Power Conditioning and Overclocking

[Aegir]

Would using a power conditioner, a line conditioner, help with overclocking?

To smooth out the bumps, dips, and spikes before it hits the PSU.
Would it give any benefit to performance or overclocking?
Has this been tested?

 

[KATEKATEKATE]

I'm inclined to say no- not unless the mains power coming in is already of especially poor quality, in which case there's bigger potential problems than overclocking headroom. Curious to see what others have to say though.

 

[longblock454]

No it will not help, all that is needed is a good quality power supply and your fine.

 

[Aegir]

I'm a lot more curious as to whether or not a test has been done.

All that must occur is for a system to be plugged into a conditioner with a stable overclock, which becomes unstable when plugged into just a basic surge protector on the same outlet, but stable again once plugged back into the line conditioner.

Without a test, I'm skeptical that anyone could possibly know.
There's just not much information on this subject.

 

[longblock454]

All that must occur is for a system to be plugged into a conditioner with a stable overclock, which becomes unstable when plugged into just a basic surge protector on the same outlet, but stable again once plugged back into the line conditioner.

Which would also have to power transients at the same time? And fairly continuous?

Modern PC power supplies have listed voltage ranges from ~90 to 240v, so you'd have to have some really crappy power, or a crappy power supply for that to be an issue. My house is on networked re-closures and my PCs stay up without issue when they switch feeds.

Any such lab test would require simulating "crappy power" which doesn't really make sense, get the feed fixed instead, this is probably why your not finding much info/real world testing.

 

[Aegir]

Which would also have to power transients at the same time? And fairly continuous?

It'd be a matter of simply turning off the system and replugging it into the bare wall.
When you turn it back on, would the overclock fail?
The BIOS will not just reset from being unplugged.

It must be actually tested.

 

[SmokeRngs]

I think the point people are trying to make is that to get to the point where a line conditioner would affect stability enough to cause problems with an overclock the problem would be so bad that an overclock would be the least of your concerns. Keeping the hardware from dying due to bad power would be your primary concern and at that point you'd need to fix the real problem of bad power rather than attempt a band-aid of a line conditioner.

A quality PSU and a motherboard with quality power circuitry will have way more affect than a line conditioner ever could with regards to an overclock. The reason no one here has tests for it is because it's pointless to bother with it because practically no one would be able to tell any difference. Maybe the extreme overclockers shooting for world records might use a line conditioner in the hope that maybe they get an extra 1mhz but that it way beyond what anyone would be able to realistically run.

 

[VanGoghComplex]

You have a power conditioner already. It's called your PSU.