When to overclock?

[ms5555]

I'm planing to get an i5-760 soon and am not sure about overclocking. For gaming I play at 1650x1080, and will be using at least a gtx 460 or better card (might get a hd 5850 or wait for 6000 series). Initially I don't really see any need to overclock as stock speeds should be plenty fast enough. But what about in the future? Is there any downside to waiting to overclock like a year or two down the road as newer games would benefit from it? I'm wondering if it's better to set my overclock up now or if waiting a while will reduce wear on the cpu and let it last longer, or if it makes no difference.

 

[wolfram23]

For wear, the difference will be pretty minimal depending on the OC you do. If you run it hot with lots of voltage for a high OC 24/7, then you'll probably wear it out much sooner. But if you take that 760 up to at least 160 base clock (which you need to do if you buy 1600mhz RAM anyway) then it won't affect it much at all.

I currently run an i5 750 at 177 base clock (you can see in my sig). It's very fast and temps are good so I'm not worried about runing it all the time. Plus I have all the power saving features enabled. I'm also running a pair of 5850s. You really shouldn't see a gaming bottleneck even at 160 base clock (3.36ghz up to 3.84ghz turbo) but it does help a little with load times and if you do any video encoding, or file compression, high clocks make a big difference.

 

[jsc]

Do it now, or do it later. It makes no difference.

If you stay within the recommended voltage and temperature limits, short of a random failure, your PC will be obsolete long before your CPU fails.

 

[ms5555]

Thanks, wasn't really considering the ram. It runs at 1333 on default settings correct? So I just need to bring the base clock up to 160 and the multiplier is set to run at 1600 ram? That's like 3.2ghz, should be plenty fast for now.

 

[wolfram23]

^The i5 760, iirc, is 140 base clock (140x20=2.8ghz) but yes, basically just raise the BCLK and you're good to go. It's not a big step you could even keep voltages on auto, although it might be a good time to practice and see if you can get them lower.

 

[Scotteq]

When is the best time to Overclock??


Around here, that's approximately the same instant the OS has installed, has completed it's updates, and boots properly.