results will wary depending on the silicon lottery: one Pi might overclock fine, while another one will crash even with slightly higher CPU frequency settings.
If your Raspberry Pi doesn't boot at all with the new overclocking settings, you can press the Shift key on your keyboard and keep it pressed - and then edit the settings to remove the overclock, or adjust it down.
Happy overclocking!
Cover Photo by Tim Carey on Unsplash
unsplash.com/@baudy
About picockpit.com:
Monitor and Control your Raspberry Pi using PiCockpit.com - from anywhere in the world! It's free for up to five Pis.
Find out more at:
picockpit.com
How to overclock your Raspberry Pi
In this video I will show you how to overclock your Raspberry Pi using a simple web-based tool:
picockpit.com/raspberry-pi/overclock-raspberry-pi
You'll need to know which Raspberry Pi model you have, and how to edit a text file on your Raspberry Pi. That's it - no further knowledge is required.
Head on over to picockpit.com, click on Blog, and "Overclock your Raspberry Pi" in the Raspberry Pi Tools section.
This page contains the web-based tool you need to get started with reasonable overclocking settings.
First select your Raspberry Pi model. Let's say I have a Pi 400, so I select the Pi 400.
Click on next step.
Now you'll see a screen asking you to select how much you would like to overclock your Raspberry Pi.
You've got a choice between medium booster and maximum performance here. The medium booster one is the best choice for most people, so let's go with it.
Click on Next Step.
Now you'll get an overclock preset recommendation, tailored to your Raspberry Pi.
Click on the Download button to obtain a text file of these settings.
Now we need a file manager with root rights in order to copy the file into the boot partition.
Click on the Raspberry Pi menu icon and select run. Type in "sudo pcmanfm" and press enter or click ok.
You'll see a little indicator icon showing you you are in super user mode.
Click on boot.
Now drag and drop the overclock.txt file into the boot partition.
Check that it's really there.
Next, locate the config.txt file. Open it by double-clicking on it.
Locate the all line at the very bottom of this file.
Now add include overclock.txt in a new line at the very bottom of the file.
Save the file and close the editor.
Before rebooting, we'll check the current maximum clock speed using PiCockpit.
In PiStats, you can see the current CPU load and SoC temperature.
PiDoctor shows you the current CPU frequency and voltage. Note the values of 1800 MHz, and the current CPU voltage 0.9500 V here. Also check the under-voltage, ARM frequency cap and Throttling indicators. Ideally, they should all be in the OK state.
One last thing before we reboot: we'll install stress-ng to test the overclock stability.
Open the console, and type
sudo apt-get update
then write
sudo apt-get install stress-ng
Run stress-ng to see the current state, and the impact on the clock speed and SoC temperature:
stress-ng --cpu 4 --cpu-method fft
This will run stress-ng on four CPU cores, using the fast fourier transform method.
Check the instructions on the picockpit.com overclocking page for more details and options.
In PiStats, you'll now see a load of 100 %, and the SoC temperature will be slowly rising.
The Pi 400 has a very good built-in aluminium heatsink, so it copes quite well with this load.
Note that the CPU frequency, as seen in PiDoctor, still stays at 1800 MHz. It's the current limit on this Pi 400 - we haven't rebooted it yet, so the new settings aren't active yet.
Let's do it now. You can actually use PiCockpit to reboot the Pi:
Go into PiControl, and click Reboot.
If you don't have PiCockpit, you can of course reboot your Pi using the usual method.
After the reboot, your Pi should feel a bit snappier.
Let's check the current frequency situation using PiCockpit.
In PiDoctor's System module, you'll see that the Current CPU frequency is higher than 1800 MHz. It will go as high as 2200 MHz, depending on load.
In PiStats, you can check the current CPU load and SoC temperature.
Let's run a stability test on the Raspberry Pi using stress-ng which we installed before.
Open the console and run stress-ng by typing
stress-ng --cpu 4 --cpu-method fft
This stress test will show you whether the overclock is stable or not - it should run for an hour to give you somewhat reasonable confidence in your settings.
On my Pi 400 it crashes after a couple of seconds, so now I would start to adjust the CPU frequency down, by editing overclock.txt.
As a Raspberry Pi engineer told me on the Raspberry Pi Forum, if they could have made the stock Raspberry Pi overclock rate higher, they would have done it.
So your results will wary depending on the silicon lottery: one Pi might overclock fine, while another one will crash even with slightly higher CPU frequency settings.
If your Raspberry Pi doesn't boot at all with the new overclocking settings, you can press the Shift key on your keyboard and keep it pressed - and then edit the settings to remove the overclock, or adjust it down.
Happy overclocking!
Cover Photo by Tim Carey on Unsplash
unsplash.com/@baudy
About picockpit.com:
Monitor and Control your Raspberry Pi using PiCockpit.com - from anywhere in the world! It's free for up to five Pis.
Find out more at:
picockpit.com
