Is overclocking hard??

Well I'm about to make my first gaming rig, and I want to know. Is overclocking hard and or neccessary for me to do, or would it just be better for me to leave it alone

I don't recommend people to OC if they don't know much about the bios.

Most motherboard manufacturers make it ridiculously easy and you should find you're getting a substantial gain without having to resort to aftermarket coolers and stuff. Whether it's necessary is debatable. It's not really that often that games are bottlenecked by recent CPUs, although there is a handful of notable exceptions. Either way, tinkering with your system is very safe if you're doing it all in software, and it will teach you a lot about PCs.jimmyjammer69

[QUOTE="jimmyjammer69"]Most motherboard manufacturers make it ridiculously easy and you should find you're getting a substantial gain without having to resort to aftermarket coolers and stuff. Whether it's necessary is debatable. It's not really that often that games are bottlenecked by recent CPUs, although there is a handful of notable exceptions. Either way, tinkering with your system is very safe if you're doing it all in software, and it will teach you a lot about PCs.-GeordiLaForge-

I tried to look at guides, but none of them say how much I should raise the voltage and stuff like that. How will I know?zbdyx

[QUOTE="-GeordiLaForge-"][QUOTE="jimmyjammer69"]Most motherboard manufacturers make it ridiculously easy and you should find you're getting a substantial gain without having to resort to aftermarket coolers and stuff. Whether it's necessary is debatable. It's not really that often that games are bottlenecked by recent CPUs, although there is a handful of notable exceptions. Either way, tinkering with your system is very safe if you're doing it all in software, and it will teach you a lot about PCs.jimmyjammer69

The first time you do anything and everything is hard, but after some experience and knowledge (reading helps), its very easy, its almost second nature. Remember when you first rode a bike? ridiculously hard, but now, its automatic. OC is the same, can be hard, and its hardwork at the start (lots of reading), but then it gets easier and easier, and you know exactly what to touch and what to leave alone.

It's a waste of time on modern CPUs (eg Core 2 or better), which are so powerful to begin with, they probably aren't going to be a bottleneck. Most likely you'll just introduce instability and put needless strain on components for no appreciable difference in performance.

If you do decide to go through with it, put the FSB : DRAM ratio into 1:1, relax your memory timings, and slowly raise the FSB and voltage. Stability tests like Prime 95 will determine how much you need to raise the voltage. If it crashes, give it a little more juice until it's stable.

It's a waste of time on modern CPUs (eg Core 2 or better), which are so powerful to begin with, they probably aren't going to be a bottleneck. Most likely you'll just introduce instability and put needless strain on components for no appreciable difference in performance.

If you do decide to go through with it, put the FSB : DRAM ratio into 1:1, relax your memory timings, and slowly raise the FSB and voltage. Stability tests like Prime 95 will determine how much you need to raise the voltage. If it crashes, give it a little more juice until it's stable.

AFraud

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2009/09/08/intel-core-i5-and-i7-lynnfield-cpu-review/7
this should give you idea how overclock work vs stock performences
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=807&p=8

as far i seem to know it all about find a good guide how to overclock ur cpu progressivly which is long but as long you got Very Enthusiast AirFlow Cooling & Great motherboard it can be done easy but it still seem to take those 24 hour Cycle at Prime 95 to stress the pc until it stable the temperature mostly when you OC depend of Processor model

Such as Core i7 920 is Safe Running at 75C but you try to make it REach 70C & lower Apprently Beefdog as core i7 920 D0 Stepping at 4.2ghz under 70C most of the time

Well P4 & today Overclocking Is Very Very different it and most of peope who ad pentium 4 where too afraid to overclock and not having the right cpu cooler / motherboard and i heard alot of pre-build ad locked bios to prevent any mess with voltage i heard so tough it was less common now it a common fact that almost all pre-build pc does lock you from overclocking such as ACER / hP / Gateway / Dell

but any people who own build there self can overclock as long they get good airflow case / motherboard / cpu cooler / and read some guide. there are review on cpu that does help and expalin on bit-tech / legionhardware / legitreview / and OC forums it pretty easy with help of people to do it it just messing slowly with votlage / fsb to increase the mhz

such as lot of review did that with E8400 Stock 3.0Ghz to 4.0Ghz With Common D0 Stepping which now replaced ever since E8600 by E0 Stepping which does reach up to 4.5ghz with airflow cooling while mine is seem to reach on OC-board up to 4.9Ghz with AIRFLOW but it is dangerous voltage but stable according there test

But Topic Creator Should tell us is System in detail to get more information like is Processor / motherboard / Ram If they are DDR2 / DDR3 And there Latency such as C7 7-7-7-20 for DDR3 it also play a role he can go then to OC forums and read there guide for X processor

all recent processor get there offical Overclocking Forum & Help from several place Clunk.org ect. it as Lot of Overclocking information for dozen of processor The core 2 Quad / Amd Phenon II / Amd Athelon II / core i5 / Core i7 / Core i9 (soon)

I would not mind to try to help him find a forum for is specific processor and he would need to tell us is case and cpu cooler to get even more accurate information and maybe few people who does overclock around here can help him in the process since i ain't performed oc yet or anything related to it so id abstain from going into something i haven't experimanced and only read on guide :)

So anyway you can see a basic idea of how it work from here http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/06/overclocking-intel-core-i7-920/1