OK, so that was one of the easier Guides I've written. :cool:
"But...but... Arne" you say... with a quivery lip...
Oh, all right then...but first the warning:
MOAR's Law
Moar's Law states: "You will want Moar and it will end in tears".
There is always Moar...someone else will always have Moar.
Even seated in a comfy armchair, calm and relaxed, Moar is often wanted...hankered after...desired.
In groups it gets exponentially worse. In online groups, well...
Recognize this about yourself and learn to control it and you will have a much better time OverClocking and possibly a much better time in life in general.
Why did I say DON'T at the start? It's quite simple...overclocking may be all cool and that...but it is killing your CPU and it is killing your CPU's warranty.
Ask yourself: If someone walks in and takes a hammer and beats your CPU into a tech-cool coaster will you say “cool coaster” and go out and happily spend on a new CPU? If not, then you shouldn’t OverClock. Things can and do go wrong. If you can’t afford a dead chip… don’t.
If you are going to do it anyway…and I can see that glint in your eye…and if you have an Intel chip, go and buy their overly wordy Performance Tuning Protection Plan
https://click.intel.com/tuningplan/ and sleep soundly at night...
Don't say Performance Tuning Protection Plan close to anybody else's face...the spitting...
If you have an AMD CPU they don't do the same thing...wish they did...but then arguably their CPUs don't overclock.
"Oooo you didn't Arne!"
Yes, I said it...:o
This won’t be a nitty gritty of screenshots of how to set an offset or what slider does what...there are a hundred thousand of those about already. It's more a zen guide to core happiness with your OC...pun intended.
And actually...while not quite as simple as the first post, it is not overly complicated either.
You are probably OverClocking already and might not know it. XMP profiles and DOCP profiles (same thing) are actually overclocks. Congratulations...you are an OverClocker...you are running your System out of spec.
But OK, let's get to the meat of it...CPU and GPU overclocking.
For the instant gratification generation, there are all sorts of programs that one-click OC your system. I can't help you with these since I have never tried them. They work but they are inelegant and probably cause mothballed nuclear reactors to be brought online as they do everything they do at voltage that would run the Delorian!
Overclocking the CPU is best done by you...in the BIOS. Overclocking the GPU is done using software from the desktop. Afterburner/PrecisionX being my recommendation.
And these days it is remarkably simple. Vcore is related directly to MHz...you up one you can up the other.
"So Moar Vcore, Moar OC?"
Yep
"So, the Moar the better?"
Nope
This whole post can be summed up in this graph:
You can make one of these for yourself...for your actual CPU.
What you will find is, that as you increase voltage to the CPU you can increase frequency. You will see that as you start to go up 100MHz at a time, the voltage you need to keep it stable, more or less, increases in line. This is the area in the black box on the graph and it’s where you want to be. How far along that line you can go from stock, mostly depends on your cooling.
Then, you will plot a 100 Mhz increase and the amount of voltage you need to apply to do it will increase. Now, this point can be gradual (the transition yellow to red) or it can be sudden. Imagine the line goes straight to red.
Yellow and red are Moar's Law territory. It depends on absolute voltage values and your level of cooling but really Yellow is already a step too far for 24/7, on basic cooling, medium/long term OCing happiness. Yellow might be OK if you run a really serious cooling set up. Red is "I must get 5.3GHz because someone on the forum done it and I will too" unhappiness! You may run for days or weeks and someone will run for years here…but they are the exception…this is bonafide tears territory.
“Why…what’s happening at those higher voltages…why can’t I just keep pumping the juice?”
Current is happening and materials are breaking down. Where your electrons were all in an orderly line before…
Odd things are now happening. Some Electrons are getting leery.
Where they were ordered they now run about in packs and create havoc in their silicon pastures!
At some point they turn altogether ugly…
“Alright… with the sheep metaphor Arne!”
Well, you get the point...
The best OCs are found at the end of the linear part of the OC line…happiness. It's that simple...you just have to listen to
your CPU!
Just where the straight line turns into a hockey-stick...that's happiness in OCing...anywhere on the hockey-stick is only for bragging rights or short seriously cooled benching runs.
To quote the Viz "I run my system stock"
GPU ocing is similar…just nudge a voltage slider along and go up 13MHz…you can get the same sort of graph.
It’s worth mentioning that with a lot of GPUs, you can add the MHz without adding any voltage…see where stock voltage gets you on the OCing…free OCing…the best. Can happen on your CPU too.
If you are bench-marking then OCing your GPU RAM can squeeze points but it is
pointless for gaming. More damage is done to GPUs OCing RAM beyond where it wants to go than anything else. If you are seeing artifacts you are already in tears territory and probably getting lower scores, even in benching, than if you backed off a bit. A 24/7 GPU RAM OC is pointless.