What's the point of overclocking?

[!WhoAmI!]

I've never fully understanded what is overclocking. My dad and I want to know this type of stuff because he has an i7 2600k that can be overclocked, but he wants to know before-hand what are the benefits of overclocking.

[Max_Settings]

Faster speed.

[WereCat]

Overclocking -> increasing the performance at the cost of heat and power consumption and most likely a noise as well (in load)

[Cazan]

by overclocking your cpu you can get increased perfomance and achieve greater speeds as others said , but you need to have a motherboard that can handle onverclocking too  

[Mira Yurizaki]

Overclocking offers a linear increase in speed. If you overclock the processor by 10%, the theoretical performance improves by 10%. The neat thing about the i7-2600K is it's fairly easy to get to 4.6-4.8 GHz turbo on air cooling. This is between 20-25%, which is usually considered significant.

 

Though, heat and power consumption also increase linearly.

[!WhoAmI!]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Overclocking offers a linear increase in speed. If you overclock the processor by 10%, the theoretical performance improves by 10%. The neat thing about the i7-2600K is it's fairly easy to get to 4.6-4.8 GHz turbo on air cooling. This is between 20-25%, which is usually considered significant.

 

Though, heat and power consumption also increase linearly.

 

1 minute ago, Cazan said:

by overclocking your cpu you can get increased perfomance and achieve greater speeds as others said , but you need to have a motherboard that can handle onverclocking too  

 

12 minutes ago, WereCat said:

Overclocking -> increasing the performance at the cost of heat and power consumption and most likely a noise as well (in load)

Thanks for the responses guys, this made me understand it more!

[Max_Settings]

1 minute ago, !WhoAmI! said:

 

 

Thanks for the responses guys, this made me understand it more!

Cool, be sure you know what you are doing before you do any of it though.

[Eduard the weeb]

free performance so you get some more FPS.

[!WhoAmI!]

 

4 hours ago, Max_Settings said:

Cool, be sure you know what you are doing before you do any of it though.

Yeah, I just realised you can't overclock on factory set motherboards like gateway because its locked basically. But hey this type of information is good.

[keskparane]

Overclocking is the process of voiding your warranty and decreasing system stability in exchange for an occasional slight increase in response. 

[YedZed]

7 minutes ago, Eduard the weeb said:

free performance so you get some more FPS.

not just fps, speed in general

[Eduard the weeb]

1 minute ago, YedZed said:

not just fps, speed in general

yeah

[WereCat]

15 minutes ago, keskparane said:

Overclocking is the process of voiding your warranty and decreasing system stability in exchange for an occasional slight increase in response. 

That is not overclocking, that is messing with stuff without proper testing.

[SeanAngelo]

36 minutes ago, !WhoAmI! said:

I've never fully understanded what is overclocking. My dad and I want to know this type of stuff because he has an i7 2600k that can be overclocked, but he wants to know before-hand what are the benefits of overclocking.

MOAR POWAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[keskparane]

2 minutes ago, WereCat said:

That is not overclocking, that is messing with stuff without proper testing.

So it doesn't void your warranty and the CPU gets a higher tdp?

[WereCat]

Just now, keskparane said:

So it doesn't void your warranty and the CPU gets a higher tdp?

It does void the warranty but how will they find out you were OCing if you won't tell them?

[bimmerman]

The i7-2600K can overclock very high relative to its stock frequencies, but at the cost of added power and dissipation of that power (in heat). Your cooling and power supply, in other words, may not be up to the challenge....assuming your motherboard were capable of it.

 

Neither of those issues is hard to solve though. A good air or non-custom water CPU cooler is <$100 and good power supplies can be found in that range.

 

Is it worth it? Depends on how soon you want or feel a need to upgrade. If the computer as-is, without overclocking, is doing everything you need it to do, then no, I wouldn't bother.

[keskparane]

18 minutes ago, WereCat said:

It does void the warranty but how will they find out you were OCing if you won't tell them?

So are you saying that overclocking may also involve fraud?

[WereCat]

26 minutes ago, keskparane said:

So are you saying that overclocking may also involve fraud?

no

[SupaKomputa]

58 minutes ago, keskparane said:

So are you saying that overclocking may also involve fraud?

Its not fraud, nothing illegal, you buy it and you do what ever you want.

But, warranty doesn't cover anything other that the factory speed.
If you OC and try to get a replacement, they won't give you IF they can prove it was OC'd.

As long as no physical damage, no one can make any judgement.

But then again dead CPU is super rare.

[SupaKomputa]

2 hours ago, !WhoAmI! said:

I've never fully understanded what is overclocking. My dad and I want to know this type of stuff because he has an i7 2600k that can be overclocked, but he wants to know before-hand what are the benefits of overclocking.

Because factory clock is just artificial limitation made by the chip maker.

Inside just the same. A lower / cheaper clocked can potentially have the same clock speed or faster as the most expensive one.

A $300 i7 can be as fast as $1000 one with a bit of tweaking.

Well thats the reason of OCing in the early days.

Now people OC to get the highest mhz possible, and its easier now, almost all motherboard brand supported this practice.

[keskparane]

I don't want this to get serious. I was just having fun. Although I believe it to be factual.

5 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Its not fraud, nothing illegal, you buy it and you do what ever you want.

But, warranty doesn't cover anything other that the factory speed.
If you OC and try to get a replacement, they won't give you IF they can prove it was OC'd.

As long as no physical damage, no one can make any judgement.

But then again dead CPU is super rare.

My understanding is that it is fraud to deliberately mislead. Not that fraud is legal if you don't get caught. And I only raised it in relation to overclocking because of

1 hour ago, WereCat said:

It does void the warranty but how will they find out you were OCing if you won't tell them?

To me claiming a warranty on a product where you would decline to represent the truth is a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth.

[WereCat]

19 minutes ago, keskparane said:

 

To me claiming a warranty on a product where you would decline to represent the truth is a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth.

 

Tell that to the motherboard manufactures that OC your CPU automatically out of the box.

[SupaKomputa]

39 minutes ago, keskparane said:

I don't want this to get serious. I was just having fun. Although I believe it to be factual.

My understanding is that it is fraud to deliberately mislead. Not that fraud is legal if you don't get caught. And I only raised it in relation to overclocking because of

To me claiming a warranty on a product where you would decline to represent the truth is a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth.

Okay...

 

19 minutes ago, WereCat said:

Tell that to the motherboard manufactures that OC your CPU automatically out of the box.

Yes all the motherboard maker already give you this warning in the manuals. So the choice is yours to make.