4790k - Is there any real reason to overclock?

[danielbsipe]

So I recently purchased and installed an i7-4790k. Stock frequency is 4.0ghz. So there isn't much over clocking head room beyond 20% (4.8ghz). The performance gains from a 20% overclock is small at best, particularly for gaming, where most of the heavy lifting is done by the GPU. Also, the 4790k turbo is a 10% boost, so ocing past that is only an additional 10%.

Since it is proven that over clocking will shorten the life of your chip is there any good reason to do so? Or is it more of a hobbyist practice/for fun sort of thing? Should I bother trying to OC my CPU having it cooled by a tower air unit?

Thanks for any guidance.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I wouldn't necessarily call it just Hobbeyist because there are times when people do intense video encoding, rendering, or heavy CAD work that requires an even stronger CPU. In gaming typically you won't notice a difference, however some games that use an extreme amount of CPU like Assasins Creed Unity may benefit on rare occasions. But without overclocking it's still extremely powerful.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

It's more of a hobbyist thing , it's a killer chip without the overclock.

 

[justaguywithagun]

eh i would say mostly a hobbyist/enthusiast thing. although i've never had a cpu failure and i overclock anything i can for that extra boost in performance, even my moms always-on seldom de-dusted phenom II 550 unlocked to a quad running 4ghz.

so long as you play under a certain level, i firmly believe that the amount of life lost from a cpu for the average consumer is generally negligible, though some processors seem to succumb more easily than others.

that being said, for gaming a 4790k is overkill and theres certainly no need to overclock this chip to get awesome performance in basically anything

 

[danielbsipe]

Thanks for the advice guys. I will probably avoid overclocking until i pick up a closed loop water cooler in the future.