Why do you overclock?

[absic]

Hi,

I was having a discussion with a couple of friends the other day and the question of overclocking came up and the reasons why it is done.

One of my friends said that he would never overclock and couldn't understand why people spend so much money on building a PC and then push it with stress tests and excessive voltages to the point of breaking, just to gain a bit of extra speed, especially as most high end computers are very fast anyway. He felt that system stability and reliability were paramount and that any overclocking would just shorten the life of his components.

My other friend said that overclocking and getting the system to run stable at higher speeds was a challenge and was like tuning a car or motorcycle to go faster. He also said that he felt as if he had really achieved something if he could gain a high overclock with stability and "It can give you an edge in gaming." He then went on to explain in some detail the processes and steps he had undertaken to push his CPU, RAM and GPU and all about the extra frame rates that he had gained from his system by tweaking. (He still loses a lot of games though so I'm not sure it has helped him at all)!

Me, well I'm fairly neutral about the whole thing and can see both sides. I have overclocked and experimented with various results, some good and some, well....... it's a good job I'm fairly patient. These days, however, I tend to go for the middle ground. I know what my system is capable of at both ends of the scale and have opted for no-overclock, as my default settings serve my needs adequately.

So, why do you overclock? Are you, like me, just curious as to what your system is capable of or are you overclocking for a particular reason?

My Current System Specs:
Chassis: NZXT Tempest Evo
Mobo: GA-790XTA-UD4 (BIOS F3)
CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE 125W
Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 Air cooler
RAM: Corsair Dominator 2 x CMD4GX3M2B1600C8 (8 Gig)
GPU: Sapphire Radeon ATI 4850x2 (1 Gig)
Monitors: 1 x LG L1715S & 2 x LG L194WT
Sound Card: M-Audio Delta 1010
HDD's: 2 X WD 640 Gig Caviar Black SATA3, 2 x Hitachi Deskstar 1TB, 1 x Seagate 1TB, 1 x Hitachi 500 Gig
DVD/CD: Liteon
Graphics Tablet: Wacom PTZ3
Keyboard: Microsoft Digital Media Pro
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (Retail)

Main Use of system: Audio Recording & Mixing and Graphics Design & Editing

[venganza]

Why does a man aspire to a Ferrari over a VW?

They both you from point A to point B

This little hobby of ours, encompasses all manner of people and a plethora of interests, and to be honest it is far cheaper than many others I could name.

Some people are content to browse the net and email, others enjoy flogging every last herz out of little bits of silicon...

Such is life

[Dark Mantis]

Whilst I agree that the main target is to end up with a machine that is stable and reliable, it is always nice to "get something for nothing" and that's where overclocking comes in. If I can overclock my i920 to 4Ghz then I am quids in. The same goes for framerates, if you can squeeze a bit more out of the graphics card without paying for the latest and greatest then you are happy. Everyone likes to have some extra speed so long as it doesn't impact on the reliability.

[oggmonster]

Because its addictive! Knowing you can get more performance out of something for no extra cost (well leccy bills maybe ) is so much fun I personally have only ever doen 8hours+ prime95 stable clocks so have often had to do a fair ammount of tweaking but its good when your hard work comes together. Its even better when you get a good overclock with safe volts as you have got alot more performance + hardware is not being put under too much strain