FEATURED Modern Overclockers, Modern Overclocking... What does it mean to you?

[I.M.O.G.]

The question is speaking generally about how you perceive overclockers, and the art of overclocking. 10 years ago it was one thing, today it is something much different though our values and culture are the same. What do you think about it?

To me, overclockers are hardware enthusiasts and evangelists. They like to tinker, they like to understand how things work, they like to look beyond the product labels and figure out which parts perform the best, they like to push the limits. Why? Often because they can, they like to put their personal stamp on their computer.

Modern Overclocking is a hobby based on passion more than it ever has been. There are lower tangible motivations for higher performance. Dual cores, quads, hexs, octocores... How much power do you really NEED today? Overclocking today is about customization - we know the hardware can perform past its stock ratings, and we want to find out just how far it can go. Its about going further, faster, and its about science - the urge to understand, excel, and surpass.

So what are overclockers about in your perspective? What is overclocking about in your book?

 

[stool]

I started OCing back in the 90's, and frankly, in the past have spent a boatload of money trying to get that extra Mhz out of almost everything I ever bought. One of my biggest thrills was getting a 300Mhz Celeron doubled to 600Mhz on air. This included water-cooling before it was mainstream, volt-modding, soldering, etc. As time has gone by, its gotten so easy to OC, where most everything is done for you, it just doesn't seem to hold the appeal it once did. Manufacturers, for the most part, have conceded that OC'ing is going to occur anyway, so the roadblocks they used to put up have mostly vanished.
I think that on the whole, overclockers still have the same mentality, but the nuts'n'bolts experimental side has diminished, simply because its gotten so easy to do OC'ing.

On a personal level, I push stuff to the max on air these days, but am trying to actually learn about servers and their functions and repairs, networking, laptop(notebook, netbook)repairs, etc. and am not so far into the deep end as I used to be.

 

[\dev\goat]

When I think about overclocking, one part of my brain remembers sanding down pennies and putting them in a stack with thermal paste in between and sticking them to the ram on my videocard and rubber banding a huge socket 370 cooler to the gpu just for a few more mhz so I could get a huge performance increase in Quake3 and have a LITTLE BIT higher kill/death ratio. Fond memories.

The other part of my brain remembers the huge amount of money I've spent blowing things up in order to acquire the knowledge I currently have about overclocking.

You summed it up pretty well. These days it's getting more and more commercial. It's not about squeezing the last ounce of juice out of a budget part to be more competitive in a game, or increasing productivity in some application. It's become a corporate sponsored weener wagging contest where parts come pre-overclocked from the factory and overclocking lingo is posted all over the boxes and ads for any computer part for sale.

With current hardware it seems to make almost no difference in the things I actually use my computer for to overclock it anymore. But I can't shake it. It's become so ingrained in me over the years that it almost makes me cringe to see something stay at stock speeds. Even if my computer is idling I would rather have it be at 4.8ghz than at 3.4ghz. Just to know that I did it. That I pushed that part or that group of parts to their limit and they're stable and that little voice in the back of my head telling me I'm getting more than I paid for, even though I'm probably not utilizing it at all.

Overclocking is weird. It's a lot different than it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago I was completely enthralled by it. It was awesome, and it made a huge difference. And I was spending my mother's money. Now I'm still enthralled by it, and it makes very little difference. And I'm spending my own money.

 

[Bobnova]

I'm a newcomer to OCing, my first OC was in 2009.
At that point I was OCing (and registered here to learn how) to squeeze more performance out of my $370 budget build, I did and I was very happy about it!
Then.... I wanted more, so I bought a motherboard that allowed voltage control, not long after that I discovered the benching section. The discovery that I could actually compete at overclocking changed everything. No longer did it have anything to do with my daily computing, instead of spending hours on a 24/7 OC I started slapping something together with more volts than really needed and lower clocks than I could have, my daily stuff just isn't that intensive, and I'm not on a e5200+hd4830 anymore, either.

Now it's all benching, and to bench successfully you need to really squeeze the hell out of your system, the standard level of overclocking here at OCF is quite high, but on the benching team we take it to the absolute limit, were another 1mhz puts us into BSOD (or post-failure), and hardware death is less surprising than it is annoying.
To me, that is perfect. I love tweaking and tinkering with things to get the last few percent, and I'm a very competitive person by nature.
The end result is spending an hour or more running one benchmark over and over again with slightly different settings and a 230+ CFM fan screaming into it in order to get the best score possible. Yesterday I managed to get the 7th fastest 3dmark03 4870x2 score of all time. That made my day!

What does it have to do with "normal" overclocking? Well.... Nothing, really. Another try 2mhz higher (910 core instead of 908 core...) met with dismal failure, and the CPU was cooled down to 70odd degrees below zero in order to do it's job.


Anyway, to me OCing is Benching, and Benching is a way for me to race without having to spend thousands of dollars on a single weekend of racing at a track. I like sprint karts better, but I can't do that in my living room!

 

[Trottel]

Overclocking is pretty stale for me now. I got into it because I could not afford the performance that I wanted. Also tinkering with the hardware was lots of fun. I had some serious soldering skills that I have since lost.

Basically I feel that these days there is a whole lot less performance benefit to overclocking, and that overclocking has never been so simple. On my last desktop I built, I never went further than setting the FSB higher in the BIOS. In the old days I would have had aftermarket heatsinks on everything, variable resistors for tuning the voltage, and I would have played with the BIOS options for days on end trying to get the optimal performance out of my computer. Now you can still do that, but you will really have nothing to show for it. I think the peak of this for me was with late Socket A. After that, overclocking just kind of went downhill towards the easier and less reward route.

 

[Archer0915]

To me it started as a poor boys sport I started off twaeking because the jumpers on my 386 MB only alowed for 40MHz and that is what it was at when I bought it. The memory on the other hand was ripe for the tweaking and though many of the games were stick figures and a Mig 29 framed out blowing up stick tanks it made a diffrence. Rendering saw the biggest improvement when I added my math Co-Pro.

I had a monster in those days. Every part was hand picked and ordered from computer shopper because the WWW was not and the only time I could get on the internet was when I went to see my wife at NCSU.

Yup PO boyz sport.

I will say I loved the PI and K6 2 series processors the best. BIG OC.

 

[EarthDog]

Im going to second the poor boy's sport. I started getting into this in 2004 with S754 and A64 2800+. Pushed that a 400Mhz on air... Jumped up to a 3200+ pushed that several hundred Mhz on air. x2 3800+, Opty 165/180, e8400, Q9450, Q9650, QX9650, i7 920, W3570, i7 930, several 2600k's (my wallet goes where the performance is at regardless of budget)............so it turned into getting the most out of my hardware to beating on the most hardware. My salary in that time has also gone up as well affording me this expensive hobby. Said water was 'extreme' cooling at that time and no way I would get that...well, My first loop was a few years ago. Said no way I would get in to TRUE extreme cooling and last year, went extreme with DI, and then LN2 and the benching party. Hook, Line, sinker.

With the latest release from Intel, it really has dumbed down overclocking from previous generations. This is dissapointing as Im sure the REAL pureist overclockers that mod boards to do it found subsequent generations to do the same. I have noticed across many forums that everyone is looking for a handout on settings instead of trying to learn what they are doing. This makes me sad. But maybe its a generational thing as well?

 

[I.M.O.G.]

I think the handout nature you see fairly often is due to the growth of the overclocking market... A lot of people start getting into OCing for the cool factor or bragging rights. 10 years ago, a higher proportion of people were motivated as geeks to understand the fundamentals, know what happens when you pull certain levers, and make their system work better than others could. I know those geeks inspired me and made me want to be as knowledgeable about how this stuff worked when I started out.

There is certainly a lot higher demand for "BIOS templates" now than there has been in the past. I think that is due to heightened consumer awareness of overclocking thanks to marketing centered around enthusiasts and performance. Many people with a consumer mindset want the results, but don't have any interest in the technical/science/learning it takes to understand how to do it themselves. We've watched as manufacturers have started implementing "go fast" buttons that "automatically" overclock with mixed results, and thats a response to what the market wanted.

If you look at who sticks around, its generally people that want to know the product model numbers that are technically superior, they have more solid understandings of what factors make those things superior, and they understand the roles frequency, voltage, and temperatures play in determining what you get out of the system. We also keep a lot of people around with that same spirit, but who are more focussed in the software side of making their computer run the way they want it to... But they still share the detail oriented qualities of wanting to know and understand the fundamentals that determine why things work the way they do.

 

[stool]

I've got to be honest, I no longer have to search high and low for certain CPUs with certain bin numbers, and experiment with HSF combos or RAM cooling, because as I mentioned before, its just too damn easy to do this, unless you are into LN2 or extreme stuff. You can pick up a black edition AMD CPU, and add bunches without breaking a sweat by changing the multiplier and FSB and never have to touch voltage or add aftermarket cooling. I still tinker, maybe out of force of habit, but it just doesn't seem the same.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

I agree to a point in regards to everyday overclocking, which is what got me hooked on subzero Overclocking - it brings back the spirit that first got me interested in overclocking.

Yet we're still here, and still a lot of people talking about overclocking related topics... My goal for this thread was to focus on that primarily. We have a community buying tens of thousands at newegg every month (that we track, who knows how much we aren't able to track)...

How would you describe what this place is about? How would you characterize our members?

For example... Often the tendency is to characterize overclockers as kids or people 13-25, underemployed, gamers, etc... That was more true historically, but still its a common misconception. How would you describe us as a legitimate and formidable force? Not only do we buy a lot of gear, we tell others what to buy, we fix other computers, we recommend upgrades - online and in meatspace. People come to us to get answers - if we know how to run it beyond specs, people trust us as the people who really know their stuff about how computers work.

 

[Bobnova]

One of things that I really liked about OCF when I was looking at various OC sites to pick one to settle at was that the majority of the people here were my age or older. Or at least acted my age or older, which is just as good.
It's a very mature site by and large.

The benching team average age IS older than me I think, it's nice.

As to what this place is about.... That's hard to say, there are huge swaths of it that I don't really frequent. I think the #1 thing though is doing it right, rather than taking the easy shortcut route.
The benching team too, though "right" for benching and "right" for 24/7 are two very, very different things.

Doing the overclock right, doing the cooling right, doing the water cooling right. It's important!

 

[grumperfish]

^^^
Also this. I'm used to forums like SA, so I liked that OCF wasn't just meme after meme, and it was obvious that it had a large community of people who actually enjoy helping others with technical issues while at the same time pushing performance to the limits.


I only started overclocking in 2005, with a P4 2.4C Northwood, and that was also how I stumbled upon OCF. I never really had the chance to play with the old 300A Celerons, or even Pentium III's until way later on, as my household was still running a single P2 desktop with Win98 until I left for college (jumping immediately to a P4 and XP was confusing at best).

Overclocking (again, thanks mainly to these forums) for me started as a way to stretch out my hilariously-tiny budget to the maximum, while also becoming educated on how PC's and their components actually work. Along the way I learned how to look critically at performance comparisons, pricing, and how to understand technical specs which I now use regularly as a side business.

Nowadays, to me at least, it doesn't seem like there's as much of a point looking long and hard at finding specific part numbers or chip revisions, as I've found myself looking more for performance per watt and cooling potential than anything else. I still enjoy tweaking and squeezing as much (stable) performance as I can get out of a part, but lately I've almost been content to look at the middle ground and say "Yes, that will work fine for me" instead of "but how much faster can it go with an SD fan attached to it?". I've spent the last couple days looking at new GPU's, and I've noticed that I'm looking at the coolers offered more than I am at the core clock or overclocking potential.

However, I'm still hoping for another 1Ghz OC on my next CPU, so there's that.

 

[stool]

I.M.O.G., Having been here a long time, I believe that the membership is probably as diversified as you can get. Age-wise, I'm what you would officially call an old fart, in my late fifties, and I know there are plenty more like me, yet I can coherently exchange with people way younger and with different backgrounds. The fact is, overclocking has actually gone from, let's say, a "fringe" thing, to something that even a lot of mainstream people have an interest in. I'd say that if you look at the questions asked in the "help sections", and the frequency of answers, we're doing pretty well.

 

[capttripppp]

I haven't been here long, and I have not yet ventured into the realm of overclocking. In fact to be quite honest, I didn't even know that OCing was a viable option until very recently. It wasn't until a couple of moths ago that I built my first computer. Now I have always had a computer, but I always bought OEM Dell or Gateway, what have you. Being able to build your own computer always seemed so esoteric to me, only the chosen magi could do it. But it turns out that I was way off from the mark, and I proved it to myself by doing it.
As such, I feel that my desire to get into OCing is just a natural progression. Hey I accomplished something I thought was unattainable, why not move to the next mark. From where I stand OCing seems very esoteric, and I should clarify myself here, by OCing I mean more along the lines of benching, not OCing for general use. The basis for my personal view on this is because I personally don't need anything extra out of my computer on a daily basis. Also to me, benching seems more esoteric because of the use of DICE, or LN2, the temp probes, the pots, the insulation, etc etc...
At any rate, I feel that in order to bench or OC you should do the research on what you are doing and how it is affecting the computer as a whole. So with that in mind, I have been reading.... and reading.... and reading. And I will read some more until I feel that I am ready, then I will still read some more. That being said, this community that you all have created is one of the best that I have been through for info, help, and the fraternal feel. The members here really make people feel welcomed no matter your level of tech knowledge or experience, or age. It's a window into the magi's world, and instead of trying to keep everyone out, here you welcoming people in and giving them the road map to show them the way. For that I thank you all

 

[LennyRhys]

Overclocking is an intregal part of the IT industry, and this is reflected in the marketing of components nowadays - whether it's motherboards, memory, graphics cards, CPUs, or even entire systems, overclocking is one of the main selling points of today's hardware.

The principal appeal that overclocking holds for me is that it is diverse: it can be done with the bear minimum of cooling hardware; there are more "enthusiast level" cooling accessories for people who want to invest a little more time and effort into their overclocking; and for those who go the whole nine yards with subzero cooling, there are even precision-manufactured prefabricated parts like LN2 pots and bolt-thru kits which were unheard of in days gone by. Overclocking is also diverse in that any part of a system can be overclocked independently from the rest, so all the faculties of the modern PC--multithreading, raw processing power, memory bandwith, video performance--are being continually pushed and improved upon by different groups of people in different places all over the world, according to their preferences and inclinations.

Overclocking is what computing is all about. Without the overclockers, the industry would fold (pardon the pun).

 

[Trottel]

I agree to a point in regards to everyday overclocking, which is what got me hooked on subzero Overclocking - it brings back the spirit that first got me interested in overclocking.

What does it for me is laptop overclocking. They are just underclocked, undervolted, and undercooled desktop components with little to no out of the box support for overclocking. It is a real DIY affair and it is very rewarding to accomplish it as well as gain the performance that most laptops are lacking. I don't have the money to burn for extreme overclocking and benching stuff like that.

Yet we're still here, and still a lot of people talking about overclocking related topics... My goal for this thread was to focus on that primarily. We have a community buying tens of thousands at newegg every month (that we track, who knows how much we aren't able to track)...

How would you describe what this place is about? How would you characterize our members?

For example... Often the tendency is to characterize overclockers as kids or people 13-25, underemployed, gamers, etc... That was more true historically, but still its a common misconception. How would you describe us as a legitimate and formidable force? Not only do we buy a lot of gear, we tell others what to buy, we fix other computers, we recommend upgrades - online and in meatspace. People come to us to get answers - if we know how to run it beyond specs, people trust us as the people who really know their stuff about how computers work.

I have averaged about $1000 a year from Newegg alone for the past 8 years. I don't think a single purchase since I joined this forum has been tallied because I always forget to use the link on Overclockers.com. But still, desktop overclocking for me is dead outside of taking 20 minutes to up the FSB in the BIOS, repaste the GPU heatsink, and overclock the GPU through the OS. That is all it takes to get 95% of the way there. I still read up stuff on this forum all the time though to keep up to date on hardware and stuff, or if I have any problems. The sheer amount of computer hardware knowledge on this and the handful of other forums oriented towards desktop overclocking is absolutely staggering. I don't consider myself super knowledgeable any more, but I still know enough to realize that most people who think they know computer hardware in the real world and on other forums really don't know a whole lot. Lots of myths, half-truths, and just plain wrong things are said and widely accepted out there that wouldn't last two seconds on this forum. I am very happy to be a member here.

 

[Pinky]

I started OCing back in the 90's, and frankly, in the past have spent a boatload of money trying to get that extra Mhz out of almost everything I ever bought. One of my biggest thrills was getting a 300Mhz Celeron doubled to 600Mhz on air. This included water-cooling before it was mainstream, volt-modding, soldering, etc. As time has gone by, its gotten so easy to OC, where most everything is done for you, it just doesn't seem to hold the appeal it once did. Manufacturers, for the most part, have conceded that OC'ing is going to occur anyway, so the roadblocks they used to put up have mostly vanished.
I think that on the whole, overclockers still have the same mentality, but the nuts'n'bolts experimental side has diminished, simply because its gotten so easy to do OC'ing.

On a personal level, I push stuff to the max on air these days, but am trying to actually learn about servers and their functions and repairs, networking, laptop(notebook, netbook)repairs, etc. and am not so far into the deep end as I used to be.

Stool reflects a lot of my sentiments. I also want to add that some common sense and persepctive can help the enthusiast to avoid a lot of the financial pitfalls of living on the bleeding edge. As you inferred, you DON'T need THAT MUCH horsepower to do things. Most gamers already have plenty of processing power at stock speeds to have their game run fluidly with most settings and resolution maxxed. It's become a badge more than a necessity. Look at the signatures -- members seem more focused on their specs and uber gear they own. Heck, I wear my signature proud - NOT overclocking, and cruising on the intraweb just fine baby!

 

[Pinky]

In a way, I see overclocking as well as a lot of other enthusiast activities as a reflection of our consumer driven, wasteful society. We spend a lot of money for just a little more. We use it for a bit then throw it away (often literally). It's how we're brainwashed into "keeping the economy going". But we really don't need ANY of these things. It's obsessive behavior run riot. Product of a wealthy society with no spiritual focus.

 

[Archer0915]

Well I guess I need to come out with my actual opinion on this. I have never read a guide (unless I was checking it for errors) and I don't think I have ever really asked a question about overclocking. I have used tech docs (when they became available), speeds of currently shipping processors and production dates as a guide. I have killed processors but such is life.

When I got into this there were no forums, no guides and no shoulders to cry on when you killed something. I think I have made every possible mistake you can make and learned that if it kills something when you do that than don't do it. I honestly think that modern overclocking is a joke compared to the past. I hear people complaining about not being able to get to XXXXXX speed and wanting to send back the CPU or sending back a CPU because it won't unlock. There are guides for this and for that and the thought process is ruined.

I can't actually express my true thoughts on modern overclockers because it would seem like a blanket statement but I know many are interested in more than just the OC; they want to learn how and why and it is because of them I won't state my true feelings.

And I do have a complaint: Many of my fellow members have seen me go ballistic over misinformation, lies, assumptions, class discrimination and arrogance. There are too many people who have read a guide, gotten a good overclock and decided they knew it all. I do my best to attack these people with information and discredit them because no kid trying to OC on daddy's dollar deserves to COOK his rig because some punk advised him incorrectly.

Sorry I turned that into a rant and don't let this be a thread killer. If anyone has a problem with this post PM me and I will remove it.

 

[stool]

Bro, its up to us to get people past the automatic expectation that they can immediately get to "xxxx" speed, or the like. The many years where I spent much more time than was healthy trying to get a couple of extra Mhz out of a rig are largely gone, but I still believe that there are many out there who are still into the reality of OC'ing and seeing what they can achieve from their gear. You'll never get a complaint from me for correcting BS or misinformation.