does overclocking really pay off

[Osprey]

I bought my i5 2500K with the express desire to OC it. Haven't done it yet tho'

[TonyD]

Originally Posted by Rattlehead

I can only imagine some people go too crazy with their voltages, not knowing the harm they're doing.
But personally I've also never had anything actually stop working as a result of overclocking, not permanently anyway.
(I did see some smoke coming from my old PC once, which was alarming, after a particularly stressful overclock. )

Nowadays I just leave everything at factory settings...

I did once, but pre-Thoroughbred days. My son had a Duron 1 GHz in an A7V mobo that I was trying to get to 1.2 GHz, but pushed the FSB too far for the LAN controller (yeah, I know, it shouldn’t have been plugged in at the time ). I had to settle on 1150 MHz using a modified multiplier (remember the pencil trick?) which was a nice improvement over stock.

In reality there’s not a lot to gain making your cpu run faster, particularly in relation to game performance. There are some circumstances where you will see a difference, but I feel that the risks outweigh the relatively small improvement achieved. These days with unlocked multipliers it’s a lot easier, but there’s still a possibility of over-doing it, and you will only find that out too late. And it’s not necessarily the cpu that will fail, more likely something on the mainboard (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...d,2436-15.html)

Running components faster and/or at higher voltages than specified will shorten their life, but by how much is anyone’s guess. A mate ran an over-clocked GeForce 7800 reliably for nearly a year before it suddenly died, but we never established why.

I suggest that unless you know what you are doing and understand the risks involved, don’t over-clock! It could otherwise be an expensive lesson.

[Honeymonster]

It really depends on what your overclocking and how it scales.

For example my Q6600 GOSLACR (A known good overclocking chip) has been running for well over 2 years with over a 40% overclock with zero issues, a very small voltage increase and sensible temps.

I successfully overclocked a GTX460 (another known good overclocker) to simply stunning speeds with a massive improvement in performance using basic software.

However my latest aquisition a 5870 scales very badly with an overclock. It needs loads of voltage, gets very hot and makes little or no improvement.

The best option is to search the overclocking community and find out what's hot and what's not.

So yes IMO overclocking is well worth the effort with the right hardware and lots of testing but it's not for everyone. You really need a basic grasp of what you're doing or at least some good instructions.

My success has always showed on my 3dmark scores and been very noticeable in game.

I've never melted or damaged anything but once you start modifying voltages have no doubt it's more than possible.