Software vs BIOS OC ?

[psikey]

Whats the negatives in just doing a software OC with utilities that come with a motherboard once booted into the OS that arn't resident settings on reboot?

I'm only really looking to OC when gaming (and maybe occassional media encoding) so isn't it best to just use the software OC rather than have a permanent OC in the BIOS? I'm thinking about component life, fan noise, power usage etc.

90% of time the PC is just used for general stuff such as Web/HTPC/iTunes/Office type stuff with gaming only around 5-10hrs per week.

 

[psikey]

Thanks for the feedback. Just gone for a mild BIOS overclock to get the RAM from 1333 to 1600 and CPU from 133x21 to 160x21 so from 2.8GHz to 3.34GHz. I have a basic motherboard so am limited even though I have the i7 860 and 4GB XMS3 RAM.

Gets me min of 33fps on Crysis at 1080p with everything maxed so good enough for me (OC 5850 GPU).