What got you into overclocking?

[grumperfish]

I had a P4 and I read on some site that it could go faster with a different board and heatsink (A late start for sure).

Still have the chip running my firewall actually.


Edit: I think I mostly just like the way custom aircooling looks. Any savings I make by overclocking tend to get swallowed by ridiculous heatsinks.

 

[Archer0915]

Cars. I am a natural tweaker in the pursuit of power.
My first PC was an 80386SX (first computer was a C64) and I spent more time in BIOS messing with memory timings (NO oc option because the jumper was maxed) trying to get better frame rates in my DOS games than I did playing the games. I moved from 70ns simms to 60ns @ $70 a meg. I then purchased an 80387 for about 200 bucks and an OAK windows accelerator card with1024K of memory.

All I can say is I laughed at people that jumped on the $1000+ 486SX wagon and I smoked them; because most came with only 2 megs of ram.

Anyway I was hooked because I had the fastest thing on the block until the internet became wide spread. Well it was a natural progression until I reached a point that it became impossible not to OC.

 

[Deathhorse]

being poor got me into overclocking. See when you poor you have to buy cheap chips that you can overclock with moar volts. Between here and overclock.net i was able to achieve a 100 percent OC on a E2140.

 

[bennoculus]

The desire to get free performance out of a chip got me into it. Just like the majority of us.

 

[manu2b]

Well, for me OCing is like tweaking 2 strokes dirt bikes: more power for free!

 

[ihrsetrdr]

...back when I bought an Amptron PIII motherboard and dropped my 600mhz PIII in it; when it booted up it showed as 900mhz.

Motherboard died within a couple hours. This is when I learned of the wonderful world of jumpers, and the concept of checking them, prior to booting up a board purchased used off ebay.

 

[Jaydu]

I think its the same reason why I fix up my cars for a bit more power. I like tweaking stuff weather it be a car, computer my stereo anything that can be made better I have to make it my own. I have always taken things apart to look at how they are made and in my later years I now take them apart to make them stronger faster better and put them back. Its a good sense of accomplishment.

 

[pan1cattack]

My insatiable appetite for more power and getting the most possible performance from my hardware.

 

[Pvt.Dancer]

I found OCF when i was looking for hardware advice on a new build seeking the wisdom of those better than I and found it. but I first started ocing with my first ever build with an AMD Athelon 2500+ honestly it was pure quriosity i saw the numbers and i barely knew what they ment and just kept going i eventualy killed it pretty fast but it was a great start after that I slowed down afraid i was going to kill something. I started over clocking again after coming here and seeing all the inspiring numbers and builds i couldnt resist.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

a college buddy got a wrong order from newegg, it included two processors and mobos. he called and they said they only sent him one of each, packing slip said that also... so I bought the extras with money I didn't have really. it was ramen for me.

I didn't know anything about computers hardly, this was 2001. started reading here to figure out what to do with them, and improve my starcraft performance. got hooked by reading the front-page, then the forums won over my undieing loyalty once i saw everyone was so selfless and helpful... I didn't ask many questions, but I read almost everything on the forum, and just tried to research to answer everyone's questions. I didn't know what to ask, so learning the answers to everyone else's questions got me up to speed pretty good.

I remained a casual Overclocker until last year at the end of November when I attended our benching meetup in Tyler, TX. I got bit by the liquid nitrogen bug, and now I overclock just for the sake of seeing how fast I can make things go. I don't have time to fiddle with the PC's I actually use, but when I have a few hours here and there, I piece together the hardware on the workbench and pour the cold stuff on it.

 

[Deltafan909]

More performance for Microsoft Flight Simulator X. The amount of money I've dropped for that game...

 

[raident30]

more FPS on games and the excitement of overclocking itself!

 

[trekky]

a friend said he overclocked so i tryed it out and i LOVE IT!!! now im bugging other ppl to overclock!

 

[appelsos]

actually a weird connection i guess:

into tuning/modding cars, found out you can "mod" computers. got hooked.

 

[MGF Derp]

Like so many people have said, just a natural tendency to push it till it breaks.

 

[hokiealumnus]

Could have sworn I posted in this thread. Oh well, never hurts to self-aggrandize more, no?

I started in this crazy game back in 2006'ish. Our faithful P4/MSI machine died before I ever overclocked it (turned out to be a good board for it too, sadly). So I bought all the parts for a new system and couldn't for the life of me get it working properly. Turned out, like so many others I helped afterward, I didn't set RAM voltage & timings properly.

Anywho, I sought that help at the abit forums. The regulars there were quite nice and started me off on the overclocking journey (and forum addict journey). That extra FPS for first person shooters was enormously important with an E4400 and 7600GT. Then I joined The Raptor Pit, where Raymo helped me out more than he knows. Somewhere along the line I became a mod at TRP as well as the dearly departed abit forums (RIP abit).

Shortly after joining TRP I signed up at OCF. One thing led to another and somehow they got me signed up as an editor/reviewer for the frontpage and then suckered me into becoming a mod. The rest is history (with a healthy side of torturing hardware because it's fun).

 

[Deanzo]

I had an AMD K6-450, which was soo slow next to my friends Intel P500Mhz.
And overclocking was a way to close in on it, but with such a sad cpu, it never really helped.
But that was the start of my overclocking.

 

[Diggrr]

I'd built a computer in the spring, and with summer's temps I found water cooling as the solution.
A member here invented the CPU block I copied successfully (before commercial blocks/rads/pumps were available), so by early winter I joined...I live in the boondocks, so there's really not many local who can keep up with computer torturing.

I'm more of a hardware guy and have never really OC'd much.
I dig the water!

 

[corruption]

I started when I found my PC lacking guts when trying to play Battlefield 1942 and wanting higher FPS in CounterStrike. I pushed my 450Mhz Slot 1 P3 to 557MHz. (The IDE bus was locked to the FSB and any further I would have HD corruption. If I remember correctly the bus was running at just over 40MHz.) I pushed my Radeon 7500 as far as it would go....which wasn't far....poor thing, didn't have a chance and didn't know it.

 

[grumperfish]

I pushed my Radeon 7500 as far as it would go....which wasn't far....poor thing, didn't have a chance and didn't know it.

My favorite overclocking experience was with the 9000pro (128mb IIRC) I had to use for awhile. Strapped a V1 cooler to it with dual 80mm Deltas and overclocked it way beyond tolerances. Played through Oblivion with it using the Oldblivion shader hack. It wasn't pretty, but I was not going to miss out on it given that my x850pro had died the week before it came out.