Overclocking, where a computer user increases the clock cycles on their CPUs past the manufacturer's recommendations to squeeze out even more performance, has been popular for many years. Now, a new technique has taken intrepid computer extremists in another direction - underclocking.

Underclockers purposely slow down their machines by various means, even to the point of making the machine unusable. Their professed motto is "How slow can you go?"

Alex Rakoczy explained what he did to slow down his computer system, "Yeah, I turn down the FSB [front side bus] as low as it will allow me, and then crank down the clock multiplier. I set the memory settings really slow too. It's insane. Anybody can make a 486 go slow, but it takes real skill to make a 2.4 GHz machine with 1 GB of RAM unbearable to use."