Explain overclocking please?

[ccdsg]

What's up. 

I have an ASRock B450 Pro4, 4x4 Patriot 4 Blackout DDR4, CV650 PSU, XFX RX 5700 XT, Ryzen 9 3900X, and a 1TB SSD. Am I supposed to overclock? What does that do for me? I know it obviously makes my PC run faster but at what cost? Do I need to put some money towards increased cooling? Is it something I always do, or that I control?

[GoodEnough]

Just now, ccdsg said:

I know it obviously makes my PC run faster but at what cost? Do I need to put some money towards increased cooling? Is it something I always do, or that I control?

overclocking a cpu is generally not worth it, even if you have a fancy cooler to go with it.

and overclocking ram can be a real headache depending on what ram you have 

 

when it comes to overclocking most of the time (at least in my opinion) its generally about the gpu, and trying to squeeze as much power from it as possible, some applications will run alright when you overclock while some wont, there is a fine line between a good core clock and stability.

 

there are those who take the time and make the most absolute perfect overclock for said part, while others are too lazy to overclock at all, think of overclocking as a hobby that someone does.
 

[Letgomyleghoe]

you should definetly at least use amd's auto overclock on your gpu, the 5700xt is one of the cards that gets a real boost out of oc'ing

 

the 3900x doesnt have much room for oc'ing and its probably better to just let it boost

 

as for your ram, what exact kit is it?

[Orange1]

26 minutes ago, ccdsg said:

What's up. 

I have an ASRock B450 Pro4, 4x4 Patriot 4 Blackout DDR4, CV650 PSU, XFX RX 5700 XT, Ryzen 9 3900X, and a 1TB SSD. Am I supposed to overclock? What does that do for me? I know it obviously makes my PC run faster but at what cost? Do I need to put some money towards increased cooling? Is it something I always do, or that I control?

Depends on what you are doing, its more a hobby interest then real time saver, unless your doing skillful projects that require shaving tons of time off a task and a task thats helpful to oc'ing.

[comander]

Once upon a time AMD and Intel both made CPUs. Instead of only selling one product they took the same chip design out of the same factories and validated them at different levels. Enterprising people discovered that the slowest parts could often run much faster, sometimes even faster than the fastest officially available. 

In 2005 I could take a 1.8GHz Opteron 165 and push it to almost 3GHz. In 2006 I could take a 2.13GHz Core 2 duo e6400 to 3.6+GHz. These are like 80% gains. 
In 2012 I could take a 3.4Ghz Core i7 and push it to 4.6Ghz pretty easily. This is a ~35% gain.

In 2017 I could take a 3GHz r7 1700 and push it to around 4GHz, also around a ~35% gain

In 2020 I can take my 3900x and... if I try overclocking it, some things will perform worse and the stuff that performs better isn't that much better. It'll also suck 2x the power and dump out 2x the heat. 


At this point I lowered the VID by 0.1V (so -0.1V VID). It gets me lower power consumption and a little bit better performance since power draw is one of the things that limits the built in boosting algorithm on the chip. This gets me MOST of the performance gains of overclocking with basically no downsides. Some chips will do better at -0.05VID.
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3494-amd-ryzen-3000-undervolting-offset-override

 

 

[GoodEnough]

Just now, comander said:

In 2017 I could take a 3GHz r7 1700 and push it to around 4GHz, also around a ~35% gain

closer to 400mhz all cores, not 1ghz, since that cpu doesnt run at that frequency when benchmarking and you know it.

[ShrimpBrime]

28 minutes ago, ccdsg said:

What's up. 

I have an ASRock B450 Pro4, 4x4 Patriot 4 Blackout DDR4, CV650 PSU, XFX RX 5700 XT, Ryzen 9 3900X, and a 1TB SSD. Am I supposed to overclock? What does that do for me? I know it obviously makes my PC run faster but at what cost? Do I need to put some money towards increased cooling? Is it something I always do, or that I control?

Overclocking started many years ago because the performance gains where a lot. Like big FPS jumps in games and work productivity. But keep on mind that computing was on a single core processor.

 

Today's processors are self overclocking. Boost, SenseMi, Performance enhancement.... ect ect ect. is all done automatically. Also with many many more transistors, there's a lot less gains with manually overclocking processors. The manufacturer has already done that for you.

 

And then there's competitive overclocking. Yes, you spend money on cooling, chilling sub zero what ever you want really to gain everything to achieve a higher benchmark score than the next guy. Enthusiast, sportsmen really like to compete basically like a drag race. LN2, Dry Ice, Cascade Unit's and TECs for extreme cooling. Cold = faster, same holds true for memory and video cards aside from overclocking processors. 

 

[comander]

Just now, GoodEnough said:

closer to 400mhz all cores, not 1ghz, since that cpu doesnt run at that frequency when benchmarking and you know it.

3000 is the spec for all core clocks (though top turbo speed is listed at 3.7GHz). It's possible it goes higher. I pretty much ran my part at 3.8GHz at a lowish voltage its entire life. I could get it to around 4GHz but I wanted to run it at lower voltage and thermals. 

[Orange1]

If time is money, and rendering shaves off big time off the task by oc'ing to the n'th degree and its worth it, then OC otherwise its a contest and a hobby.

[comander]

2 minutes ago, Orange1 said:

If time is money, and rendering shaves off big time off the task by oc'ing to the n'th degree and its worth it, then OC otherwise its a contest and a hobby.

If time is money, OP should probably not waste time OCing and validating the part and instead get something like a 5950x.

[GoodEnough]

Just now, comander said:

3000 is the spec for all core clocks (though top turbo speed is listed at 3.7GHz). It's possible it goes higher. I pretty much ran my part at 3.8GHz at a lowish voltage its entire life. I could get it to around 4GHz but I wanted to run it at lower voltage and thermals.

max boost is generally the maximum speed on a single core but thats pretty wack since processors can go 50mhz above the boost on 3 cores (if its a 6 core)

[Mark Kaine]

56 minutes ago, ccdsg said:

I supposed to overclock?

No. If you're happy with the performance you're getting there's no reason to OC at all. 

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

20 minutes ago, Orange1 said:

then OC otherwise its a contest and a hobby.

Eh, weird take. With my old 1060 6GB I *had* to OC to get to 60fps in most titles (at reasonable "not potato settings" at least) 

 

 

I would never OC "just for fun" it puts stress on all components, and it doesn't do any good for longevity, also consumes more power obviously. 

 

I get it it *is* a hobby, but it's by far not the only reason people do it. 

[NineEyeRon]

Go find a clock

 

Do a bit of work in time to the clock. Like writing the letter “a” over and over.

 

Now do it on every half second.

 

In overclocking you are telling your PC to do the same work but in less time. It won’t be the 50% increase you just made but rather 4-5%, the actual amount is very dependant on the system as a whole and may or may not be noticeable in your experience.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to CPUs, Motherboards and Memory

***

 

You are not supposed to OC anything. Thats just fancy thing people do sometimes to squeeze that little bit more out of what they have. It can at the same time give you couple of years more, and possibility to lose same amount.