Should I overclock?

[khothmod]

Simply put, I have the choice between an i7-6700 with a cheaper cooler, and an i7-6700K with a more expensive one. 

 

I'm really wondering how big of a deal it would be to abstain from overclocking... It would still last me several years, and have a nice amount of speed, right? I'm a gamer, but I'm also somewhat interested in getting into content creation or programming. I've got a Z170 board, but I only bought it because it's a nice product on an even nicer sale. 

 

If I go for the unlocked CPU, I'm going to end up spending over $100 more than if I buy a locked CPU. I'm thinking of something like this:

 

i7-6700K

Noctua NH-D15

 

or

 

i7-6700

Cryorig H7/Hyper 212 EVO (probably doesn't matter)

 

Thoughts? TIA

[Electronics Wizardy]

You probably not going to noitice if you don't oc. Your probably not going to get more than a 4.5 oc and  thats only a 20% oc. Your fine if you don't. If you aren't doing content creation professionally you don't need the extra cpu. Programming wise you don't really need much cpu. Most of what you do is text editing and when you do compile, even large programs will compile in less than a minute.

[incarnate]

Overclocking is mainly useful at end of life, but even then, it's not going to stave off an upgrade for long. Imo, overclocking is done for overclocking's sake.

 

It's rare to see a case where something goes from unplayable to playable through a cpu oc. For gaming you see bigger returns on gpu overclocking.

 

As for content creation, I'm not too familiar, however that said, I can't see ocing having that major of an impact, ESPECIALLY if you use a program that uses gpu accelerated rendering, And if you're not, more cores will net far more noticeable returns.

 

In the end, you're fine with getting the non k

[Chezpuf]

Overclocking can make a big difference in programs that render using the CPU, like Photoshop and Premiere Pro. I noticed a big different in my 5820k form the stock 3.3ghz to OC 4.5ghz.

[DrMikeNZ]

I ran my 3930K overclocked with a 100% 24/7 CPU load for over 4 years. Running overclocked is significantly less power efficient, and the temperatures degraded the thermal interface materials on the CPU and motherboard requiring quite a bit of routine maintenance over the years. There was no noticeable difference in games overclocked, as my GPU was the main bottleneck.

 

If I were in your situation I would just go with the i7 6700.

If your workload changes down the road and you get into heavy content creation where you become CPU backlogged, then next generation you might be better looking up to the enthusiast platform for more cores.