Extreme Underclocking

Enthusiasts have been overclocking their computers for years, going to extraordinary lengths to push their systems past their intended speeds. For these daring souls, the ultimate goal is to have a computer boot and log into a forum as fast as possible, then post the results and breathlessly await the internet's approval. Either that, or to play video games online with the FPS display toggled and constantly ask for everyone else's framerate while they stand still and die.

As the speed increase from overclocking has become increasingly minimal, the culture has changed. Now underclocking is in vogue, and a new breed of system tweakers who call themselves "Extreme Underclockers" are doing all they can to make their top of the line computers perform as horribly as possible.

Sounds kind of lame, right? Wrong. The line between "wow, that's slow" and "wow, I guess it's not even on" is a razor's edge, little man. Those who walk it fear nothing, for their shoes have special razor-proof soles.

An underclocker is considered the best of the best when notepad.exe takes more than an hour to load and his computer is capable of running without a power source.