4.2 or 4.6 ghz OC ?

[Faisal altheyab 11]

Hello 

I currently have my i5 3570k overclocked @ 4.2 ghz with a cooler master evo fan . and I was thinking to overclock up to 4.6 ghz .  i will ofcourse buy a new water cooler (probably the h100i ) . so is it worth it to buy a new cooler and OC to 4.6 ghz or am i not going to see a performance boost in FSX from my current OC .

Cheers

[JHolst 2]

You don´t need watercooling, get this one:

 

http://www.thermalright.com/html/products/cpu_cooler/archon_sb-e_x2.html

 

Might even be better than all these stupid "watercoolers" out there..

[martin-w 3,235]

Agree!

 

Archon is amazing for a single tower desighn. Even matches the Noctua NH-D14.

[Howellerman 104]

Assuming your CPU is completely hammered, you would get 10-percent out of it. So, if you are used to struggling with 25 fps, you may get 27.5 fps. However, if your CPU is *not* completely hammered, you will get less improvement. 

 

I ran @ 4.6 on my i3770K for a while, but it was a bit hard on the hardware. So, I used the overclock "genie" on my MSI system board and run at 4.2. Much more cool, calm, and collected. For difficult areas, I could tell the difference in performance. Otherwise, I am still flying along @ 30fps or so, smoothly. 

 

Additional information: I have an H80 cooler, and when I was running 4.6 the core temps got into the high 70's. At 4.2 I never break past 60. Heat is the main enemy of electronics (well, outside of EMP), so I feel good about loosing that theoretical 10-percent.

[Noel 4,499]

Hello 

I currently have my i5 3570k overclocked @ 4.2 ghz with a cooler master evo fan . and I was thinking to overclock up to 4.6 ghz .  i will ofcourse buy a new water cooler (probably the h100i ) . so is it worth it to buy a new cooler and OC to 4.6 ghz or am i not going to see a performance boost in FSX from my current OC .

Cheers

That last 10% comes at a cost of rapidly decreasing power efficiency and increasing heat production, and accelerated CPU degradation if achieved using higher voltage and leading to higher temps.  As others have suggested as a practical matter it's not particularly meaningful performance-wise except in those situations where 10% improvement--and it will likely be slightly less than this, never more--could make a difference.  It's in that low-middle range, say 24fps at 4.2Gh versus 26fps.  When you get much lower than that, say 21fps or less, the extra 10% still doesn't get you into the promised land anyway.

[Faisal altheyab 11]

ok guys i think i wont OC to 4.6 i will stay with my stable 4.2 OC . thanks for the advice i think i can save a couple bucks now 

Regards

[martin-w 3,235]

I agree with Noel and Howellerman. Having said that, we are enthusiasts, so for many of us a tad more performance is worth the effort. There can be something quite satisfying in regard to extracting extra performance from our rigs. So it's a personal choice really. For me, yes I would go for it, as long as my system was stable, and the temperature of the components was within the margin I had deemed acceptable.

 

So my philosophy is not so much targeting a given frequency, more like targeting a temperature I deem acceptable.

 

To be honest, if 4.2 is sufficient for you, and you have an Asus motherboard, then all you need to do is flip the TPU switch on the motherboard, this will give you an instant and stable boost to 4.2GHz. I'd still run Prime or something though to test for stability.