PC build thread

[noiseredux]

After you put it together are you gonna play Ikaruga on Steam?

[dsheinem]

After you put it together are you gonna play Ikaruga on Steam?

Yeah, I will - though I've spent some time with the GCN port and sheeeeesh am I bad at this one.

I figure I'll try the few newer games that I have which can push graphics (to put it through its paces) and then dive back into my run of Thief 1 before too long.

[Frag Mortuus]

So despite building my own PCs for 15-20 years now, I have never overclocked anything and am not sure if there's a lot to it these days, if I would want to do it, if it would necessitate lots of extra cooling, etc.

I do know that my processor and MB allow for overclocking, and I know that some video cards get overclocked too. I know the rig I put together is fast but, given the components, is overclocking something I can do? Should do? Would want to do (or avoid) for some reason? It arrives in a few hours and I am going to assemble it then, so if there's stuff I need to do at the level of hardware this would be the time….

Honestly, your CPU is going to be so fast that you probably won't need to OC it. I also read an article on some PC site that showed the overhead on that CPU isn't really high. They were able to get to 4.8 and the additional wear you put on your CPU probably isn't worth it. But, if you wanted to, your MoBo probably has a built in feature that will give you an automatic OC (mine is called Dummy OC and it gives me about a 20% OC).

I would NOT recommend OCing RAM or GPUs because the amount of heat that is generated and applied to those parts is not worth the tiny bit of performance increase you may get.

EDIT: Just because that CPU doesn't have a huge overhead doesn't mean it's not a good CPU, it's just that some OC better than others. Also, this was on air cooling not water. So, if you use a closed loop water cooler like the Coolermaster H80i you could possibly get up to 5.0Ghz. The problem is that the architecture of that socket has never been great for overclocking.

[Stark]

So despite building my own PCs for 15-20 years now, I have never overclocked anything and am not sure if there's a lot to it these days, if I would want to do it, if it would necessitate lots of extra cooling, etc.

I do know that my processor and MB allow for overclocking, and I know that some video cards get overclocked too. I know the rig I put together is fast but, given the components, is overclocking something I can do? Should do? Would want to do (or avoid) for some reason? It arrives in a few hours and I am going to assemble it then, so if there's stuff I need to do at the level of hardware this would be the time….

I wouldn't do it unless you're running into something that could benefit from it. What you built will be able to run anything current you throw at it, so why add wear and tear to your stuff if it isn't necessary?

[flex wood]

So despite building my own PCs for 15-20 years now, I have never overclocked anything and am not sure if there's a lot to it these days, if I would want to do it, if it would necessitate lots of extra cooling, etc.

I do know that my processor and MB allow for overclocking, and I know that some video cards get overclocked too. I know the rig I put together is fast but, given the components, is overclocking something I can do? Should do? Would want to do (or avoid) for some reason? It arrives in a few hours and I am going to assemble it then, so if there's stuff I need to do at the level of hardware this would be the time….

Just put the CPU in it's boost mode which pushes it to 4.4 GHz there isn't much need to overclock more than that. It's pretty simple to do you just change a setting in the windows control panel in the power saving stuff.

And for a game to really push your graphics card I would say Metro Last Light.

[Hobie-wan]

IMHO overlclocking has been mostly pointless since the days speeds were measured in Mhz unless one was trying to engorge their e-penis artificial benchmark scores. Maybe if you were rendering video day in and day out and shaving 15 minutes off a project or two every day it would add up, but for the regular person using their computer it isn't going to make a huge difference. But then I tend to hold onto PC stuff for a good while so I don't want to blow it up by putting extra stress beyond what the manufacturer decided was good for that batch of silicon.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

The only "OC" I have found was worth it on my setup was upping the power limit on my graphics card so the boost clocks would run full time (and give me 7970 performance).

Overclocking a CPU is basically useless these days.

[Frag Mortuus]

IMHO overlclocking has been mostly pointless since the days speeds were measured in Mhz unless one was trying to engorge their e-penis artificial benchmark scores. Maybe if you were rendering video day in and day out and shaving 15 minutes off a project or two every day it would add up, but for the regular person using their computer it isn't going to make a huge difference. But then I tend to hold onto PC stuff for a good while so I don't want to blow it up by putting extra stress beyond what the manufacturer decided was good for that batch of silicon.

The only "OC" I have found was worth it on my setup was upping the power limit on my graphics card so the boost clocks would run full time (and give me 7970 performance).

Overclocking a CPU is basically useless these days.

I disagree with both statements. I have a small overclock on my CPU and see about a 10FPS rise in games. Also, load times are shorter and boot time in general is faster. That is just going from 2.66 to 3.2Ghz. So an OC up to 4.0Ghz which is an ~50% OC would bring a significant performance increase. Now, you may reach a point where the OC is higher than needed in regards to the rest of your PC, meaning that the rest of your PC is acting as a bottleneck for your CPU. But, if your RAM and GPU, MoBo chipset, etc can all keep up with your OC'd CPU then you won't reach that limit and should notice some sort of performance increase.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I disagree with both statements. I have a small overclock on my CPU and see about a 10FPS rise in games. Also, load times are shorter and boot time in general is faster. That is just going from 2.66 to 3.2Ghz. So an OC up to 4.0Ghz which is an ~50% OC would bring a significant performance increase. Now, you may reach a point where the OC is higher than needed in regards to the rest of your PC, meaning that the rest of your PC is acting as a bottleneck for your CPU. But, if your RAM and GPU, MoBo chipset, etc can all keep up with your OC'd CPU then you won't reach that limit and should notice some sort of performance increase.

I can only speak from experience with my own build. However, pushing to 4.7ghz on my 4.0ghz 8350 didn't really yield any performance improvements.

[dsheinem]

well everything is up and working…except the gpu

Doing some troubleshooting to hopefully get it up soon and give it a trial run, then I have to go grab lots of stuff off of old drives to migrate them to the new one. Should be a fun night

And Christ the GPU is gigatic