September 30th, 2008
BIOS settings demystified
I find that when it comes to people building their own PCs (or tweaking their existing rig) then the mysteries that lay within the BIOS settings are scarier to most people than anything hardware related. Let’s do something about that!
I can see why the myriad of BIOS settings instill part excitement and part fear in many people. After all, it’s almost impossible to connect two bits of hardware together in the wrong way, and hard to break anything unless you are being particularly clumsy or using hulk-like strength to force incompatible parts together. But when it comes to the BIOS settings, it seems like there are an infinite number of settings that can be fiddled with, and each of the individual settings seems to have dozens of possible values.
To make matters worse, almost every BIOS is different. OK, that’s not exactly true, but it’s true enough in that it’s impossible for me to give you a definitive overview of the BIOS that you can take with you and apply to every motherboard you come across.
So, rather than give you a roadmap for a specific BIOS, what I’m going to do here is cover some of the more obscure BIOS settings that you are likely to come across.
Note: Unless you are overclocking your system, 95% of the time you can get away with leaving everything at the default setting. However, there are times when you might need to dig in the BIOS to make a small change, and that’s when a little bit of familiarity with the BIOS really pays off!
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Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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