Why do you overclock?

chromic

Honorable
Jan 6, 2013
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Hello, here is a little story about me.

(If TL;DR scroll down)

My name is Joona & I am an 19 years old student (going to be a car mechanic ), and i live in Finland -Europe.

At September 2007 (12 years old) I wanted a laptop for my birthday (most of my friends had one), but since i played alot of games, people said me that an laptop couldnt run them well and i got an HP pre-built desktop.

Specs were more or less something like this :

AMD Athlon 64 x2 +4400
nvidia GT6600
HP- motherboard
320gb seagate HDD (still working with ~25 000 hrs)

Paired with an wireless mouse, keyboard and an HPW2007 monitor (That i have used to date with 0 problems, and it probably has like over 30 000 hours on it. 😛 )

Anyways, rolled with that pc setup for 3-4 years (i think), then games start to slow down quite alot, and i didnt know anything about computers back then.

Dont remember when (probably at my birthday again), but my brother gave me an HD3850 Gpu for better fps. (upper card)
http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/591/radeon_3850.jpg

And i was "WOW!! That looks badass!"

Rolled with that same setup with only the gpu upgraded for the next 1-2 years.

Then games started to slow down again, and i wanted better performance.

Asked my brother to help me to upgrade my GPU (again, very near on my birthday) he told me that "hey theres an HD5850 on sale" (used), my plan was to buy it myself, but he said that "oh its your birthday soon, l can buy & gift it to you"

Back then borderlands ran like 20-30fps on my current HD3850, and same 20-30fps on the HD5850, asked my brother for assistance and he said that i should upgrade my motherboard and CPU.

I ended up with athlon II 3x 455 CPU & Asrock N68C-GS-FX (cheapest motherboard at the time)

And the FPS Increase was Phenomenal, from like 20-->70fps.
(Still didnt know crap about computers)

(Heres where overclocking starts)

I started reading about overclocking, mostly GPU, and got my 5850 (sapphire, reference cooler)

Got to an OK 800/1200mhz vs 725/1000mhz stock.

From this moment on, i was hooked on overclocking.
(and upset that i didnt spend 20€ more to get an athlon ii 4x 965BE cpu).

Time went on, and after a couple of months, i wanted more.

upgraded the 3x 455 to an FX-6100, motherboard to Asus m5a97 r2.0 & to "top it off" stock cooler to an Scythe Ninja 3.

Got 4.4 ghz out of it, was surprised that it performed almost at the same level as 3x 455 (gaming).

It still wasnt enough for me, upgraded my trusty 5850 to an Powercolor 7870XT and it went 1200/1550mhz without any further adjustments (great OC'er, stock cloks 975/1500).

After some months, I found that my 6100 was lacking in games (due to low single core performance) and decided to go with an FX-8320, overclocked it to 4.4ghz and the performance gains this time were quite alot.

Stayed with this setup for around ~1.5 years, and i was thinking, "maybe more?"

upgraded my 40€ scythe Ninja 3 to my current (76€) Antec kühler h2o 1250 cooler & m5a97 to an m5a99FX to squeeze the last drop out of my 8320 (got it to 4.63ghz)

Still wasnt enough..sold my 8320, M5A99FX & 7870XT for 630$/500€ total (short story/answer : had to wait 2-3 weeks in order to get the payment, so the buyer gave me some components for "pawn", but i got to keep them.)

Anyways..
Now that i had all this money, i could do a total system upgrade.

Went with R9 290 (180€/230$)
I5-4670K 175/220$
MSI Z97 Gaming 5 110€/~140$

(Sold every old part after upgrading, so mostly it was cost efficient)

and i know, most of these upgrades were unnecessary.

TL;DR



Now to the REAL topic, why do i overclock?

Myself, i dont really OC for the performance, Nor benchmarks (ok for a little 😛).

I overclock because i enjoy it, pushing hardware to its limits, pushing your skills to the limit!
If i can push that extra 100mhz, i will do it, even if it doesnt give me any noticeable boost.

Even if i can push that extra 10mhz on Gpu, i will do it.

Why? you may ask.
Just because i can, enjoy it & almost everyday learn something new.

Its like a hobby to me, like painting, swimming, skateboarding...etc are for some.

Question is ; Why so you?

P.S.Sorry for my boring text.
 
Solution
to increase system life (useful system life that is.) better bang for dollar. performance. because i can and enjoy doing so.

my 4 year old system is still coming out swinging.
to see how far I can take my system. although, after I reached the max, I go back to what I actually need. perhaps when it's needed, when my hardware is getting to old. i'll push harder again. I got my fx 8320 to 4.6 GHz so far, but it's running everything smoothly on 4.1 GHz, so no need to OC right? but now I know I have the potential to get some more juice out of it. probably even more then 4.8 with a better cooler.

my GPU, well I like good benchmarks! I like to see how my gtx 970 beats someone elses gtx 970 or a gtx 980 stock speed for example. but same story again. after I had my fun, it gets clocked back, but now I know the full potential and I can clock it higher when it's needed.

a would need to upgrade my PSU though if i'm going to do some serious overclocking and I want it to last!(working with a corsair cx750m, not the most stable, but good enough for now)