Should I bother overclocking my GTX 970

[Almuric]

I have a six year old KFA2 GeForce GTX 970 OC, and am trying to stretch it out to after the current shortage.

I am very tempted to try and push it by overclocking in MSI afterburner. I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on am I risking shortening its lifespan at this age by increasing power limit, core and memory, or should I leave it be and not risk knackering the card and getting caught with just built-in graphics.

Any wisdom on this would be much appreciated

 

[Almuric]

So long as you're keeping it well cooled (this means good fan speeds on the card as well as good airflow in the case), it should be fine to overclock. Presuming you'll just be adjusting things with MSI Afterburner or similar and not modifying the BIOS etc.

But, what I would say is that you're only likely to gain 5 or perhaps 10% performance boost. So, is that worth it? If it will make the games you're playing more playable, great. But you may find turning down settings a little is just as effective.

Thanks for the advice I have a Silverstone GD08 HTPC case with an i9 10900 and Noctua NH-U9S cooler with the optional secondary fan. My CPU temp rarely goes above 55 degrees, so am hoping that will provide a good base for cooling. I was playing with the idea of maybe pushing the max temp in MSI afterburner up to 85 degrees for the GPU and seeing what overclock I can get with that.

 

[Almuric]

You may want to replace the six year old thermal compound which has probably turned to dust by now.

Good shout, I hadn't considered that, and I have a ton of paste left over at the moment, will check it out.