Reasons to overclock

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nirdinur

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Sep 19, 2001
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Hi,

Never overclocked before and I'm thinking about it. I read about it here and I'm confused. Is overclocking a way to get better performance to play games? Is it a hobby to see how high can a pc go?

Also, should I consider a water cooling product or is it for advanced overclocker?

sorry for the lame questions. I am just trying to clear things up in all my confusion.

Thinking about experimenting with an old rig I got and when I'll feel confident I'll buy a new setup and OC it.
 
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xFeaRDom

xFeaRDom

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Overclocking shortened down:

It is both of those things, can be used as a competition, but it is more luck than skill, it is also to get an extra boost out of your CPU, for an extra 15%~ performance boost, why not?

You don't need a water cooler to overclock, you can use a high-end CPU cooler, such as the Noctua NH-D15 being the best, highly recommended one for a higher budget, and other such as the Hyper 212 Evo and the Cryorig H7 being the lower-end ones, but will allow a good 4.5GHz overclock on a 6600K easily.
 
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manddy123

manddy123

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Both.

Every CPU has a base clock and a boost clock ( which is it's default overclocking ).
But you can go even higher than that, getting some extra performance overall, sometimes even 20% more speed.

Some AMD CPUs and every intel ' K ' are overclockable, so if you got a proper motherboard to do so, you can add up a few more MHz to them, improving their processing capability.

You don't really need a liquid cooler, it sure does the job a bit better than Air coolers, but they serious issues with leaks that may end up ruining your system if installed improperly. A good air cooler, should hold up any temperature too.

But no everything are flowers, with the extra MHz and processing power comes extra heat, stuttering or instability(if done wrong), extra power draw and it's not always viable depending on the CPU, sometimes you're just unlucky and your CPU is made not with the perfect-to-overclock materials, that's what's called the Silicon Lotery.

TL;DR It means raising up the maximum clock speed of your CPU to gain extra performance.

BTW, everything that i said above can be applied to RAM,GPU or Monitors, it just a matter of context
 
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DanielSpaending

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If all you do is gaming, you would benefit the most from OC'ing your GPU. In some games you can get an xtra 5-10 fps, so it is actually something you can feel right away.

The best is it is really not that hard to do, especially compared to CPU overclocking, and all the software you need is free. You can find many tutorials both on tomshardware, but also youtube is a good source if you are more in to visual guides. JayzTwoCents have made a few good tutorials.

On the hardware side, you only need to have decent airflow in your case. Watercooling is also an option but is considered advanced, and not necessary unless you want to go to the extreme.

The only real downside is that you will need to crank up your fans on your graphics card, so you will get some more noise.
 
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nirdinur

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So overclocking the gpu should be the first step for a gamer? That's a surprise for me because I see mostly products for overclocking the cpu. Thanks for that. Just to nake sure I understand, I can overclock the gpu without upgrading my hardware?
 
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DanielSpaending

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In theory yes, you can overclock any graphics card right out of the box. However, your card will draw more power from the psu when overclocked, so if you are right on the limit powerwise, you might not be able to overclock too much.

Also since overclocking will generate more heat, you want to make sure your graphics card is getting enough fresh air. If the GPU runs too hot, it will automatically clock itself down, and you wont benefit from your overclocking. So if you want to make sure you can either purchase a new casefan, or ramp up the speed of your intake fan a little. But that depends on your setup, and might not be necesarry at all. But at least make sure you have 1 intake fan and 1 exhaust fan.

 
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madmatt30

madmatt30

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Not true that overclocking the GPU will instantly improve performance , it depends entirely on which is the weaker component in your system between the CPU/GPU.

Real overclocking advice & recommendations for a cooler etc will depend entirely on what CPU & board you're running.
If ita a locked Intel on a cheap h series board the chances are you'll only manage 300mhznor so by blck overclocking - not really worth the hassle IMO.
 
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DanielSpaending

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That is of course true, if your CPU is the bottleneck then OC'ing the GPU won't do much. But in the majority of games today, in the majority of systems, the GPU is the bottleneck. Games like Cities : Skylines, and to a lesser extent GTA V is CPU bound and will enjoy a greater benefit from CPU overclocks. But most newer FPS'es, racing games etc. are GPU bound, and overclocking the GPU will give you better performance ingame.

Plus, I find GPU overclocking a bit easier. So if you want to start overclocking, and overclocking is really fun, I suggest you start with the GPU :)
 
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