To overclock or not to overclock that is the question

If you are computer enthusiast, you probably heard about overclocking. Basically, overclocking is making some part of your computer works faster than it set by manufacturer. Usually people overclock CPU, memory, video cards.

There two questions why they doing that and why it is possible?

Let’s start from why it is possible. Usually manufacturer test chip for its performance. There are higher quality chips and lower quality. Obviously higher quality chips can perform faster or fully. Less quality chips failed some checks but can perform at lower speeds or became less functional product. For example, for CPU if it failed to work say at 4 GHz it can work as say 3 Ghz. Or if it fails to work as 8 cores it can work as 4 cores or as 2 cores. Obviously, manufacturer put extremely harsh tests to make sure that in every condition that chip will work in labeled conditions. Usually chip will not work in such harsh conditions, so you can overclock it and it can work even if manufacturer decided that it didn’t met standard and downclock it. For example, chip at 4Ghz will not work with 4 modules of memory. But say will work at that speed with 2 modules. But it is only one part of the story. As far as my knowledge goes manufacturer didn’t test every single chip. They test batches. And as result you can get higher quality chips with less quality brothers. So, if you are lucky you can get one that works much better.

Why people are doing that?

Well firstly it is fun. You have to read a lot of stuff everywhere, be involved in discussions try many things. You actually learn a lot about that part and how that part communicates with other parts in your PC. It is good source of knowledge and I did a lot of that in the past. I was a lot of fun and you are feeling quite satisfying when you overclock something 100% and it works quite stable.

Secondly if you manage to overclock a lot of you are feeling like you are saving a lot of money. For example, you can buy DDR4 memory 3000 but make it work 3466 or more. So instead of buying 2 times more memory you can try to overclock and got the same speed but 2 times less money.

But overclocking come at a price. But pushing something over the limit you can damage your device and it can stop working completely or can degrade so it can more only at much slower settings than before you started overclocking it. Say if you increase voltage on CPU it will be much hotter and will degrade at much higher speed than normal. Also, other components will work at much harsher conditions and can break too. For example, you can overclock CPU and it works great but because of that MOSFETs on your VRMs now have to deliver much more power and say they don’t have heatsinks and good cooling they may fail. And from what I heard if they die they usually take CPU and memory with them. I know 2 cases when due to extreme overclocking motherboard dies.

So, should you do it? It really depends. If you have a lot of time and would like to learn a lot and can tolerate loss, then go ahead and learn. But first lean then do. And usually if you overclock a bit chances that you break something are quite minimal.

If you would like something to work faster and you make living out of it, I would say do not overclock. If you overclock and would like to make sure it is stable, then you have to make a lot of lengthily tests. They take a lot of time and effort. And still does not guaranty that in few months system will still be stable. And in general, you don’t gain that much. And before you will gain anything you will have to spend a lot of time and maybe gain nothing. But time is spent and say if you spend couple of days overclocking it and making sure it is stable, how long that system should work before you save more time that you spent on overclocking?

And lastly but it was critical for me personally. Ok you overclock, and everything looks stable. And then few days later something does not work. Some program crashing or gives you strange errors. Is it because you overclock and system not stable? Is it because you overclock and damaged something? Or is it simply software issue? This question was always killing me, and I did reverted overclocking and checked it again. Only few times it was really because of overclocking but I still had to check every time and finally I decided not to do overclocking anymore because I lost much more time than I gain due overclocking. But I still read a lot about it. But your mileage could be different so make you own decision 😊

Anyway if you want to overclock watch this great video about MOSFETs temperatures and degradation with time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9JxeIqVkuQ

I hope it helps.