The true necessity of competitive benchmarking

I OC an i5-6600k using my MB setting of 20% CPU upgrade.

It drastically increases my performance from 3.5 to 4.3 GHz. I've noticed when I OC from 4.3 GHz 4.5 GHz there are no noticeable gains in any of my GPU/CPU intensive gaming. But there is occasional difference in stability, but rarely. And also the obvious increase in CPU temperature.

So I took it down from 4.5 to 4.3 to make my CPU last longer (hopefully 10+ years *worst case scenario)

My question, is that I have considered contributing to the benchmarking team to see how far my CPU can really go, and to better understand the benefits of pushing it.

Can anything here help me. Before I go trying out 10 programs to push my CPU for the benchmarking team, I'd like to better understand the pros and cons.

I consider myself a 20+ year experience PC user, who wants to advance in knowledge, but do so wisely.

Not sure what pros and cons you're looking for...
It's necessary because in almost any hobby there exists a way to denote yourself as "the best", this is how many choose to for computers.

Basically, overclockers community enabled me to build my first PC, which is a valuable contribution to a wonderful cause, which is Myself. I want to give back.


I don't want to run my PC into the ground through stress testing it, causing -3 years on the lifespan of my computer.

Pros/Cons means, I want to understand, that yes, I know all OCing has a risk with it, but are the majority of OCing benchmarking newcomers able to contribute without permanently damaging PC components.

Best I can tell you then is, if you're afraid to break it, don't bench it.
Voltage and heat kill. To be a productive bencher your hardware will see plenty of both.
I have hardware that I've benched for more than 10 years. By the same token, I have benched hardware that didn't last 10 seconds before it was dead.

Here is a tip after the mobo overclocked it, Set the voltage to 1.2 if its on auto, If you cant boot or you crash in games increase it a little to 1.25 if you crash again increase it to 1.3 and so on.
And you cant know if your CPU is 100% stable so you should stress test it for atleast 15 mins in Prime95, Watch your temps when you stress and i would keep it above 80 but its ok if its not going above 90, Butyou should note: The cooler your CPU runs the longer it lives. With your cooler you should be able to overclock even to 4.7 with decent temps but i wouldnt recommend it since you want your CPU to last at least 10 years...
BUT running it at lets say 4.7 for a few days wouldnt do any harm and shouldnt shorten your CPUs life.

I think Mr.Scott summed it up quite well. There's always a risk when overclocking and benchmarking takes that a step further. The harder you push your system the better scores you will get, so there's an incentive to go just a bit faster etc.. when you only need a few points to advance in the standings. In the end if you really want to push things you have to accept the fact that something you're using might die, it's that simple.
On the other hand if you're curious, create an account at hwbot.org with overclockers.com as your team, download some off the benchmarks and try them out. It's a good way to compare your system to other similar ones and it's fun. Here's the page with all the HWBot benches and pay attention to the rules. They will tell you what is required in your screenshot to have a qualifying submission. If the SS is incorrect the submission will be removed as invalid.
Have some fun with it and don't be afraid to ask for some help/pointers, there's a lot of guys here with tons of knowledge and willing to help. Benchmarking has taught me a lot more about my systems and how to tune them then simple overclocking ever possibly could have. I push things quite hard and have only lost a bit of hardware, the majority of that was a result of my in-experience or just carelessness/rushing things.

I was hesitant myself when I first started a little less than a year ago, mainly because I did not want to break anything. Needless to say I have broke some things mainly through my own stupidity or pushing something for those few extra points.

If you want to give it a try but not risk your main rig you can always pick up a cheap system off of eBay and play with that first. That way if you break it you are not as worried about it.

First lesson I learned the hard way. Do not bench on your main OS. Get yourself a cheap ssd or hdd and bench on that because you will eventually break an OS.

Well enough of my rambling but I for one look forward to a new teammate to compete with here at the rodeo.

Lochekey said:

I was hesitant myself when I first started a little less than a year ago, mainly because I did not want to break anything. Needless to say I have broke some things mainly through my own stupidity or pushing something for those few extra points.

If you want to give it a try but not risk your main rig you can always pick up a cheap system off of eBay and play with that first. That way if you break it you are not as worried about it.

First lesson I learned the hard way. Do not bench on your main OS. Get yourself a cheap ssd or hdd and bench on that because you will eventually break an OS.

Well enough of my rambling but I for one look forward to a new teammate to compete with here at the rodeo.

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All this gets a huge +1.

I'll +1 all that also, fresh installs all the time just sucks.
+1 also for used stuff to learn benching.
I don't bench on the team but benching here in the dark and then asking for help here in the forum has tought me how to find out if something actually helps or hinders me in what I do with my rigs, it also helps when I am seeking help on software forums to be able to pick out if some info is good stuff or the guy's full of fluff.
to pay my dues back, I don't really help much with benching but I try to help where I can.

Seems like you want the best of both worlds ?

To be effective at benching you have to take risks.

Hell if we could meet i would throw you a CPU and RAM i found for free .

I do not deal with shipping cause its a headache.

Well, I've benched my daily drivers with insane voltage on air/water: my 4790k saw 1.65v on air for XTU, and my 5820k in sig up to 1.59v... Both are still alive, lol!

You can benchmark anything you want. You do not have to push your hardware to some extreme max to produce a benchmark number.

Want big points, you want big cooling (and risk).

Don't want risk? You can benchmark your daily clocks pretty safely.

Dry Ice is fun though. has it's risks and rewards like anything.