Overclocking

[potatoproduction]

What are the limits to over clocking other than cooling?

[Oshino Shinobu]

The chip itself (silicone lottery). Power delivery, the board, PSU and other components such as memory can affect it too. 

[Swndlr]

The chip itself (silicone lottery). Power delivery, the board, PSU and other components such as memory can affect it too. 

[Bogica]

The chip itself (silicone lottery). Power delivery, the board, PSU and other components such as memory can affect it too. 

^

Yup. That sums it up just about right. Couldn't have said it better.

[BoredErica]

Practically speaking, it's just voltage. Your mobo won't really affect max overclock. Too much voltage will hurt your chip.

 

And it's silicon, not silicone. They add silicone into fake boobs.

[Kodiack]

The silicon lottery is one of the most limiting factors.

 

I tend to get duds for CPUs, for example. My i7 920 didn't like to go above 3.5 GHz. My i7-4770K wouldn't hit 4.4 GHz with reasonable voltage. My i7-5820K hits 4.5 GHz, although it takes 1.3V to achieve that.

 

My 5820K is the best overclocker I've had, and it is by all accounts quite an average chip.

 

Fortunately, my graphics cards tend to treat me pretty well. My 7970 in particular was a champ! I just had to hop into CCC, push the core clock and memory clock sliders to max, and it was happy as could be without even touching the voltages. I'd have needed to flash some modified video BIOS to have overclocked that any further.

Cooling is definitely the most important, but every chip will ultimately respond to overclocking at least slightly differently. Unfortunately, you never really know how far your chip will go until you've started pushing it, hence the term "silicon lottery".

[Whorax]

Practically speaking, it's just voltage. Your mobo won't really affect max overclock. Too much voltage will hurt your chip.

 

And it's silicon, not silicone. They add silicone into fake boobs.

Well I guess there's a silicone lottery too!

[-rascal-]

Well I guess there's a silicone lottery too!

 

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