Overclocked.. and want to reformat

[SlowEJ8]

Hello guys, my CPU is currently overclocked and was wondering if it would be hazardous to reformat without going back to stock settings?
I'm currently using a SSD as well, only.

Let me know, thanks.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

I have a very similar setup (used to have the same motherboard in fact) and have reinstalled from scratch and mirrored OS drives multiple times. As long as your OC is stable, there should be no problem.

Most of the time, your CPU won't be turboed up to 4.5GHz anyway, since modern Intel CPUs are OCed via Speed Step.

 

[MrSquished]

i've reinstalled windows while OC'd before on an oc that i knew was very stable. it did occur to me once to go back to stock clocks as well, just to avoid any errors behind the scenes.

probably to be 100% safe just go back to stock clocks or a much milder oc. not like anything really bad can happen except you have to start again after a freeze up - the main worry is just having a small nuisance to worry about down the road if maybe some bit of code doesn't write itself properly during the install?

 

[greenhawk]

I would remove the oc for the install, just to be on the safe side. (less time spent installing). While a stable oc should not be phased by this, I did know one friends oc that was stable in anything you could throw at it includging 24hour burn in and weekend long gaming / video encoding. For the life of it, it only failed on some part of the windows installed (extracting files IIRC). oddest thing I have come across. Even boosting voltage would not get windows to install at anything over stock.

 

[Vectronic]

Unless you have a really touchy/specific config that's somehow tied into the OS and specific drivers etc. You should be fine... but, if that's the case, you should be able to save your config, set to default, and reformat/reinstall, then restore your config too.

Usually the only time you have problems is if you have disabled stuff that might cause problems when installing drivers, an example being HDMI Audio disabled, will make Catalyst error during driver install "Device Not Found" etc (though it's not actually a problem in that case)... if you are installing an older OS, you might want to re-enable CSM/Compatibility Support Module if it's disabled.

 

[Idontcare]

Hello guys, my CPU is currently overclocked and was wondering if it would be hazardous to reformat without going back to stock settings?
I'm currently using a SSD as well, only.

Let me know, thanks.

The concern you have with installing an OS (or any application) while OC'ed is not that something will go so bad that you notice it right away (like obvious system hang, etc), but rather the concern is that everything will seem to go right and only later on in a month or two you start noticing things aren't exactly just right.

Silent data corruption

Personally I don't install OSes with an OC'ed processor. It doesn't save all that much time, OC'ed vs stock, but it puts you at risk of having a buggy borked system for months until you decide you've had enough and decide to do a full system install again.

 

[Danimal1209]

Just record your OC settings and re-apply them after reformatting.

 

[Idontcare]

Just record your OC settings and re-apply them after reformatting.

Its actually even easier than it sounds because his Asus mobo (P8P67-M PRO) has the "ASUS O.C. Profile" option under the tools section in the BIOS - this allows him to store 8 different bios parameter configurations which can then be reloaded at boot as he desires.

So it is very easy to store one profile as "stock everything" and another profile as "Tuned OC" and just toggle between the two profiles before and after he re-installs his OS.

The only downside to the Asus OC Profile feature is that it gets wiped when you update the BIOS, so you do need to store your OC settings in a hardcopy somewhere. Personally I do this by way of taking advantage of the option to export screen captures (have thumbdrive installed on USB port, press F12 for each screen shot you want) rather than the laborious method of writing everything down.