I'm just wondering, is overclocking good or bad. I have known for a whole now that you can overclock parts in your pc, but haven't messed with it till now. Currently I have my cpu and ram both overclocked to max and my pc is running really fast compared to what it normally runs, but the cpu does run high, so I was wondering, is overclocking harder on your hardware and can it put a lot of strain on your graphics card if your card is an onboard?

With overclocking, you are forcing parts to work harder than they were designed to. More and more practice with overclocking will reduce the negative effects it causes, but it will never completely get rid of the negative effects.

Overclocking causes your parts to work faster and harder, causing more strain with regards to heat, power consumption, etc.

Heat is probably the most damaging of the effects, seeing as the fan(s) in your computer were designed for the parts running at regular capacity. While a better fan will somewhat negate the heat issue, the fan itself will use up more power, and either way the parts will die out quicker than their expected lifespan.

However, if you upgrade your hardware regularly then it shouldn't be a problem.

ya well i do upgrade my part as better ones are released, and as for the heat I dont think that is going to be a problem have 6 fans running in my pc to keep it cool, but I am assuming overclocking everything to max is really bad, i should probably reduce it to about half of what I have it at just to be safe right?

Posted By dog199200 on 13th Nov 08 at 1:23am

 

ya well i do upgrade my part as better ones are released, and as for the heat I dont think that is going to be a problem have 6 fans running in my pc to keep it cool, but I am assuming overclocking everything to max is really bad, i should probably reduce it to about half of what I have it at just to be safe right?

Seeing as this is your first time with overclocking, I suggest just increasing the cycle speed a little bit, and see how your computer handles it. After a while, if all goes well, increase it a little more.

ok will do, thank you

Wish I knew more about the inside of computer I want to make the perfect computer,

its easy to learn

Learning the inside of a computer isn't hard. Some hints on overclocking though.

Use Intel. If you use an AMD base system, it's not going to handle it too well as AMD can be over-clocked, but, the processor was never designed for it. What makes Intel so great, is that the guys actually designed the processor to be over-clocked.

Overall though, I think what Marc said is a load of rubbish. Over-clocking does strain your system, but it's able to be balanced so that you cause little to no damage to your system.

The heat issue that Marc said, is not an issue. If you have 6 fans and your CPU temp increases, add in a suction tunnel on the side of your case, take off one side of your case. Or, you could buy more fans, or upgrade to liquid cooling.

If you want to over-clock, effectively and 100% of the time, you should need an excessive power supply (like 600 - 800 watt) allowing the fans and the actual CPU/Graphics Card to run at an overclocked speed. This will drain more power, so you have a computer than can run on 550 watts of power, then you just up your cycles and whatnot 100% or however much you are increasing, then it will drain the more power.

However, with the way that a lot of companies have developed, a lot of products (such as some nVidia cards) come pre-OCed and can still be over-clocked FURTHER than that. It's perfectly safe, if you over-clock an Intel processor (most likely a 6000+ Core 2 Duo or equivalent), as the processor is designed to be OCed, then it won't cause a problem.

The only thing that would be a problem is running physical maintenance. My mate who lives across the road OCs his computer (it's rated about 8.9/10 on the world scale for a system), he spends a lot (I mean A LOT) of money on his computer to maintain it. He takes it apart probably at least once a fortnight at the bare minimum, uses a pressurized can to clean dust and crap out of the fans and other parts, vacuums out the case and keyboard etc, then puts it all back together again. Extensive process to be honest.

Me, I'll stick to my AMD Athlon Processor and not OC. There's not difference, not the human eye anyway. As we can't see the difference between anything higher than 30FPS which you can get without OCing Which just requires effort I'm not prepared to put in anyway lol.

well sadly my processor is an Athlon 64 X2, because all my motherboard support is AMD Processors. And I have a 500 Watt powersupply, but I also don't have an vid card, i have an onboard so I dont have to worry about that as much. And I was able to tell, but I also overclocked my processor up to 12x faster which is the max for my processor provided what my motherboard can handle.

You don't have a graphics card....