Overclocking 3rd Gen Intel - Windows or Linux?

[Cliffo]

Greetings from Australia,

Hugely inspired by LTT et al to return to a hobby of resurrecting middle-aged computer gear.  Currently rebuilding/upgrading the following components with a view to first overclocking experience:

 

Intel i7-3770K - Cooled by Thermaltake UX100, but am considering switching out a tower radiator type cooler from my Unraid/Plex Serve (inspired by watching your videos, thanks Emily).

ASUS P8Z77-V DELUXE - noting the need for an overclockable Z77 chipset.

2x8GB Corsair 2133Mhz - currently 4x8Gb generic (i.e. 32Gb) but 1600.

ASUS Tough Gaming GTX 1660 Super.

Thermaltake Toughpower GF A3 650W Gold fully modular

NZXT H440 White Case

 

CPU, Chip, RAM, Case have all been purchased cheaply second hand, or free, with CPU cooler and power supply being bought cheaply but new.

 

I've been very happy with this system running Linux Mint (also inspired by LLT, especially Emily again), but love watching both you guys and Jayz2Cents benchmarking stuff - not so easy on Linux.

 

So, I'm considering switching to Windows 11 in order to access all the mainstream overclocking, monitoring and benchmarking software.

 

Conflicted whether I should or not, given I've been very happy running Linux.

 

Thoughts on OS?  Benchmarks to sensibly shoot for?

[Fasauceome]

21 minutes ago, Cliffo said:

Thoughts on OS?  Benchmarks to sensibly shoot for?

 

The OS won't make nearly as much difference for the overclock as it will for daily usage. I'm not so big on OC monitoring software past the basics. Personally I've been trying to get away from windows because of the excessive bloat and tracking of personal data. If you are comfortable doing a bit of extra work for the occasional game with poor compatibility, Linux is a good option for OS. 

As for benchmarks, the most reasonable benchmark is often the games and programs you use the most. If you play Destiny 2 all the time and your overclock gives you an improved experience in that specific game, the overclock was a success. Unless you are tying to compare scores online, then unigine superposition is a good choice.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Fasauceome

[Beerzerker]

19 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

The OS won't make nearly as much difference for the overclock as it will for daily usage. I'm not so big on OC monitoring software past the basics. Personally I've been trying to get away from windows because of the excessive bloat and tracking of personal data. If you are comfortable doing a bit of extra work for the occasional game with poor compatibility, Linux is a good option for OS. 

As for benchmarks, the most reasonable benchmark is often the games and programs you use the most. If you play Destiny 2 all the time and your overclock gives you an improved experience in that specific game, the overclock was a success. Unless you are tying to compare scores online, then unigine superposition is a good choice.

Correct in that the OS itself doesn't make alot of difference BUT at the same time most benchmarks are made to be ran in Windows.
For example, CPU-Z is mainly for use in Windows, there is a version like it (Not CPU-Z itself) for Linux but takes more to make it work.

Benckmarks like things like 3D Mark benchmarks are Windows based, Super PI can be ran in either but most commonly in Windows and most, if not all tweaking utilities are also Windows based too.
For your machine anything from XP all the way up to Win 11 can be used, depending on the bench you want to run and you'll get different results from different OS versions with the same bench.

If simply wanting to get more from it, either OS type will do and knowing how to tweak the BIOS is important no matter how you go about it.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Do also consider that its a lot riskier messing with older hardware as the components will have aged.  You could fry an older motherboard if its VRM capacitors are reaching their operational lifespan, whereas you might have gotten years out of them if you had not tried pushing them harder.

[Beerzerker]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Do also consider that its a lot riskier messing with older hardware as the components will have aged.  You could fry an older motherboard if its VRM capacitors are reaching their operational lifespan, whereas you might have gotten years out of them if you had not tried pushing them harder.

This is true, the board's condition in this case matters and you'd want to look it over.
Chances are it's fine for what you plan on doing since it's not "Too Old" (Around 10 years old) but at the same time, unless you really know it's history I'd at least check it, run it and see how it behaves and look for things like unusual temp readings in something like HWmonitor.

Good luck with it.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

This is true, the board's condition in this case matters and you'd want to look it over.
Chances are it's fine for what you plan on doing since it's not "Too Old" (Around 10 years old) but at the same time, unless you really know it's history I'd at least check it, run it and see how it behaves and look for things like unusual temp readings in something like HWmonitor.

Good luck with it.

On the contrary, 10 years is a long time for modern electronics especially for capacitors, depending on how much of that time its been in use and at what temperatures.  You can wear out capacitors in under a year if they are running at their upper temperature limit, particularly electrolytic which will dry out (why motherboards switched to solid state), but even ceramics can die.

 

You can't visually tell if a capacitor has failed unless its a electrolytic that has leaked/popped, but not all fail that way.  The issue is their capacitance changes over time so they no longer do their job properly.  If you are running a mid-range CPU this might not cause any obvious issues, but the higher-end the more likely you will run into problems and overclocking especially can push things to failure.

 

I would only do it if you don't care about potentially killing it.

[Beerzerker]

16 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

On the contrary, 10 years is a long time for modern electronics especially for capacitors, depending on how much of that time its been in use and at what temperatures.  You can wear out capacitors in under a year if they are running at their upper temperature limit, particularly electrolytic which will dry out (why motherboards switched to solid state), but even ceramics can die.

 

You can't visually tell if a capacitor has failed unless its a electrolytic that has leaked/popped, but not all fail that way.  The issue is their capacitance changes over time so they no longer do their job properly.  If you are running a mid-range CPU this might not cause any obvious issues, but the higher-end the more likely you will run into problems and overclocking especially can push things to failure.

 

I would only do it if you don't care about potentially killing it.

I can agree with most of this because it's true concerning caps and other related things BUT at the same time I'm not paranoid about it either.

If the OP gets one to play around (OC) with, that's fine and probrably will be OK too because from my own experience running things on anything from air to Ln2 itself, I've never had a purely age related failure (Yet) over countless purchases from fleabay - I even set a few records/WR's right after I got some of these items, no sweat to it.

It is good practice to check things and do some stuff like Re-TIM'ing the chipset(s), get the board cleaned up and doing some testing before running it up, maybe redoing the thermal padding under the MOSFET heatsinks..... Things that makes common sense to do anyway, which is what I tend to do with my stuff before running it.

As for the potential to "Kill It"...
That risk exists anytime you press the power button on any build, be it either new or used but more likely if you're leaning on it hard too.

The board make/model in question here is a decent one and not a big risk of just falling over for the helluvit, the OP would have to push it hard and probrably for awhile too before that happens.
If the OP has plans to push it hard then the risk is already understood for what it is and if not - They'll get the hint soon enough.

[Alex Atkin UK]

17 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

If the OP gets one to play around (OC) with, that's fine and probrably will be OK too because from my own experience running things on anything from air to Ln2 itself, I've never had a purely age related failure (Yet) over countless purchases from fleabay - I even set a few records/WR's right after I got some of these items, no sweat to it.

My point is its fine if you are "just playing", but when someone asks on here I will assume they are trying to get more life out of old hardware because they can't afford a new build right now.  In which case, risking killing what they have seems a bad idea.