I'm going to overclock the snot out of my old system

[weberdarren97]

Hello all,
Now that I have the aftermarket cooler on the GTX 760 ti (OEM), I'm ready to overclock the system and put it to work with Folding@Home. In case you didn't know, Folding@Home is a project out of Stanford University in which you donate your unused computational power to simulate protein folding. If enough computers around the world do this at once, we might be able to piece together the puzzle of just how these proteins work. If we can do that, it'll make creating cures much simpler for medical experts.

So now that I'm ready to put the system to work, I first thought that I'd overclock the snot out of it and see if I can't get some noticeable performance improvements in games.

Here are the specs:
CPU: Intel Core i3 540
Motherboard: whatever comes in a Dell Inspiron 580
RAM: 2x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz (no labeled brand/model)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 760 ti (OEM)
Storage: 120GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO, 1TB WD Black 7200 RPM HDD
PSU: Seasonic M12ii 520W Bronze EVO Edition

Here's what I'll be using to test the graphics card: Dirt Rally built-in benchmark, Resident Evil 6 Benchmark Tool, Star Swarm Stress Test and Unigine Valley Benchmark.

Do note that the motherboard only has a three phase power delivery system and there's no MOSFET heatsink. Since I'd like this system to be functional after I'm done with this, I will not be overclocking the CPU.

I plan on pushing this system until it screams. I'm thinking +22% on the power limit, +350MHz on the core and +300MHz on the memory.

I will be creating a new post with the results of this overclocking. All opinions are welcome on this post and the upcoming one after completion of the project.

-Darren

 

[photonboy]

I doubt you'll notice much difference after overclocking.

Even if you gain 30% on the CPU which is probably going to be the bottleneck much of the time, your max FPS improvement is still going to be about 30%.

So if you got 20FPS in a game before, then you'll get at most 26FPS after.

I'm not saying don't overclock, but you should know what to expect. I would suggest for GAMING you look carefully at what's going to run well on that rig. LOTS of great games still, but choose carefully.

 

[weberdarren97]

Update: OC failed. No second thread will be created.

It doesn't matter what my overclock settings are or even if I use different resolution monitors, I just can't get past the No Load Limit. It seems that the card doesn't think that any load is enough to require boosting.