What are your views or experiences regarding overclocking your computer hardware?

[4Ryan6]

Many do not overclock their computer hardware at all, some do a little overclocking some do a lot of overclocking, if you don't overclock at all, please say so, if you do overclock to what extent are you comfortable doing it?

Have you had any past bad experiences with overclocking, causing component failure?

Of all my local friends and family, I am the only overclocker, as most of them do not even know what overclocking even is, to my wife overclocking is setting her clock ahead to gain time leeway going to work.

Most all of my overclocking friend relationships, have come through intervention and shared knowledge right here at Toms Hardware and Toms is not even a dedicated overclocking website.

So what are your views or experiences, good or bad, regarding computer overclocking?

 

[chunkymonster]

I remember using mobo jumpers before they integrated everything into the BIOS to OC an AMD K6-2. And, I remember using the pencil trick to OC an AMD K7 Thunderbird. Even a very modest 200 MHz increase made the entire system seem like going from a turtle to a cheetah. I remember justifying it to my friends and girlfiriend at the time by saying that I was getting more performance for my money, but they just looked at me like I was stupid and asked what games they could play on it.

I had a Pentium D 820 which I OC'd but burned out due to not having good enough cooling.

Man, those old AMD and Intel machines would run HOT AS HELL!

Stopped CPU OC'ing and did more GPU OC'ing for a while as I decided to switch to a dual opteron with dual cores set up for several years; that was before they were putting 4 cores on die and barely any programs were multi threaded but WinXP 64bit ran like a dream.

My current machine, with a 1st Gen i7-920 overclocks like a chipmunk on cocaine easily going form the factory 2.66 GHz to 4.2 GHz with the right cooling solution and tweaks. I can and have run it stable with no voltage increase 24/7 at 4GHz with no issues. Gonna be sad when I say goodbye to this machine, which thankfully won't be for a some while as the i7-920 is more than enough for what I do.

Overall, OC'ing has been fun and always made me feel like I was getting something extra for my money. Plus the personal satisfaction of getting that little bit more tahn the factory said it was rated to run.

 

[4Ryan6]

I remember using mobo jumpers before they integrated everything into the BIOS to OC an AMD K6-2. And, I remember using the pencil trick to OC an AMD K7 Thunderbird. Even a very modest 200 MHz increase made the entire system seem like going from a turtle to a cheetah. I remember justifying it to my friends and girlfiriend at the time by saying that I was getting more performance for my money, but they just looked at me like I was stupid and asked what games they could play on it.

I had a Pentium D 820 which I OC'd but burned out due to not having good enough cooling.

Man, those old AMD and Intel machines would run HOT AS HELL!

Stopped CPU OC'ing and did more GPU OC'ing for a while as I decided to switch to a dual opteron with dual cores set up for several years; that was before they were putting 4 cores on die and barely any programs were multi threaded but WinXP 64bit ran like a dream.

My current machine, with a 1st Gen i7-920 overclocks like a chipmunk on cocaine easily going form the factory 2.66 GHz to 4.2 GHz with the right cooling solution and tweaks. I can and have run it stable with no voltage increase 24/7 at 4GHz with no issues. Gonna be sad when I say goodbye to this machine, which thankfully won't be for a some while as the i7-920 is more than enough for what I do.

Overall, OC'ing has been fun and always made me feel like I was getting something extra for my money. Plus the personal satisfaction of getting that little bit more tahn the factory said it was rated to run.

Your experiences are like a trip down memory lane!

When we achieved a 200mhz OC back then, you couldn't tell us nothing, we had arrived!

The pencil trick on the Thunderbirds was the overclockers gold ring, we finally had increases much further than the 25mhz ~ 50mhz we worked so hard to get manipulating motherboard jumpers.

What we achieved back then is a joke today of what's possible, if you don't get a 1,000mhz increase today most are disappointed.

Most all of our overclocking besides being learn as you go, also at least for me had some learn the hard way in it as well.

Messed up some GPUs in my day, not my best claim to fame but that was part of the earlier learning process.

I've done a lot of testing overclock wise and through experimentation have an extremely serious cooling solution for CPUs which allows my present setup overclock of 5ghz to run cool enough, It's very innovative but definitely not an everyday cooling solution but very successful.

None of my local friends understand overclocking or even that it's possible,so I don't attempt to even explain why I overclock, what's the use, I'm sure they walk away thinking how crazy I am, and unless they actually use the machine themselves cannot begin to understand.

I have one friend that understands the speed and response of the machine, almost always have to wipe the drool from the KBD when he leaves. jking

I guess I mainly do it because it's a challenge.

 

[dogman_1234]

I havea very limited hardware set-up Apart form increasing the base clock frequency, there has been no other OC'ing ventures I have experienced.

 

[MU_Engineer]

The most I'd overclocked anything was pushing my old A64 X2 4200+ from 2.2 to 2.6 GHz. It was one of the LDBHE units which didn't overclock that well. I didn't notice a difference in performance but it certainly ran hotter so I returned it to stock. Everything since then has been server gear which is not overclockable.

 

[Tradesman1]

While this isn't a dedicated OCers forum, there are a great number of good OCers I've met from here in the 6 months I've been here, and know I had a number of discussions with them via PM on techniques/approaches/limits on various hardware, etc.....I for one feel like I've been pushing hardware for as long as I can remember...I myself tend to OC to what I feel the limits of the hardware permits and that will vary depending on individual components being used at the time as, for example not all CPUs of a given model or equal, nor are sticks of DRAM, GPUs or anything else, I don't go LN or the like.

Was wondering though.......this is posed as a question, was it intended as a discussion thread?

 

[Bloomgren]

Overclocking may affect system stability and shorten the life of the hardware, and even burned hardware (CPU not only affected!!!), So there is no particular reason it is best not super.

 

[4Ryan6]

Was wondering though.......this is posed as a question, was it intended as a discussion thread?

I meant it to be a discussion thread but when I originally posted it there were no question or discussion selection options available to choose, is that more forum software messing up, or did I miss something?

 

[Nefos]

Well, so far I am an OC virgin, but now I got a decent board and an FX 8320 and I will do some fine OCing.
I dont feel them necessary (for games it does not affect notable performance as far as I saw) but for learning how the CPU works will help my professional development for sure
MY problem is that I am always on a limited budget, so I cannot really afford the necessary parts and the losses that may occur, and now I will do some work as well, so I dont want to risk my pc as well :/

 

[riser]

Oc'ing is pretty pointless today.

I'm running 16 VMs on my system, using most of RAM, yet my proc barely hits 60% under load. Back when you had a Pentium 100/110 and you could bump that up to 125, sure that is a 25% increase when you were peaking out your proc. Today, not as likely to happen. When you were shaving minutes off hours, now you're shaving seconds off minutes.. eh. I doubt anyone is that efficient to really utilize that.

GPU OC'ing... the real world performance gains I've seen aren't worth the trouble... been a few years since I messed with it though. I would have to go back to stock settings in one game if I had any kind of OC'ing going on.

Kind of pointless today. I mean, they're building the chips to make it OC friendly?! How about I sell you a 4.0GHz chip, but I'll tell you its a 3GHz chip and let you think you're OC'ing it to 4.0GHz?

Now back when you had to add the copper jumpers and actually tick the switches, it was a bit different. You actually gained something and had the risk of frying your system.

Just not into it anymore. I even running the H100 water cooler on my system.. Even when I set the mobo to OC the system, its a couple hundred MHz gain. Nothing noticeable today.

 

[epicoverclock]

i am addicted to overclocking it's just pure fun. for me its not just about gaining performance. many times this resulted in damaged components. recently i was running intel core i5-760 on 1.7v on stock intel heatsink. As a consequence the motherboard gave up and i had fried pads on the cpu. Other time i was cooling a amd bulldozer fx-4100 wind a deodorant as an alternative to l2n. it leaked into the socket damaging cpu and gpu and motherboard. the thermal shut down did not work cpu went past 125c. now i have to use a pentium 4
i also fried a gt9800 by putting voltage to the max, it burned out instantly

 

[4Ryan6]

i am addicted to overclocking it's just pure fun. for me its not just about gaining performance. many times this resulted in damaged components. recently i was running intel core i5-760 on 1.7v on stock intel heatsink. As a consequence the motherboard gave up and i had fried pads on the cpu. Other time i was cooling a amd bulldozer fx-4100 wind a deodorant as an alternative to l2n. it leaked into the socket damaging cpu and gpu and motherboard. the thermal shut down did not work cpu went past 125c. now i have to use a pentium 4
i also fried a gt9800 by putting voltage to the max, it burned out instantly

So can we be safe in assuming you've learned what not to do?

 

[MU_Engineer]

i am addicted to overclocking it's just pure fun. for me its not just about gaining performance. many times this resulted in damaged components. recently i was running intel core i5-760 on 1.7v on stock intel heatsink. As a consequence the motherboard gave up and i had fried pads on the cpu. Other time i was cooling a amd bulldozer fx-4100 wind a deodorant as an alternative to l2n. it leaked into the socket damaging cpu and gpu and motherboard. the thermal shut down did not work cpu went past 125c. now i have to use a pentium 4
i also fried a gt9800 by putting voltage to the max, it burned out instantly

Did you use stick deodorant as a thermal grease or spray a constant stream of spray deodorant in an LN2 pot for its evaporative effects? Neither sound like a particularly good idea but I bet it didn't stink as bad in your room when the board fried

 

[epicoverclock]

i am addicted to overclocking it's just pure fun. for me its not just about gaining performance. many times this resulted in damaged components. recently i was running intel core i5-760 on 1.7v on stock intel heatsink. As a consequence the motherboard gave up and i had fried pads on the cpu. Other time i was cooling a amd bulldozer fx-4100 wind a deodorant as an alternative to l2n. it leaked into the socket damaging cpu and gpu and motherboard. the thermal shut down did not work cpu went past 125c. now i have to use a pentium 4
i also fried a gt9800 by putting voltage to the max, it burned out instantly

So can we be safe in assuming you've learned what not to do?

I tell myself every time when i build new pc not to overclock but i still do it. i guess that means im a nerd.

i am addicted to overclocking it's just pure fun. for me its not just about gaining performance. many times this resulted in damaged components. recently i was running intel core i5-760 on 1.7v on stock intel heatsink. As a consequence the motherboard gave up and i had fried pads on the cpu. Other time i was cooling a amd bulldozer fx-4100 wind a deodorant as an alternative to l2n. it leaked into the socket damaging cpu and gpu and motherboard. the thermal shut down did not work cpu went past 125c. now i have to use a pentium 4
i also fried a gt9800 by putting voltage to the max, it burned out instantly

Did you use stick deodorant as a thermal grease or spray a constant stream of spray deodorant in an LN2 pot for its evaporative effects? Neither sound like a particularly good idea but I bet it didn't stink as bad in your room when the board fried

i sprayed constant spray of deodorant on a cpu. i was putting over 200w through a 95w motherboard.

 

[MU_Engineer]

Most halfway decent current heatsinks will handle well in excess of 250 watts of thermal dissipation. Shoot, the AMD FX-9000 series has a TDP of 220 watts. You didn't have to make your basement smell like something a sweaty-palmed junior high school kid sprays too much of on himself before his mom drops him off for his first date with his braces-and-pimples girlfriend just to cool a 200 watt CPU.

 

[4Ryan6]

Using deodorant as a coolant?

I truly hope that is a joke, because that is totally overclocking clueless!

If it is not a joke, then overclocking should be the last thing you ever think of doing!

 

[4Ryan6]

Overclocking can yield great gains but you have to know what you're doing or suffer the consequences.

Overclocking produces added heat that has got to be dissipated or risk destroying your hardware, if you do not have adequate cooling you should not be overclocking in the first place, that is part of knowing what you're doing.

Irresponsibility relating to overclocking has sent many computer elements to the component part graveyard, but that's where you learn from your mistakes and do not repeat them, and learn how to overclock before doing it.

Personally I am way past any overclocking negativity, I've seen it gain too much not to pursue it, is it dangerous today, yes, but absolutely nothing like it used to be, with the flood of multiplier unlocked CPUs of today.

With all the information across the net readily available, to all of us, with guide after guide of how to properly do it, only those that overclock without knowledge are really the ones destroying their components.

Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to cram overclocking down anyone's throat, if you don't do it, then that's great and your choice, but if you do, at least learn what you're doing first!

There is no sense destroying hardware out of sheer ignorance!

 

[epicoverclock]

Using deodorant as a coolant?

I truly hope that is a joke, because that is totally overclocking clueless!

If it is not a joke, then overclocking should be the last thing you ever think of doing!

this actually happend and its not a joke. i think i know a bit about overclocking

 

[4Ryan6]

Using deodorant as a coolant?

I truly hope that is a joke, because that is totally overclocking clueless!

If it is not a joke, then overclocking should be the last thing you ever think of doing!

this actually happend and its not a joke. i think i know a bit about overclocking

Well what can I say, I cannot argue with an expert!

Best to you! Ryan

 

[epicoverclock]

Using deodorant as a coolant?

I truly hope that is a joke, because that is totally overclocking clueless!

If it is not a joke, then overclocking should be the last thing you ever think of doing!

this actually happend and its not a joke. i think i know a bit about overclocking

Well what can I say, I cannot argue with an expert!

Best to you! Ryan

what i meant is that i'm not a newbie but definitely not an expert

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Using deodorant as a coolant?

I truly hope that is a joke, because that is totally overclocking clueless!

If it is not a joke, then overclocking should be the last thing you ever think of doing!

this actually happend and its not a joke. i think i know a bit about overclocking

Well what can I say, I cannot argue with an expert!

Best to you! Ryan

Ryan, you do know what the definition of an expert is don't you?

Spoiler

An "Ex" is a has been.....
.
.
.
and a "xpert" (spurt) is a drip under pressure.....

 

[4Ryan6]