Bad overclock: Reddit — Dive into anything

Reddit — Dive into anything

I notice a lot of weird opinions and thoughts people seem to have toward OCing in this subreddit and I think that should not be so. I thought I’d give some quick points/facts about it in hopes to dispel some of the incorrect notions I see.

Nobody should be denied the glory of the free performance you can gain by OCing your GPU or CPU (when I say C/GPU I’m referring to both). It’s also one of the biggest benefits of the being master race.

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Overclocking in and of itself cannot damage a C/GPU. If a video card or CPU is set to run at a speed it can’t run it, it will reset (CPU) or crash (GPU). This causes no damage to the component. Voltage and heat are the things you want to watch out for, which I’ll mention later.

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My grandma could OC a C/GPU these days. Back in the day, CPU overclocking was more complicated, finicky, and required a decent amount of knowledge. That isn’t the case today. To overclock your CPU, you only need to change 1 number in the BIOS. GPU overclocking is done via software and all you have to do is move a slider.

In both cases there are more things you can do to squeeze more out of your parts, but they are all optional things. If you just want to take your 3.2 Ghz CPU to 4.0 Ghz, 1 number is all you need.

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These are the true enemies of overclocking. They are the reason aftermarket coolers exist. Simply increasing the clock rate of your C/GPU without increasing voltage has a negligible effect on temperatures. Increasing voltage on the other hand, is what will cause higher temperatures.

HOWEVER, both GPUs and CPUs these day have thermal limits and will shut down or throttle if they reach that limit automatically to prevent damage. However, if you’re paying attention you will never even come close to this kind of thing happening.

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My 780 Ti is completely stock with the reference shroud design and it’s running at max voltage and +200 Mhz core. The thermal limit of this card is 83c and mine, full load, doesn’t go past 73c.

The point being that your cooling solution is completely irrelevant if you are watching your temperatures. Your temperatures are what will guide and control your OC. Having better cooling usually just means you can push more voltage, which can result in better speeds, but doesn’t always.

If you’re operating within safe temperatures, your cooling and voltage do not matter. The goal is to push everything as high as it can go within your safe temps. Safe temperatures are your limiter. «I can’t OC because I have a stock fan» is 100% false. You can OC as long as your temps are safe, regardless of cooling.

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Each physical chip, or card, is unique. Components of the same type will overclock completely differently, it’s much like playing the lottery. My 2500k absolutely will not do 4.5 Ghz, whereas others can get theirs to 4.8 Ghz or even higher. Video cards are the same way. I was lucky and got a decent 780 Ti, it OCs pretty well. But there are plenty of others out there who are 80 Mhz above mine or 150 Mhz below. This is why you need to find the maximum you can get out of your own personal parts through trial and error.

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This is going to be a very basic guideline for how to OC. If you find yourself becoming interested in the tinkering you’re doing, feel free to research and learn more on Google. Overclocking is a legitimate hobby and benchmarking can be a lot of fun. If you just want more FPS, that works too.

First, some rules and guidelines before you change anything.

• Look up your C/GPU. Check for the thermal max. Keep that number in mind. Hitting this number will not make your component explode, it will throttle or crash. Even still, I like to aim for ~10c below this number for 24/7 use, depending on the component (e.g 290x’s get real close to their limits).

• Download RealTemp to monitor CPU temperatures. Always have this open while stress testing your CPU.

• Download MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision (if you have an EVGA card and want to use it) to monitor (and to OC) GPU temperatures. Always have this open while stress testing your GPU.

• Download Prime95 to stress test your CPU.

• Download Heaven to stress test your GPU.

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The basic flow of overclocking anything goes as follows:

• Increase Mhz

• Test (Prime95 or Heaven for ~5-10 mins)

• Repeat until it fails

• Lower Mhz OR increase voltage

• Repeat

Only increase voltage if your temperatures are safe at full load. All components have different voltage tolerances. Voltage increases should be tiny. To give you some perspective, a 2500k’s stock voltage is around 1.2v. You probably couldn’t get safely above ~1. 35v on air and that would likely be pushing it. Increases should be ~0.05v at a time or less. So if you get a failed boot on your CPU at 1.2v, try 1.25v and see if that works.

============================= Overclocking your CPU

When overclocking a CPU, Google a guide on your specific motherboard and have a look at what they do. You don’t have to, but it can be helpful since some motherboards can have unique settings/options. If you just want MOAR HERTZ, look for the CPU Ratio or Multiplier in the BIOS. Now there’s more to it than what I’ll say here, but you can think of it like 100 x Multi/Ratio = Clock speed. My CPU multiplier is at 42, which gives me 4200 Mhz, or a 4.2 Ghz clock speed. That’s it!

Since a failed OC on a CPU just means it won’t boot, you can be a bit liberal with your increases. On most of the Intel stuff around right now I would go right for 4.0 Ghz and run Prime95 for a bit to get a baseline OC. From there you’ll want to bump it up by 50-100 Mhz at a time. If your get a BSOD or your PC doesn’t POST, you’ve gone too far. Dial it back by 50 Mhz and try again. Once you are back into Windows, run Prime95 for ~30 mins and see if it’s stable. If it isn’t you’ll get a BSOD or an error. If this is the case, dial it back another 50 Mhz and try again.

Of course, the entire time you’re running Prime95 to stress test you should be watching RealTemp. Usually you’ll hit the max you’ll ever hit a couple minutes in, but it’s good practice to keep an eye out. Without voltage increases this is unlikely to ever be an issue, but again it’s good practice.

If you get a failed boot, instead of dialing back your OC, the other option is to increase the voltage. This process continues over and over until you find the max safe voltage (remember, your temps determine this) and the max OC you can get. You may hit a point where adding voltage doesn’t give you any increased OC, which means you’ve likely hit the maximum OC for your chip. At that point your goal would be to keep that speed with the lowest voltage possible, so you dial down the voltage until it fails, then go one step back.

============================= Overclocking your GPU

Using either of the programs listed above, move your Core slider up 50 Mhz. Run Heaven for 5-10 mins, watch your temps, etc. It’s the same deal as CPU overclocking. Once you get a driver crash or see artifacts (visual anomalies), dial it back 10-20 Mhz, try again.

You really want as much as you can get out of your GPU since it’s going to give you the most performance increase when it comes to gaming. As with your CPU, once you hit a wall you can also increase voltage and try again at those same clocks. Watch your temps, repeat the process.

Once you have your maximum stable core overclock figured out, you can move onto the Memory. Now, memory OC’s generally don’t provide any FPS gains so it’s up to you if you even want to bother. You use the exact same process as your core overclock, and take it as high as you can.

============================= Wait, that’s it?

Yep. This post contains all you need to know to safely OC your GPU or CPU regardless of your cooling, assuming you follow directions correctly. If you find yourself enjoying the process, do some more reading and learning and really see if you can squeeze all you can out of your components.

A quick note on stability. Different people have different ideas on what this means. I myself consider ‘stable’ to mean I don’t crash doing the things I normally do. It is very possible to OC your CPU and have no crashes in games or on the desktop, but get errors or crashes during something extremely CPU heavy (video encoding, etc). My video card for example can benchmark fine at ~1250 Core, but will crash after a few games of BF4 at that speed. Through testing, I’ve found that 1200 gives me 100% stability. If I were interested in benchmarking, I’d definitely be running it at 1250 instead of my stable OC, it all depends on what your goals are. On the other hand, some people won’t consider an OC stable until they can run Prime95 crash free for 24 hours. It’s all up to you what you want out of your PC.

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I hope this helped clear up some misconceptions and maybe even encouraged a few of you to give it a shot. If you have any questions feel free to ask, I’m no expert, but I have been OCing for quite some time.

It’s safe, it’s fun, it’s MASTERRACE!

Is Overclocking Good? | Small Business

By Ken Burnside

Overclocking has been done to CPUs since the days of the original Pentium, and is a common «do-it-yourself» performance boost used by gamers and consumers. While it’s not for all form factors of computers and it has some downsides, overclocking is a way to get additional performance out of existing hardware. Modern processors from Intel and AMD can usually be overclocked safely, but the specifics of which processors can be overclocked by how much should be investigated carefully before you begin.

What Not To Overclock

1. If your business uses all-in-one PC designs, with the motherboard integrated into the back of the monitor, do not overclock the machine. This also applies to very small form factor desktops, similar to the Mac Mini, and is even more important with laptops. The reason for this is that overclocking the computer causes the CPU to take more power, and generate substantially more heat, and these types of designs lack the air flow to run at those increased temperatures without risks to stability or risk of damaging the hardware. This makes overclocking a bad idea for servers, where reliability is the most important criterion.

What To Overclock

1. Overclocking should be done only on PCs using full-tower designs, and only on PCs where the extra performance is going to make a difference in office productivity. For example, overclocking a PC used for web surfing, writing memos in Word, and checking email isn’t going to make the person using it more productive. Overclocking a PC used by someone in your graphic design department who works with lots of video editing or 3D rendering might make a difference, because they’re largely processor-limited — each rendering pass or filter has a lot of calculations to run. Speeding up each of those calculations reduces the amount of time each rendering pass takes, allowing more experimentation from your art team.

Downsides of Overclocking

1. Overclocking can damage your processor, motherboard, and in some cases, the RAM on a computer. It will void the warranty on the CPU and may void the warranty on the motherboard. Getting overclocking to work requires incrementally increasing the voltage to the CPU, running the machine for 24-48 hours, seeing if it locks up or experiences any kind of instability, and trying a different setting. To successfully overclock your machine, you’ll almost certainly need to upgrade the CPU cooling on the processor, so it’s not entirely a «free» hardware upgrade. If you run a business with dedicated IT support staff, the money you spend on staff time to successfully overclock a machine may be more than just buying the next better processor.

When Overclocking Makes Sense

1. Overclocking is useful when three conditions are met: The machine is a «dead end» in terms of other upgrades, the machine cannot be replaced with a newer machine, and the performance gain outweighs the labor costs of setting up the upgrade. Note that a «dead end» machine doesn’t mean obsolete — overclocking the fastest processor available may be the only performance upgrade you can use. Overall, there aren’t a lot of cases where overclocking a computer makes sense for a business.

References

• PC Magazine: How to Overclock Your CPU
• PC Stats: Beginners Guides: Overclocking the CPU, Motherboard & Memory

Writer Bio

Ken Burnside has been writing freelance since 1990, contributing to publications as diverse as «Pyramid» and «Training & Simulations Journal.» A Microsoft MVP in Excel, he holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Alaska. He won the Origins Award for Attack Vector: Tactical, a board game about space combat.

Why a car accelerates poorly: 7 reasons

Oxygen starvation

Many drivers have noticed that cars lose momentum in hot weather. This is due to a decrease in air density.

If zero temperature in one cubic meter contains 1. 7 kg of air, then at +25 its content is reduced to 1.2 kg per cubic meter. Accordingly, in the heat, less oxygen enters the cylinders, as a result, the combustion temperature decreases, which means that the output of the power unit also decreases. nine0003

A similar drop in acceleration is also strongly felt in mountainous areas — due to the lower air density, the filling of the cylinders again deteriorates here.

It has been calculated that for every 1000 meters you climb, a naturally aspirated power unit will lose about 10% of its power. Namely, at an altitude of 1 km, a 100-horsepower motor will produce about 90 hp, at 2 km — 80 hp, at 3 km — only 70 hp. But turbocharged engines are much better adapted to work both in heat and at altitude, since such units pump air under turbine pressure, and in any case it creates the necessary air pressure. nine0003

Tire pressure

It’s no secret that tire inflation significantly affects not only fuel consumption, but also acceleration dynamics.

Roughly speaking, without inflating tires to the required values, you increase the contact patch and, accordingly, grip, pumping — on the contrary, reduces the contact patch. In both cases, the overclocking dynamics also worsens.

Another problematic situation is when there is a difference in tire pressure. For example, with «pumped» wheels on one side, the car will pull in that very direction. Hence — the deterioration of controllability, exchange rate stability and again — acceleration. So the car demonstrates optimal acceleration performance on tires inflated to a predetermined rate. nine0003

Clogging and breakdown of fuel line elements

As a result of refueling with low-quality fuel, it happens that the fuel pump mesh, fuel filter are clogged, carbon deposits are formed on candles.

A faulty pressure regulator, a pinched fuel line (for example, after careless off-road trips), clogged nozzles — all this also provokes a loss of acceleration dynamics.

The vehicle either has poor acceleration or, even worse, twitches when the «gas» is applied. Poor-quality gasoline, as an option, water impurities in the fuel, can also cause interruptions in the operation of the engine and, as a result, deterioration in acceleration. Finally, a breakdown of various sensors can also cause a loss of dynamics, in particular, a mass fuel flow sensor (DMFS), a knock sensor, an oxygen sensor, and others. nine0003

Clutch slip

When the car’s clutch is working, torque is transferred from the engine to the transmission without loss. However, if the clutch slips, in other words, does not fully engage, there is a sharp, and therefore very noticeable, loss of dynamics.

From the outside it looks like this — the engine picks up speed, roars, but the car picks up speed inadequately slowly. This is especially noticeable when going uphill.

It is noteworthy that the clutch can «slip» both in cars with «mechanics» and «robots», «automatic» and «variators». In the case of an automatic transmission, the culprit is a faulty torque converter, while the variator and the «robot» have defective clutch elements. nine0003

Problems in the operation of the ignition system

Candles that have exhausted their resource, as well as high-voltage wires with breakdowns, can adversely affect acceleration dynamics.

Therefore, it is necessary to check and, if possible, replace used parts. This should not be delayed, including because the poor condition of the ignition system can provoke, for example, a breakdown of the ignition coil, and its replacement will cost a pretty penny.

Low compression in cylinders

Low compression in one or more cylinders of the engine is another common reason that the car is dull during acceleration. Such a situation can be provoked, for example, by damage to the valves or their wear, or, say, by the breakdown or occurrence of piston rings.

To clarify the diagnosis, it is necessary to make the necessary measurements with a special device — a compressometer. Indirect signs of a drop in compression are difficult starting of the power unit, unstable idle speed, characteristic pops, smoke from the muffler and increased oil and fuel consumption. nine0003

Incorrect operation of the braking system

It also happens — due to the inadequate state of the elements of the braking system, the wheels are braked by pads during movement.

This problem is most often caused by an incorrectly adjusted parking brake. However, such scenarios as a stuck piston in the brake cylinder, pads in the bracket are also not excluded. The treatment is obvious — disassemble, clean, lubricate or replace.

Poor acceleration VAZ-2112 16 valves: poor acceleration dynamics

Poor acceleration of the 16-valve VAZ-2112 is the result of a failure in the ignition system or fuel supply. It is difficult to eliminate the causes of such a failure, but it is quite possible with your own hands. For this, a lot of work will have to be done.

Lost power on the VAZ-2112 — many symptoms and causes, more details in the video below: