Will overclocking my GPU put my other components at risk?

Xenharmonic

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Jul 19, 2012
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Hello :).
I recently just bought a nice Asrock extreme 4 motherboard and i5 3570K (both are awesome!)
I have a Gigabyte GTX 560 factory overclocked to 830Mhz—and I think I can get a bit more performance out of my rig with a little GPU overclocking.

The only thing is, I don't want to put my shiny new motherboard, CPU and RAM at risk.
So my first question is: will a bit of mild GPU overclocking (no voltage increase, I have an antec 300 case, very cool and roomy) put my other components at risk?

If not, what's a good overcloking program to use? Should I use Gigabyte's one?

Should I change only the core clock frequency and leave the other parameters alone? When i'm not playing a game with very high quality graphics, should I turn it back down to defualt? Is changing the core (or other) clock rates frequently bad for the card?

Thanks so much for your replies!
 
Overclocking your graphics card will only put your graphics card at risk, there should be no downstream ramifications (unless some of your data gets in fights or something...) BUT
Check that your PSU can handle the crossloading which may have influence on the other components. If you have a very high quality PSU it won't be an issue. You can check the reviews for your PSU from this link: http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page541.htm
You shouldn't have to change your clocks once set and stable
 
It really depends on were it's performance flaws were found. Often, it's when the PSU is loaded over 80% of it's rated wattage which you probably will never get to. Here's where you can get into trouble - I haven't read the review so I don't know about this - crossloading regulation. If the review mentions poor crossloading regulation - that'll be your big concern.
I'm not going to say you shouldn't overclock, I will tell you to be aware of issues and mostly, if you do decide to overclock your GPU, keep in mind that any issues related to voltage (tearing, pixilating, or other graphic anomolies - and perhaps other non-graphics related issues also) may be from the PSU and not indicative of a poorly performing graphics card.
 

Xenharmonic

Honorable
Jul 19, 2012
28
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10,530
Thanks for the information man.
I might wait a 6 mnts/ a year and get a new, good quality PSU and maybe go SLI with another GTX 560.
For now it's probobly not worth the risk, given how bad a review my PSU got on hardware secrets hehe.