Am I overclocking?

[the gremlin]

|Hey guys, newbie here lol.

I've never overclocked before... Never had to with my 6800K. Although, when looking into my ASUS settings panel thingy, it shows my CPU running at 3.6 ghz, and one core is 3.8. My processor is only supposed to be at 3.4 - 3.6 to boot, so why is this the case? Did I click some auto optimize option when installing everything? Is overclocking really that easy?

 

 

[rtpb5642]

What motherboard? 

[the gremlin]

1 minute ago, rtpb5642 said:

What motherboard? 

Asus - X99-A II ATX LGA2011-3

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/b/pkcYcf

[the gremlin]

1 minute ago, CUDA_Cores said:

That is intel turbo boost technology. Turbo boost is where individual CPU cores "turbo" or increase in clockspeed beyond they base clock frequency. No you have not done any overclocking. 

 

Ahhh ok. I was thinking that the turbo boost only affected a single core up to 3.6. So everything would be at 3.4 except that core. Do I need to go into the bios with this Motherboard app I have?

 

Asus - X99-A II ATX LGA2011-3 btw

[the gremlin]

2 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

technically, you can OC through the asus software. But most of us here will recommend delving into your systems bios and overclocking there. Sometimes software overclock settings don't "stick" right and end up not being permanent. 

Ah ok! is there a downside to OCing when I don't need to? I can only imagine a few times I'd need to OC this, so I'm thinking I would boost the clock speed and then reduce it again when I'm done. Having it not permanent sounds like a plus to me right now.

[the gremlin]

Just now, CUDA_Cores said:

overclocking is only needed if you think you can actually benefit from the increased performance. If your PC is running fast enough, there is no need to do it. 

 

Also intel has this technology called speedstep. Speedstep has been around since the early 2000s and essentially what is does is downclock and undervolt your CPU when not in use to reduce power consumption. So even if you did overclock, soeedstep would kick in and reduce voltage and clockspeed if your CPU wasn't doing any hard work. 

So even tho my resource monitor says I'm running at 3.57 GHz at idle, is it actually downclocked? 

You're saying there's no downside to overclocking if I only need the increased performance 20% of the time because when I don't need it, it will be downclocked.