why do you overclock?

how much would you have to spend on average for more cooling to OC safely? i take it a fan is not enough (Especially in hotter places in the world)
 
drcrappants said:
how much would you have to spend on average for more cooling to OC safely? i take it a fan is not enough (Especially in hotter places in the world)
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Do you have air conditioning? And highly depends on how far you want to overclock.

A Hyper 212+ for ~$20-30 is enough for most moderate overclocks.
 
drcrappants said:
how much would you have to spend on average for more cooling to OC safely? i take it a fan is not enough (Especially in hotter places in the world)
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I spent $60 for my Prolimatech Megahalems plus a couple PWM fans, which keeps my 2500k at 55c or below running at 4.5ghz. For my old e8500 at 4.1ghz I used a Sunbeam Tuniq that I think cost about $40 with fan. I'm in California, so not one of the hotter places in the world, so air cooling is good enough for my needs.

I overclock because I do see a reduction in video encoding times and photo processing times at the higher clock speeds, so I get more performance for my money. The added cost of good air cooling is pretty minimal if you think about it - I have have a 4.5ghz quad core for $180 (Microcenter) + $60 (Cooler) = $240 :p That's pretty awesome price/performance. Heck, even if I went with a $120 water cooling setup like the Corsair H100, I'd still be under what I paid for my e6600 back when they were new.
 
i take it you live near tustin, and got the i5 2500k? :)

my table has a computer compartment, like a tall drawer. where do you guys put your computers? i think if i put it in the compartment, it will blow up my cpu because of lack of air flow. dumb table design, eh?
 
AliceCooper said:
Get better performance out of my machine without spending money. And because I know how to and its not illegal :) (yet lol?).
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If it were illegal, that would be another reason I would do it, cause, you know, computer geeks/nerds are rebels, aight?
 
I overclock for the same reason i want to take my 1986 monte carlo ss to 750 rwhp because i can and for no other reason than that. It also became a hobby to see how much better i could make something over the original manufacture
 
I overclock for a large performance boost.

54% overclock on air cooling or my CPU and 20% overclock on my air cooled GTX 480 makes a large difference in CPU heavy and GPU heavy tasks.
 
-Free performance
-If you keep your voltages in check you cause 0 damage to the cpu (ie there are no negatives)
 
Dan_D said:
Because I can. Really it's abotu getting the most out of my hardware and thus the most for my money.
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^this. Years ago, just getting decent frame rates in the newest games was almost impossible even with the state of the art hardware; so we overclocked. Now it's all about value. The advances in cooling have made overclocking much easier than in years past.
 
i overclock because I can.....


that and it gives more frames, and better speed for Video work/folding
 
I'm with Dan_D on this, I do it because I can and if I don't I feel like I'm wasting the potential of my hardware.
 
better framerates in games

quicker video compression because fraps does a SHIT JOB recording. Seriously, i turn audio off in the recording, and when i go to compress it, the encoder still says that 70% of the file size is from audio. WTF FRAPS
 
I think the better question would be, "why aren't you overclocking?" Because the benefits definitely outweigh the negatives.

One of the reasons I do it is because if I didn't, I would feel like a retard. It's like having a Ferrari and only doing the speed limit and never going beyond 2000 rpms the entire time you own the car. Probably not the best analogy, but you get the idea.
 
drcrappants said:
what uses do u have for it, and do you see a noticeable difference? i'm getting a 2500k i5, since it is cheap @ 180$ or so, but do not know if it would help me to overclock (fairly new so do not want to fry my parts). i'd be just above average setting new gaming, intense tabbed browsing, watching vids and the general sort. not much photo editing, no video editing. heard that vga card is the bottleneck anyways, so what good is going for 2.8ghz to 4.5ghz?
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Increased performance. Believe it or not a 4.0 ghz i7 920 really is 50% faster than a 2.66 ghz i7 920. I use the latter at work and wish constantly that I had my home pc.
 
Bragging rights! LOL

Honestly, overclocking has made me better understand my system and its limits. I've been able to pump out some decent 3DMark scores, in fact I'm just last night I was able to take the #3 ranking in the top 10 Systems in the EVGA forum with GTX460 SLI setup. Having these little competitions makes it so fun!
 
Hobby of mine for the past 10 years. Free performance is fun. I mod anything I come across. Every vehicle I've owned has been modified, every computer is modified, every guitar is modified....stock is boring.
 
MrFace said:
Hobby of mine for the past 10 years. Free performance is fun. I mod anything I come across. Every vehicle I've owned has been modified, every computer is modified, every guitar is modified....stock is boring.
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well said, as I am the same way...'cept i play drums.
 
I can explain why people overclock in another simple way.
There are 2 main reasons.

People either overclock to get the performance of a more expensive product for a cheaper price

Or, people overclock a high-end product to get performance beyond what the highest-end product can normally provide.

I'ts pretty much as simple as that.
 
Try to get as much performance out as possible.....even though I cant really tell the difference between 3.4 and 3.9
 
why not? free performance.

and you wont "fry" anything, unless you literally put way too much voltage into the chip, to which they shut down now anyways if they get too hot..
 
I have a 402whp STI but I dont use it all the time at that power level. Most of the time im cruising around obeying the law, following the speed limit, and having fun doing nothing with it.

If a person buys a K series and wants to run it at stock speed, whats the big deal. Overclocking is useful if you want to simply just squeeze more horsepower out of your chip.

It's like why buy a Corvette that is stock at 350hp or whatever but then ask people why in the hell do they put superchargers and turbos, built motors, cams, etc.... tune it to 600hp and then drive like a grandpa on the road.

That is because they can and they want to. When that K series gets old then you can sling some more power at it, bigger fan, and higher LLC and bam you have a new PC in a way.

This is in response to some people commenting on why get a K series if you dont use it.
 
Cerulean said:
and to install a couple of these
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Good lord!

If I replaced all my quiet Noctua and Noiseblocker fans with those things, my ambient case temps would probably drop 20* C. In fact, it may be at room temp with that much air movement.
 
drcrappants said:
thanks guys. personally, 'because i can' would not do anything for me. if it is noticable that things are faster (details plz) then that would make me happy. otherwise, why make the processor generate extra heat/waste electricity for an imperceptible improvement? thanks, people who also added info on what they see were faster.

i dont understand "avoid bottlenecking the gpu"; isnt the gpu usually the bottleneck (as in processor speed usually is not the limiting factor)?

one ything i do notice is slow is on my laptop from 07, 1.8ghz core2 duo cpu T7100, when i open folders that contain a lot of files, it is REALLY slow for them to all show up. is this ram related, frequency related, gpu related or what? (thumbnails i enable too, as well as preview plane)

also, do any of u buy unlocked ones just so that when they begin to be outdated, u can overclock to match up to the new processors? i think that's a good adv.
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Agree 100%.

I usually actually run my 1090T underclocked in Linux, my E5800 @ stock. The instabilities and issues with heat and or boards burning up simply isn't worth it for the gain I get out of it.
 
Robstar said:
Agree 100%.

I usually actually run my 1090T underclocked in Linux, my E5800 @ stock. The instabilities and issues with heat and or boards burning up simply isn't worth it for the gain I get out of it.
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If you are having issues with instability and/or boards burning up you are doing something seriously wrong.
 
cyclone3d said:
If you are having issues with instability and/or boards burning up you are doing something seriously wrong.
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+1

As mentioned many times, it's free mhz. You can easily gain 500-600 mhz on current intel CPU's without touching the voltage. Getting 1000 mhz OC does not take all that much work either and if you're having heat and stability problems at this point, you're definitely not doing it right. Back to Overclocking 101 for you buddy.
 
I like to overclock because it pushes the hardware to it's full potential. Overclocking takes knowledge of components, understanding of complex systems, and a desire to push the boundaries of the system. This is risk loving behavior and, like any other such risk loving behaviors, it's fun because you can!
 
I do it for fun. It's like a personal challenge, to see what results you can get.
 
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