Dissapointing Overclocking - Why even be an enthusiast anymore?

[WallacEngineering]

So Im sure you guys have all seen the discussions featuring Jay from JaysTwoCents, Steve from GamersNexus, and Paul from PaulsHardware.

 

Wether you support AMD or Intel, overclocking is coming to an end. Intel's Core I-9000 series of CPUs offer slight overclocking ability and AMDs new Ryzen 3000 series offers almost no overclocking ability at all.

 

This is very troubling, because while yes, it makes sense to provide your customers with full or next-to-full possible performance right out of the box rather than hiding performance behind a barrier for enthusiasts to discover, well; this is what defines the entire reason to be a PC enthusiast to begin with.

 

I mean why would you invest time and effort into learning how to tweak settings in BIOS just to loose single-thread performance (Ryzen 3000). Why would you buy a massive 200+ watt capable air cooler or water cooler if ur never going to really exceed the stock TDP?

 

This just really gets under my skin. Custom loop water cooling will cost the average user at least $300. Thats a massive expense just to look cool, and before now, we have actually had a reason to use them. But 2019 and 2020 looks to be the time of no more CPU overclocking.

 

So now, we have to ask ourselves, what do we do? Do we still water-cool just for the asthetics, you could argue the silence but you still need a pump and fans and a good air cooler wont even need to ramp up its fans at stock TDPs. So whats the point? Why are we spending so much money on these machines if its all just a waste and any random person can go to Best Buy and achieve the same performance?

 

There is a reason why a real car enthusiast modifies his/her car to be faster. And I think that for the PC Enthusiast community to survive, we need CPU overclocking. Share your thoughts.

[Streetguru]

12 minutes ago, WallacEngineering said:

 

Just focus on memory overclocking instead.

[FellTheSky]

its gonna get a lot worse. For both cpus and gpus

[knightslugger]

There is still XOC for both AMD and Ryzen. Thought the afore mentioned youtubers made that abundantly clear.

[WallacEngineering]

7 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Just focus on memory overclocking instead.

This is a semi-valid point but not only does RAM have little to do with being an enthusiast considering its arguably the simplest part of any build - open the package and stick them in lol, but; its incredibly easy to high-ish RAM clocks. Just buy a decent 3000+MHz kit and enable XMP.

 

Obviously we do alot more than that and we can push it farther, and things like AMD's Infinity Fabric do give us some additional room for tuning, but its a tiny difference at best.

 

But alot more revolves around CPU anyways. A nice case with high airflow, a sexy big air cooler or custom loop, a powerful motherboard with strong VRMs. Whats the point in any of these things anymore?

[WallacEngineering]

4 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

There is still XOC for both AMD and Ryzen. Thought the afore mentioned youtubers made that abundantly clear.

So Im talking about the majority of us enthusiasts, not the 1%. LN2 will ALWAYS be capable of extracting more performance, we all know this.

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, WallacEngineering said:

 

At least when it comes to Ryzen it can be a lot more involved.
 

 

[knightslugger]

well what youre talking about used to be xoc back in the day. the hobby moved forward without you, apparently.

[WallacEngineering]

1 minute ago, Streetguru said:

At least when it comes to Ryzen it can be a lot more involved

Agreed, I do enjoy Ryzen more for this reason.

[WallacEngineering]

3 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

well what youre talking about used to be xoc back in the day. the hobby moved forward without you, apparently.

Ok I already knew this too, what exactly does that have to do with anything? We are talking about the present and future of the PC Enthusiast Community as a whole. Not 1% special edge cases or 15-20 years ago.

[Damascus]

31 minutes ago, WallacEngineering said:

But alot more revolves around CPU anyways. A nice case with high airflow, a sexy big air cooler or custom loop, a powerful motherboard with strong VRMs. Whats the point in any of these things anymore?

You do realize that those are now simply the minimum to get stock performance, right?  The 9900k isn't fairy magic that makes 200w of power easy to run, it just makes that balls to the walls scenario dead easy to achieve

[WallacEngineering]

17 minutes ago, Damascus said:

You do realize that those are now simply the minimum to get stock performance, right?  The 9900k isn't fairy magic that makes 200w of power easy to run, it just makes that balls to the walls scenario dead easy to achieve

Well yes but all you need is a Hyper 212 and a decent mid-range board to do it.

 

I mean I suppose you could call it enthusiast level hardware thats required to do this but at the same time, its either not really true enthusiast hardware or the low end of the spectrum.

 

On top of this, as @FellTheSky mentioned above, its only going to get worse. Core 9000 may be capable of 200w now but the line up is old news at this point and Im sure they will get Core 10000 will give us more efficentcy, less TDP, and less overclocking ability just like Ryzen 3000 has especially because of 10nm.

[paulmohr]

Overclocking has been dead for the most part for a long time. You can still do it but its been quite a while since it yeilded results that were the effort or stress on your parts.

 

With the new Ryzens they pretty much pushed them to the limit stock so it isn't needed. I would venture Intel will follow suit. Same thing with video cards. You can get a little performance out of them. Gone are the days where you can overclock something to the point where you can get next tier performance out of it. Now its just hobby for the most part.

[Damascus]

2 minutes ago, WallacEngineering said:

Well yes but all you need is a Hyper 212 and a decent mid-range board to do it.

 

I mean I suppose you could call it enthusiast level hardware thats required to do this but at the same time, its either not really true enthusiast hardware or the low end of the spectrum.

 

On top of this, as @FellTheSky mentioned above, its only going to get worse. Core 9000 may be capable of 200w now but the line up is old news at this point and Im sure they will get Core 10000 will give us more efficentcy, less TDP, and less overclocking ability just like Ryzen 3000 has especially because of 10nm.

Please, show me someone with a 5.3ghz 9900k on a midrange board and 212 evo.  Or even the person running a stock 9900k on an evo, enjoying all of the ear blast and thermal throttling that 8 cores @5ghz will create

 

Not to mention, the true enthusiasts migrated to HEDT anyways.  The boards are all glorious, there's always an extra gtx or more to be squeezed out and you need good cooling

[Princess Luna]

That's great isn't it? have been saving on locked CPUs for a while now.

[Damascus]

8 minutes ago, WallacEngineering said:

On top of this, as @FellTheSky mentioned above, its only going to get worse. Core 9000 may be capable of 200w now but the line up is old news at this point and Im sure they will get Core 10000 will give us more efficentcy, less TDP, and less overclocking ability just like Ryzen 3000 has especially because of 10nm.

Press x to doubt

 

Intel needs more cores to compete with zen, so a 10c chip that is 10% more efficient per core will still draw a decent amount more than a 9900k.  Let alone a 12, 14 or 16 core chip 

[Mister Woof]

As an overclocker

 

I'm fine with them getting better performance out of the gate without having to fiddle with shit

[WallacEngineering]

30 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Please, show me someone with a 5.3ghz 9900k on a midrange board and 212 evo.  Or even the person running a stock 9900k on an evo, enjoying all of the ear blast and thermal throttling that 8 cores @5ghz will create

 

Not to mention, the true enthusiasts migrated to HEDT anyways.  The boards are all glorious, there's always an extra gtx or more to be squeezed out and you need good cooling

You were talking about stock, which yes it can do, 5.3? Of course not. Then again, most people hit a wall at 5.1, and 5.2 stable is fairly rare. Im sure you are aware that 5.3 only really happens with good bins on water cooling.

 

Im not sure about you, but Ive always believed that you don't need a massive budget to be a "real/true enthusiast". Im sure as hell never going to spend the kind of money required for an HEDT system. R9 3900X is already massive overkill in terms of thread count for ~90% of regular users and enthusiasts alike, so Ill take one of those

[WallacEngineering]

22 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Press x to doubt

 

Intel needs more cores to compete with zen, so a 10c chip that is 10% more efficient per core will still draw a decent amount more than a 9900k.  Let alone a 12, 14 or 16 core chip 

You never know, Intel is already lowering base core clocks on mobile 10000 chips in favor of IPC and efficentcy.

 

 

This may just translate to lower clock/TDP desktop chips as well.

[Damascus]

12 minutes ago, WallacEngineering said:

You were talking about stock, which yes it can do, 5.3? Of course not. Then again, most people hit a wall at 5.1, and 5.2 stable is fairly rare. Im sure you are aware that 5.3 only really happens with good bins on water cooling.

 

Im not sure about you, but Ive always believed that you don't need a massive budget to be a "real/true enthusiast". Im sure as hell never going to spend the kind of money required for an HEDT system.

9900k stock is 4.8ghz all core, a feat the 212 evo cannot achieve.  The minimum for stock performance on a 9900k (a full, unthrottled 4.8ghz) is a good cooler and an, at minimum, lower high end motherboard.   Not to mention, most enthusiasts will focus on an aspect of the computer - raw performance, maximum silence/power ratio, ultra small (sff is my jam) or blinged out aesthetic etc. etc. 

 

The performance guy will still get the performance, or move to HEDT

The silence fans get big loops not for an extra few 100mhz, but for the sweet sexy noiselessness

The sff guys are going to downclock anyways

Aesthetics peeps are in heaven right now, and never really cared to begin with

 

 

Now, you say you won't spend HEDT money.  But what is HEDT money? A 9900k + z390 board cost the same as an equivalent intel HEDT setup, so if the top of mainstream is an option, so is HEDT. 

2 minutes ago, WallacEngineering said:

You never know, Intel is already lowering base core clocks on mobile 10000 chips in favor of IPC and efficentcy.

 

 

This may just translate to lower clock/TDP desktop chips as well.

This would fix your worries, if the ne t flagship was a 12c @4.4ghz you could OC it to 5+ and have some great "bonus perf" 

 

But they won't, because then AMD gets to be the one with the fastest clockspeed and they lose a massive PR boost from being the fastest out of the box chips

[WallacEngineering]

3 minutes ago, Damascus said:

9900k stock is 4.8ghz all core, a feat the 212 evo cannot achieve.  The minimum for stock performance on a 9900k (a full, unthrottled 4.8ghz) is a good cooler and an, at minimum, lower high end motherboard.   Not to mention, most enthusiasts will focus on an aspect of the computer - raw performance, maximum silence/power ratio, ultra small (sff is my jam) or blinged out aesthetic etc. etc. 

 

The performance guy will still get the performance, or move to HEDT

The silence fans get big loops not for an extra few 100mhz, but for the sweet sexy noiselessness

The sff guys are going to downclock anyways

Aesthetics peeps are in heaven right now, and never really cared to begin with

 

 

Now, you say you won't spend HEDT money.  But what is HEDT money? A 9900k + z390 board cost the same as an equivalent intel HEDT setup, so if the top of mainstream is an option, so is HEDT. 

This would fix your worries, if the ne t flagship was a 12c @4.4ghz you could OC it to 5+ and have some great "bonus perf" 

 

But they won't, because then AMD gets to be the one with the fastest clockspeed and they lose a massive PR boost from being the fastest out of the box chips

Ive seen 9900Ks on both a Hyper 212 and a dark rock slim. Yea, under synthetic loads they would throttle but only slightly at stock. In real world use, they were never an issue (gaming-focused rigs). While not necessarily a big problem, I did suggest decent twin-tower upgrades, just in case a 100% sustained load was ever necessary, not sure if they ever did it, and of course the dark rock slim did perform a bit better.

 

Hahaha you are totally right, Intel could never afford to loose the speed crown lol