Whats the ideer of a high 24/7 overclock

martinohansen

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Mar 27, 2011
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Firstly I would like to know what the idea is by having a high 24/7 Overclock speed? When it goes up automatically when you need it?

And then I want to hear you guys, do you think this is to hot?:
UvAFV.jpg


Do not forget to enjoy the sun!



Martin
 
I'm not sure of your chips limits,
but I'd say 90'c on that core is pushing things hehe,
I wouldn't like to think you need a 4.8Ghz overclock all the time but hey, its your pc man,
as far as I would see it, a 24/7 O/c is one thats 'permanent' I.E. you never change it
for example,
someone may have a triplecore at 2.9Ghz standard, and thats fine for surfing movies etc, then when gaming, unlock the fourth core (if stable ofc) and ramp the speed up to 3.5Ghz whilst they pwn nubs and drop it back to standard when they're done.
or they may just leave it unlocked and clocked all the time, I.E. 24/7 Clocked
hope this helps some,
Moto
 
Hi Martin and welcome to Toms Hardware Guide Forums.

As for myself I just got sick of dancing the CPU shuffle, waiting for one of the camps to officially release a 4ghz CPU, and once you overclock to the 4ghz level and experience the amazing speed, regarding boot up, desktop performance, application response, it will totally spoil you.

Then going above 4ghz is totally brain boggling and you just find yourself not satisfied at the lower speeds anymore, but that's my own personal preference, it's like getting your favorite candy and after 2 licks having it taken away.

Nice overclock you're sporting by the way!

I know that candy is not a good example but those of us that do run the higher clocks have simply spoiled ourselves and don't want to run the slower speeds anymore, mainly because we pay extra for that privilege.

You cannot do it with just any stock cooling solution, the key to running higher clocks 24/7 is you have to keep it cool and stable, and that's an added expense, overclock-able hardware is also an added expense, and of course the added electrical utility expense.

That all has to be an acceptable factor to the 24/7 constant core clocking, now regarding your 2nd question, that's too hot as far as I am concerned, I like it as cool as I can keep it, but that's just my opinion!

Ryan
 

tomsresults

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Feb 7, 2011
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>what the idea is by having a high 24/7 Overclock speed? When it goes up automatically when you need it?

I want to avoid wearing out my CPU or other parts in the case over the course of years. So I'm going to depend on the turbo feature and not be at a high frequency always.

>And then I want to hear you guys, do you think this is to hot?:

I think the i7's will start throttling at 90C. So I think 80C+ is too hot. Remember, 100C is enough to boil water! I'm going to shoot for 60-65C.

>and of course the added electrical utility expense.

Not always. CPU's convert 100% of the energy they consume into heat. (Unless your CPU is shooting out rays of light or producing noises.) I welcome the extra heat as it means I can turn down my wasteful electric furnace, which converts energy not into pure heat but rather into heat plus some unwanted noise.
 
Very few people have need for overclocking ..... but many of us just find it fun to push things to the limits. Very few apps are CPU bound so other than benchmarks, "feeling" the difference is for the most part wishful thinking. I'll use the SSD argument for example .... I can boot of the SSD (Vertex 3) or HD (Seagate Barracuda XT) unless I got a stopwatch running, I have a hard time "noticing which one I am booting off cause if ya not paying attention, most people won't notice the difference between 15.6 seconds off the SSD and 21.2 seconds off the HD. I haven't timed it but I'm sure the boot time difference in the 3.8 GHz boot profile on the 2600k (3.4 + 0.4 stock turbo) and the 4.8 Ghz boot profile is less than the SD / HD difference.

There's a great article here on SB overclocking.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=730&Itemid=38&limit=1&limitstart=9

My idea for a 24/7/365 boot is one where the heat and inefficiency really starts to climb. I am in agreement with the article above in that a 4.4 Ghz OC profile is ideal for a 24/7/365 OC. As you can see in the test results in that article, above that point the temps on the 2600k start to climb and the returns are diminishing. At that point, I'm seeing temps of 56 - 60 which is well within my comfort zone for 24/7/365 usage. Of course, there are times where I will want something more and that's where saving separate OC profiles using the profile feature in the BIOS comes in handy.

I have a 4.6 Ghz profile that tops out at 68C on the worst core and a 4.8 Ghz profile that tops out at 79 w/ HT enabled. When I get to sit down again and play w/ that 4.8 profile, I'm sure I can drop that down to at least 72C simply by turning off HT at that setting. As a "gaming profile", this makes sense as games won't take advantage of HT and 8 cores anyway. Now while I find your 90 degree core temp quite scary (your temps average 12C above mine at 4.8), it just has to be said that we, well most of us anyway, don't buy computers to run Prime95. While P95 is a good testing tool, what really matter sis what temps your machine will actually see. And if your machine never runs P95 again, then it really don't matter a hill of beans what temps it saw under P95.

The thinking is "if it can do P95 it can do anything" is not unsound. But if you are responsible and set temp alarms at safe levels or otherwise check your performance / temps when running anything new and possibly demanding, there's no harm in running light loads at OC's which would be of borderline concern under full load P95 conditions.

The other things I'd recommend for "everyday" is:

1. Don't set a fixed multiplier, set a max multiplier
2. Don't set a fixed voltage, use the offset method.

 


If 100% was converted into heat, then the processor would have no energy left over to do any work. It's easier perhaps to look at PSU's 1st. If you have a PSU which is 85% efficient, then 85% of the energy coming out of the outlet is used to produce power on the 3.3, 5 and 12 volt rails and 15% is converted into heat and motion (fans spinning). Same concept with the CPU....efficiency drops off precipitously when we overclock.

Stock 2600k (3.4 + 0.4 turbo = 3.8 Ghz) consumes 69 watts
At 4.0 Ghz OC (+5.26%), energy consumption increases 25% to 86 watts
At 4.4 Ghz OC (+15.79%), energy consumption increases 36% to 94 watts
At 4.8 Ghz OC (+26.32%), energy consumption increases 52% to 105 watts

Still, we're not talking about breaking the household budget, having the CPU run P95 at 4.8 Ghz 8 hours a day 7 days a week will cost the average US citizen:

105 x 8 x 7 x $0.10 per kw-hr x (1/100watts per kw) x 4.3 weeks per month = $2.53 per month

If ya get cold and don't wanna OC ya CPU for a heat source, could always turn on a 100 watt light bulb :)
 

tomsresults

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>If 100% was converted into heat, then the processor would have no energy left over to do any work

You are wrong. Suppose I run a 150W processor for a day, then it consumes 150*3600*24 = 13 MJ of energy (equal to the daily diet of an obese person). Then I shut off the power, turning my PC into an overall electrically neutral chunk of metal. Even if some electrons were moved over the course of the day, there is ZERO difference in their potential energy. Where did the vast amount of energy go? Does your PC have muffintops built up now? No, all of the energy was emitted as heat.