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At what point does everyone stop OCing CPU?

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bigriggg

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I was curious what stops everyone from over clocking as certain points. Do most of you OC to the highest point of stability? or just find a happy medium, or heat issues? I wonder because my q9550 does 4.0, but is unstable sometimes at that in gaming, so 3.8 and no problems all around.
 
Depends, I overclocked my i5 quite high but found it got quite toasty, so just leave it at stock and let the Intel built in OC kick in when needed. With speedstep enabled it sits at 0.8v in Windows, so a lot cooler and less leccy.
 
i usually stop when i cant get the OC to pass OCCT, then dial it back to the last point where it would hehe. temps are usually within reason at this point either way. i dont generally dial in excessive voltages, though im running right up on my limit right now for just about everything lol
 
I guess I'm of the "happy medium" group. I used to clock as high as possible, but more and more I've gone the route of "easy" overclocking with an eye towards low heat output so I can run really quiet systems. That, and I'm no longer a poor college student so these days I don't have to settle for making the most out of the cheapest parts. :awe:

Heck, if I suddenly won the lottery or something (not likely since I don't pay that particular "poor tax") I would totally buy the best of everything. My gaming rig would have a Core i7 975 instead of the $199 920 from Micro Center. Would I clock it any higher than where I have the 920? Maybe only a hair.
 
If I buy a cheap chip, chances are I'm going to get the most I can out of it.

Heat is always a concern, but with the way processors undervolt in windows these days they hardly see peak voltage. I don't even hit peak voltage while I'm gaming with an x3 720 at 3.73ghz. I max out at 34 to 36c, while prime 95 and the like put my CPU closer to 50c.

Video encoding puts me around the 40c mark at full load which is entirely tollerable. The one thing I noticed myself doing this time while overclocking, was making sure that I didn't switch the multiplyer high enough to disable downclocking features.

I have a 3.7ghz+ cpu that idles at less than 20c, that's impressive.
 
I like the easy OC. If I can't do it in a few minutes, and have it stable, cool and decent voltage, I stop.
 
i like to be within the top 10 on this forum. 😛

Well more like Top 5.
 
I personally shoot for 1ghz OC then stop if thats stable. I like to have a decent OC without worrying about heat, so I am not greedy about my OC's. Although 1ghz OC can still be a considerable amount.
 
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This "Happy medium" is stable. I overclock till my temps get to high. Right now lack of memory divider is holding me back. If I had some 1066 memory I'd probrobly be at 4ghz.
 
I OC until the chip can't take it anymore. But it must be 100% stable. That means running for literally months on end if need be without a reboot and without any crashes. That's why I had to lower the OC on this rig from 3.2 to 2.8, because it was crashing after a couple of weeks (actually, it was rebooting on it's own).
 
"Happy medium" for me I guess. 2.8GHz on my E6320 is enough for me (I actually stay at 2.33GHz with lower core voltage much more often than at 2.8GHz with higher voltages).

Any higher would require much higher voltage/power requirements, which means even more heat and then there's also longevity concerns. Yada yada yada... Basically, it's the whole diminishing returns thing.

Of course, I've tried experimenting with maximum clock speeds just to see how far I can get for fun.
 
roughly 500mHz below what it will do before I think the voltage is too high. I got my e7200 stable at 4.1 (barely) but the voltage was way too high for long term so I backed down 600mhz to 3.5 and it barely needs and extra voltage and stays plenty cool and totally long term stable
 
I stopped Ocing

wife cant tell the difference anymore (q9400 @ stock @ 3200 @ 3500)
guess im getting old
stock speed is good enough for me 😉
 
I usually leave the chip a little below the max (stable) OC I can achieve. This is usually less based on Mhz and more on voltage. If I need to make a substantial bump in voltage to achieve the last 100-200 mhz, then I usually dial it back a little and keep it lower.

For example, I was able to OC my 920 to 4.0-4.1Ghz, but it required a lot more voltage (1.35v+). I kept the voltage lower and have been running happily at 3.8Ghz for about a year now.
 
SpeedEng66 said:
I stopped Ocing

wife cant tell the difference anymore (q9400 @ stock @ 3200 @ 3500)
guess im getting old
stock speed is good enough for me 😉
Click to expand...

This.

I've got a Socket 939 Athlon X2 2.6GHz, and I haven't run into anything where I felt that the CPU was a bottleneck. On top of that, OC'ing makes it a lot more difficult to use processor power saving features like Cool 'n' Quiet.
 
Max clock at stock voltage. Actually, my E6300 is so good that i could do a 0.5 undervolt at 2.8GHz since the mobo cannot really go further up in FSB.
 
It was always stability for me over the ultimate OC. I can't tolerate any errors and I hate wondering if my OC is causing quiet and slow corrpution that I can't detect until it's too late.

Times have changed for me, though. I don't overclock anymore since I realized my machines are already fast enough at stock and I couldn't really notice the improvements. Now I'm into low power and heat with as little noise as possible. 🙂
 
It seems like the older I get, the less aggressive I get with overclocking. I also value temps, low noise, and power more also.

I'm with the group that tries to overclock as much as possible at stock voltages or less. I got my Q6600 to 3.0ghz stable undervolted. I got 3.2ghz stable but it required a huge jump in voltages (and heat and noise).

Ditto for my Q9550. 3.8ghz stable at stock voltages. 4.0ghz required a jump.

I always thought overclocking speed and voltages were relative in a linear fashion. I'm not seeing that with my past two chips. I can hit a certain point at stock voltages but after that point it's not a linear increase, it's a pretty drastic jump.
 
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