Overclocking in 2025, do you do it?

[dxchase]

Do you spend a lot of time messing with how hard you can run your GPU/CPU/NVM.E etc? How often?

Personally, not much anymore, GPU wise. I used to do this heavily up until the coming months before i got a 4080super but havent done so outside of basic OC windows (using the hidden "ultimate" performance option etc.) settings and MOBO settings but thats really it. DLSS options usually do a good job giving me good frames.

Recently started to though after i saw a beta version of MSI afterburner worked better with 40xx and 50xx series but i honestly dont see much improvement, at least to keep taxing my card all the time worth

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Not anymore. Before I had a kid I had much more time on my hands and had fun with 3D Mark and other benchmarks, but these days I'm just running stock and I like my rig to be as quiet as possible.

 

[BeardyHat]

I did a couple of years ago with a laptop that had a dedicated MX150. Managed to get a pretty mild OC on the clock speed and a significant bump on the RAM.

Think I ended up picking up about 10fps in a few games.. It was worth it to spend the time on it. But otherwise, everything I own now is fast enough that it doesn't really matter. I'm pretty happy to just turn down settings and stuff these days.

 

[Alm]

I tried it twice I think, ever. Then decided it wasn't worth the risk to system stability.

 

[neogunhero]

Do you spend a lot of time messing with how hard you can run your GPU/CPU/NVM.E etc? How often?

Not much these days, I just don't like having to run stability tests. Ryzen CPUs have PBO in the Ryzen Master program, essentially a one-click OC solution. It seemed to reduce microstutter in some games for me, but I didn't run comprehensive tests to confirm. It was running my CPU at nearly 70c in the Skate closed playtest, after turning it off it went back down to around 45c. It never got that hot in other games with PBO turned on, but definitely did run hotter than with it turned off. The temp increase for such a minor performance boost was not worth it in my eyes.

MSI Afterburner also has an Auto OC button, but even with that I don't see much of an increase. It could be placebo, but it seems maybe the game is a bit smoother, less microstutters, but not worth the temp increase again. I just don't want to bother with manually OCing them.


XMP is a given, that should be enabled by everyone. Most times BIOS already has stable timings as default, no need to configure it beyond turning it on.

(using the hidden "ultimate" performance option etc.)

I enable this as well, though I have no idea if it really does anything for gaming performance compared to the standard High Performance setting.

 

[Pifanjr]

When I installed our newest, second-hand PC I took a look at the BIOS settings and pressed a button to automatically configure the best options for my machine. One restart later and my brand new PC wasn't giving any video output or responding to any keyboard commands any more.

Luckily I was able to reset the BIOS by removing the battery from the motherboard (and promptly dropping it in the case behind the PSU housing, forcing me to remove the PSU to retrieve the battery). After that I lost my nerve to mess with it any more. The only thing I did change was setting the RAM to 3200 MHz.

 

[dxchase]

One thing i did discover while taking a quick jaunt into overclocking that my bios was out of date by...well im unable to admit it lol but i got it updated

 

[Zloth]

I've never overclocked. I haven't displayed my frames/second in years!

One thing i did discover while taking a quick jaunt into overclocking that my bios was out of date by...well im unable to admit it lol but i got it updated

Yeah, same here. I got my BIOS updated recently to prep for Windows 11, but that was the first time I did that since I bought the PC.

 

[Colif]

GPU: its not worth the effort, most cards now released with very little headroom so even the OC cards are only a little faster than the non oc cards. Nvidia & AMD don't give away a lot for free any more.
Only cards that really give great benefits are all water cooled.

CPU: only once and by accident. Asus AI Suite was running a software overclock and It took me a while to work out why I was running so hot all the time.
It was a combo of the Overclock and a feature of Samsung Magician which had CPU running at 100% performance at all times.
I stopped both of those.

Ever since my pc has never felt slow enough to need an OC. That and I prefer to run my PC cool rather than hot.

Nvme? how do you overclock those??
seems you can Overclock the SATA drives - https://www.techpowerup.com/318057/ssd-overclocking-it-can-be-done-with-serious-performance-gains
As stated, the problem is heat.,.. nvme can be hot enough already without overclocking the controller

Ram: Yes... as well, XMP/EXPO are overclocks... so almost all my sticks...

I should update my BIOS but its not that old now. I just know there is a new one and since PC is new, it might help.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Now there's BIOS flashback on pretty much the majority of motherboards I think its good practice to update BIOS semi regularly. Theres a lot of compatibility and security updates as well as other improvements across versions these days and unless your doing it in a thunder storm then theres little to no danger of bricking anything anymore if you're careful.

 

[Colif]

Make sure you have bios flashback as an option before updating BIOS. Its only in the last 5 years or so that it is on most boards, but helps to check.

General rule is don't update them just because they exist. You can introduce problems that you didn't have before. Most times I only update it if I have to, like when swapping CPU to a newer one.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Make sure you have bios flashback as an option before updating BIOS. Its only in the last 5 years or so that it is on most boards, but helps to check.

General rule is don't update them just because they exist. You can introduce problems that you didn't have before. Most times I only update it if I have to, like when swapping CPU to a newer one.

Eh, thats what Im saying. I dont think its a problem anymore and theres only really benefits to doing it, can always search about the latest BIOS before updating it to see if there are any known problems.

I mean do whatever you want its probably no biggie, but I tend to update them whenever I remember to do it these days, there tends to be a lot of security fixes and it just makes me feel a bit safer. My board came out in maybe 2020 or something and theres several BIOS updates this year (several last year, one this year) fixing security vulnerabilities.

 

[Colif]

I should update it, I just always have something else I should be doing instead. Next time I do any work on PC I will flash it then - I have downloaded BIOS file onto my PC and I had put it on a USB to flash PC a few weeks ago, and then needed USB for something else.
Its on my to do list. PC works fine now, not in a rush to mess with it.
Current BIOS only 4 months old.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I think the old attitude was to never touch the BIOS because it was a big problem if the flash failed or whatever. I assume that as technology has improved the risk has gone down. Ive flashed mine dozens of times over the years without issue, although sample size of one and all that.

I guess if you live in an area with bad/very old power infrastructure theres more of a risk, but luckily for me theres no brown outs and we havent had a power cut in over 10 years of living in the city.

 

[Colif]

Maybe my sample size of 10 years helping at TH shows its not so common. I don't recall it happening very often. I did mainly help people with software problems in windows though.

You more likely to mess up windows installing a new driver... which is why I don't rush into that. Only one I keep up to date is GPU drivers, and maybe chipset
I am still resistant to doing it just because a new one exists. It does depend on age of PC... if its old it might not really change anything.

think i need to buy some new USB sticks before i do it. All my old ones are dying

 

[Johnway]

I've never overclocked a device tbh. have thought about it, but as others have pointed, the games are fairly minor to not be worth the candle. Some auto overclock and unless i had a comparison i wouldn't even see the benefits.