Is overclocking worth it?

booey1

booey1

booey1

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I've wanted to try overclocking for a while as I'm really quite interested in it. I'm thinking of saving up for a machine that I can overclock, but recently a friend of mine told me that I was better off buying a better PC than trying overclocking.

He basically said:
1. Cases and fans and cooling equipment are quite expensive and when you get all the gear you've probably spent as much as if you just bought a better PC. And so there's not much point unless you have a top-end PC that can't be upgraded.
2. Overclocking causes a lot of heat and wears out all your components a lot faster, so that you need to replace them a lot sooner.

After listening to this I figured even though I wanted to try OCing, I'd actually be better off not doing. Is this right?

I want to try buying a quad-core and overclocking it for around £500 to use for games, but the key thing is longevity - I want to be able to get something that will run games for the next 3 years+ even if it's on the lower settings. Is this possible?

Any advice/thoughts?
 
Your friend obviously has no idea what he's talking about.

Of course it's worth it as there's no extra cost other than perhaps a better cooler...also you could buy the most expensive processor out like a Core i7 975 but if you did not overclock it then an overclocked Q6600 at 3.6-3.8ghz setup that is years old would overtake it in quite a few situations.

With a 500 quid quadcore budget you are most likely looking at a budget AMD setup. Spend as much as you can on your graphics card, something like a 5850 would be good.
 
Core i7 920 = £200
Asus P6T = £200
6GB OCZ DDR3 = £100

overclocked to 3.8ghz = faster than a system that would cost two or three times as much.
 
What about the thing to do with overclocked systems wearing out a lot faster, is this true and if so, how much faster?
 
Increasing the operating temperature will reduce the design life, but the fact is that these things will last for close to decades. So unless you plan on using the same PC for the next 10-15 years I wouldn't worry about it.
 
Definitely worth overclocking, more performance from your hardware is great, particularly when its free, plus its good fun as well.
 
What they said ^^

Never OC'd massively, but figure that I have gained circa. 50% on all of the last few CPUs I have owned and never had any sort of problem. The killer is heat, really, as mentioned above - keeping the volts in check, and with half-decent cooling, you basically grab yourself plenty more for no more cost :D
Final point, however, is that not all CPUs will clock the same; not all mobos will clock the same and so on......

Give it a go - there is loads of help and advice on these forums :)
 
Tbh, you were always going to get a flurry of Yes's and merits of overclocking by asking a question on a place such as this.

Generally though, you do not need to spend a ridiculous amount on your items to get a decent system as others have said.

I have the i7 920, P6T SE mobo and 6GB corsair XMS3 1600Mhz RAM.
As pointed out earlier this probably totals up to around £500, just under i think.
Now you could go out and spend an extra £200 buying the next step up with a 950.. or go even further and spend £750 on a 975 extreme.. or you could buy a £50-70 cooler and overclock...

As long as you are careful you won't blow up anything, most of the overclock-centric mobos have plenty of failsafes built in to help recover from bad OC's, or guide you towards some good settings.

A lot of people have overclocked their i7s here to 4Ghz, me being one of them, and im trying to push 4.2 for fun.. but i have no intention of running it at 4.2 all of the time since I won't need it, I'll probably bring it down to something like 3.4-3.8 since generally i wont need any more power than that.

It's important to choose the right platform and chip, i only have a fraction of experience with OCing, and it's all with the i7... but considering that most i7s will be able to get a stable 4Ghz from 2.66 (a 50% increase!) It's well worth it.
 
setter said:
Definitely worth overclocking, more performance from your hardware is great, particularly when its free, plus its good fun as well.
Click to expand...

Agreed. You might even get the megahertz bug =p

But in all seriousness, better performance for is always good. Especially when it's free. And as long as you are safe, and sensible, no harm will come to your components.
 
If you've got the budget, then I'd try just overclocking your existing setup first. I'm no stranger to PCs, but my philosophy has always been that I don't meddle with overclocking unless I can afford to replace it. I used to have the same obsession with raw speed when I was younger and gamed more, but nowadays an extra few fps here and there really doesn't bother me.

In short, are there big performance gains to be had? Yes
Is it risk free? No
 
i just built my first rig about 2months ago

core i7 [email protected]
crosfire 4890s@ 930 & 1055
gigabyte ud5
antec 1200
lots of fans and cathode tubing...took about 3 hours to put toghether

but ive been tweaking it every day as the person above said thats where the fun is..
im using an akasa nero heatsink so im not pushing any further until i get a beter cpu cooler..


i did have my cpu stable at 3.6 with a .01 voltage increase how good was that under prime 8 hours 2degres hotter than stock
 
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