when you overclock to say 4.5 ghz is it always going that speed

[raknarius]

what I mean is say Im playing civilization 5 and I take like 30 minutes a turn, ie im mostly afk, is my machine maxing out and using more power and having a shorter lifespan, more heat, whem im not really doing much? if that's the case should I not oc till I need it, till games are lagging etc?

 

[mr1hm]

as long as you have your power saving options like Intel Speedstep and C1E enabled in the BIOS, the CPU should downclock when there's not a lot of load.

 

[nikoli707]

keep your cpu overclocked. even if you have speedstep and c1e states disabled in the bios the core clock may stay at 4.5ghz but without seeing a load it will be running a low at low wattage low amperage and is still saving you on power compared to 100% load. i have my power saving features disabled and i run 4.6ghz clock all the time but at system idle the cpu is only drawing about 30 watts but under full load its in the 125 watt range. with power saving features turned on my cpu will draw around 10 watts. if your stable at 4.5ghz and you have your power saving features turned on then dont worry about it.

 

[mr1hm]

keep your cpu overclocked. even if you have speedstep and c1e states disabled in the bios the core clock may stay at 4.5ghz but without seeing a load it will be running a low at low wattage low amperage and is still saving you on power compared to 100% load. i have my power saving features disabled and i run 4.6ghz clock all the time but at system idle the cpu is only drawing about 30 watts but under full load its in the 125 watt range. with power saving features turned on my cpu will draw around 10 watts. if your stable at 4.5ghz and you have your power saving features turned on then dont worry about it.

what about your CPU Vcore?

 

[nikoli707]

vcore almost always adjusts itself or is dynamic to a certain extent because of the laws of electricity. there is very limited vcore adjustments that apply to throttling, line load calibration, fixed, dynamic, etc. but in the end the vcore is always within a certain range like idle 1.35v and load 1.31v. these have very little to do with power consumption though.