Does overclocking save money?

I can run 2.0ghz processor at 2.5ghz, but in order to do that I must pay for good cooling and a good motherboard.

Why would it not make more sense just to buy the 2.5ghz processor and a cheap motherboard and use the stock cooling?

becuase if you bought a 2.4 gig procesosor a good mobo and stock cooling you could potentail get ~3.2, that is why!

DayUSeX said:

becuase if you bought a 2.4 gig procesosor a good mobo and stock cooling you could potentail get ~3.2, that is why!

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You're saying that cooling isn't important?

Some chips can hit pertty good oc with stock cooling , one good key is to and good air flow in your case

dead_man311 said:

one good key is to and good air flow in your case

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That's what I'm saying. Stock cooling is dinky heatsink and heatsink fan, one dinky case fan, one or two PSU fans.

Good airflow is like ten fans. (You have about 17, right?)

one thing to is the CFM of the fan and the size 80mm are good and are usally loud , 92mm move lil more and and some a loud, and 120mm and good for one they move good air at a low RPM and are some are quieter then others

you can have good air flow with like 4 to 5 fans , depending on there placement

and yup i got 17 fans

couple of case fans= $30
new mobo, cpu, all that jazz= $200+
and when you do upgrade you can use that same $30 dollars worth of fans on your next setup

i'd say it's worth it

: ) :

I would say that buying a $90 cpu(IE 2500+ when it came out) and overclocking it past a $200 cpu(3200+ when it came out) and only spending $20 on cooling saves money. Also, having faster stuff makes it that much longer before you need to upgrade.

Overclocking the most money wasting hobby, period. To obtain a certain speed, you'll end up buying a **** load of components that will go out of date in little less than 6 months, if you're lucky, and the cycle repeats itself.

In my case and the case of other people who do things like I do, no, overclocking doesn't save you anything, but costs much more.

I paid for a 1700+ DLT3C, then a couple months later, I bought an 1800+ DLT3C hoping for a better o/c, only got 100MHz better, now I'm planning on buying a 2500 Mobile to get another 100-200MHz.

I've had to buy much better RAM to run much tighter timings than just sticking some cheap stuff in here.

I've had to buy a nice PSU to make sure my O/C has nice stable voltages.

I bought a $20 blower to put on my $40 heatsink. I'm moving to a $500 water cooling system soon.

I bought a big case to put a lot of extra cooling/overclocking stuff into, rather than a small cheap case.

I pick through top-end hardware to get the top of the top-end to oc.

Do I enjoy the hobby? Yes. Do I save any money? No. Does it really matter to me? I'm not rich, but this is what I enjoy, so just as a person spends money on paintball equipment or skateboarding equipment or video game consoles, I spend money on enjoying myself.



But then, that's just me

Overclocking the most money wasting hobby, period. To obtain a certain speed, you'll end up buying a **** load of components that will go out of date in little less than 6 months, if you're lucky, and the cycle repeats itself

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Overclocking is mean't to churn out the most power available but most people here do it as a hobby pushing their CPU farther and farther, so who cares about this so "cycle" unless they are under strict constraints (im confident my fans and HS will still be awesome six months from now...).

FuzzyBallz said:

Overclocking the most money wasting hobby, period. To obtain a certain speed, you'll end up buying a **** load of components that will go out of date in little less than 6 months, if you're lucky, and the cycle repeats itself.

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If you think that then look over at www.head-fi.org (Especially in thier headphones section).

"Pure" overclocking can be/is cheaper than just going and buying a better chip. Many of us do it as a hobby like you said though, and so you get cought in a constant upgrade cycle to stay #1.

However, if you're not interested in the hobby portion right now, it should save you some money. Find a good chip, give it some slightly better cooling on a slightly better mobo, and you come out ahead Just watch out that you don't become addicted and fall into the dreaded upgrade cycle

JigPu

people are addicted to more speed they can't even feel....i mean really, can u feel the difference between a 2.3ghz amd and a 2.4? i cant, ive ran both. wat i can tell is the difference between a loud fan, and a quiet fan.

If you buy a nice set-up , and clock it to a decent speed. once your happy with it and dont get to picking about upgrading once a month. then i say you will save some money. and the system will last along time

Yuriman said:

I would say that buying a $90 cpu(IE 2500+ when it came out) and overclocking it past a $200 cpu(3200+ when it came out) and only spending $20 on cooling saves money. Also, having faster stuff makes it that much longer before you need to upgrade.

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That's basically exactly what I've done:

Barton 2500+ (back when they were next-to-top of the line) ~$90
Thermalright SK-7 Heatsink for CPU ~$18
Thermaltake SFII 80mm fan on HS ~$8

and that set knocked the 2500+ PAST 3200+ speeds.

As of recently, my SF2 died, however, so I'm considering getting a torin blower/transformer for about $22 plus shipping to stack on top of the SK-7...

In short, financially, you CAN save mucho money with prudent, informed overclocking.... but that cycle brought up can in fact make it a very expensive hobby (I can't tell you how many times i've had to tell myself "I'm happy with what I've got...")!

people are addicted to more speed they can't even feel....i mean really, can u feel the difference between a 2.3ghz amd and a 2.4? i cant, ive ran both.

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To your first argument:
A few hundred Mhz may not make much difference in the tasks you do, but, to anyone, it most certainly DOES make a difference, in dollars, when you're considering two processors of that sort of difference. Furthermore, you're ignoring those of us (including myself) who can pull off much MORE than just 100Mhz with their relatively inexpensive setups (2.5 to more than 3.2, by intel's standards)!

wat i can tell is the difference between a loud fan, and a quiet fan.

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To your second argument:
There's no rule saying that an overclocked system is inherently noisy. In fact, there are many OC'd systems out there (mine, for one, when I'm not gaming and cranking fan voltages), that are quieter/as quiet as most NON-overclocked systems out there... This again, is dependent on well-thought out investments/DIY mods which include, but aren't limited to, large diameter fans, fan controllers, acoustic dampening (can often be had for free when dumpster diving near post offices!), choosing cases and components not prone to vibrational noise, decoupling fans... the list goes on and on ! Most of these are also cost-effective and can even be virtually free if you've got the time and curiosity to learn about them - but if you've got that then you probably need to admit you've caught the overclocking-hobby bug!

I bought my 2100+ and overclocked it when I found out that my ancient KT7-RAID would support it, albeit at a lower FSB. Most of the components in my system are at least a year old, and some (video card, aforementioned motherboard) are three years old. I too bought an sk7 when they were insanely cheap (<$20) and am running at 2400+ speeds, which is plenty fast for me. I could push this chip even farther, but I'm happy with what I have. My case is not insanely loud, but my system's not insanely overclocked either. You can definitely spend a lot of money on this hobby, but you don't have to.

Ken

In my case a proposed oc'ed barton 2500 mobile will save me money.

OCing isn't that expensive, it gaining the knowledge to do it cheaply that is expensive.

Yeah you can easily save money. Just pick the right stuff, it doesn't have to be the best stuff either. look carefully at price gaps of products. ie

2.6 = 150
2.7 = 175
2.8 = 225
3.0 = 300
(Made this example up... in Ghz)
Lets say that the max headroom for this archetechture is 3.5 on highend air.
so the 2.6 is good but for a bit more you get a 2.7. The 3.0 is really expensive and the 2.8 is about 50$ more than the 2.7.

So take the 2.7 but 50 bucks worth of cooling into it and you might hit 2.9... nice!

For a better mobo, they aren't that much more for ones that OC well, and you often pay for extra features that are quite handy.