Overclocking-why and do I need it?

soprano

soprano

soprano

Associate
Joined
4 Mar 2010
Posts
179
Guys, I've had great advice here so far thank you and now pretty sure what I want in my spec for now and to save me doing it again in 2 years;)

however, one last question, I see the CPU and GPU being overclocked in some systems automatically by Ocuk but doesnt that make the system hotter/more power hungry/more prone to failures quicker?
Basically should I just leave well alone and get an i7 and XFX ATI HD 5870 with no overclocking as the difference is minimal?
 
Overclocking is done to eek a little more performance out of your hardware, and most of us do it for 2 other reasons...

1 - Because we can :p
2 - Because there's nothing quite as good as getting something extra for free ;)

To answer your queries though, overclocking will make your system a little hotter, obviously a little more power hungry, but as for failures - well, it doesn't make things much more prone to failure to be honest.

I have overclocked my CPUs for years and never had one fail yet **touches wood and hugs Q6600 clocked to 3.6** :D

EDIT - to answer if you need it, well thats a bit like asking if you need a fast car really. You don't need it, but its nice to have it :)
 
Last edited:
Overclocking

Hotter: Yes (means you need a better cooler and some decent case airflow)

More power hungry: Yes (means you need a good quality PSU, with sufficient capacity)

More prone to failures quicker: Depends, If you properly stress test the system for 24 hours then you aren't likely to have any troubles during the useful life of the system. Overclocking does generally reduce the life of components, but we are talking from 50+ years to 10+ years, so by the time it "dies of old age" it will be completely obsolete.

Also, the lifetime of the component is affected by the specifics of your overclock. If you are overclocking with stock volts and an aftermarket cooler so the temperatures are lower than on the stock cooler - then I don't imagine the chip will age too prematurely.

As for "should I overclock" that is up to you, based on what you want to do with your system and how much effort you are prepared to put in. If you are doing CPU intensive apps, then overclocking can be very beneficial - in some well threaded apps giving you linear performance improvements. If you are primarily gaming, then there are many games that benefit from CPU clockspeed - but GPU power is often far more important.

As for GPU overclocking, I generally steer away from it. I recognise the benefit of it, but my particular card comes with a 10 year warranty and little in the way of aftermarket coolers (apart from water blocks). In my experience graphics cards are far more likely to die than CPUs (this is often nothing to do with the GPU chip itself) and I buy one that I know is as fast as I need it to be and if/when it does go pop I can send it in under warranty in clear conscience.
 
@Diggsy
true, however fast cars are usually remapped which puts extra strain on various components and leads to early failures, thats really what concerned me as I'd like to get something 'extra' but not if its going to be hotter and noisier with a shorter shelf life, but if I wont get issues then I'm all for it
 
Overclocking is either done to save money, as a hobby or at the highest levels for cash prizes. ;)

A good example is the old Core 2 Duo e6 series of CPUs. You initially had two performance tiers, the more expensive ones had more cache memory. Before long Intel released a new lot which were clocked lower than the top parts, but had the same cache for slightly more money than the mid-range parts. So you could buy one and overclock it to even faster than the top retail part, saving hundreds of pounds in theory. But in practice most people are only deciding between two products with a price gap of £100 or so. :) Still...

Anyway, with the popular quad cores today (i5 750, i7 920) overclocking doesn't give much of a boost to games which are already running maxed out. But when you consider they can get to 4GHz pretty easily, it's almost too tempting.
 
Currently a factory clocked i7 with a 5870 is still going to blast through any games, however an overclocked i7 will that that bit longer (I mean we're talking 4GHz instead of 2.6GHz here). So in terms of when you next need to upgrade the 4GHz+ i7 shouldn't need to be replaced in a good few years. If you've got the money and you're serious about wanting a low noise system you could always get one of the fully watercooled prebuilds.
 
soprano said:
get an i7 and ... no overclocking
Click to expand...

:eek: someone arrest that man!

Only joking, but seriously if your not overclcoking AMD may be a better route as they tend to have higher 'base' clocks. i7's are pretty much built for overclocking :p the advice already given is pretty sound though so you should be able to decide for yourself, but as I said if your not clocking, save some cash and get an AMD chip.
 
Overclocking is normally done to stretch the most performance you possibly can out of a given budget. If you do it incompetently (i.e. fail to do any research beforehand, and fail to think while changing settings) it's quite possible to damage things. If you stay within the community "safe" guidelines things are very unlikely to go wrong, but there's always the chance that you had faulty hardware from the start which kicks the bucket a little quicker when overclocked.

I've got an 8800gt that has been physically and electrically mistreated. It's been bent by a heatsink, dropped, scratched with a screwdriver, run up to 98 centigrade, run using a modified bios and has spent it's entire life overclocked to the edge of stability and the majority of it running folding@home. It's doing just fine two years on. Hardware is astonishingly resilient really.
 
I did my first overclocking when I moved from AMD to Intel and bought my E6400 which is still working years later, with good intel cpu's these days even air cooled overclocking (I was a complete virgin to it) I got over 20% performance increase.

Now I overclock every cpu I get and nothing has died or gotten worn out yet.

And yes I am doing an upgrade this week but realised I don't need to change up to i5 or i7 because my q6600 kicks everythings ass at 3.8ghz and on my custem setup I have run it at 4ghz) (its been running at 3.8 for 18 months stable)
 
Last edited:
With a good motherboard a lot of the Core 2 series will do higher than 20% on the Intel standard heatsink actually. :)
 
Redmint said:
With a good motherboard a lot of the Core 2 series will do higher than 20% on the Intel standard heatsink actually. :)
Click to expand...

Actually yes and i'll be testing that tomorrow :) i'm going to see how high the old e6400 can go safely now its going to be the primary media/games pc.

Its actually kinda fun looking forward to it, my other system is safe overclocking hehe its liquid cooled and my q6600 stays at 3.8 atm but can go to 4ghz messing about with air cooling is more fun!
 
great advice as usual, you guys are very helpful:D feel better getting an overclocked system now done by the professionals at OKuk hopefully:D
 
i recon its like an addiction really, once you start you cant stop until you reach your max overclock. iv been overclocking for a long time and ive only just retired my overclocked amd duron chip - still working fine - along with the mobo so they lasted very well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom