Just a thought I've been having...

[Mgutierrez33]

Admittedly, I am still very much new to the realm of high performance/enthusiast computing and overclocking. I have only been trying my hand at it for about two years now and I am just now getting a decent grasp on how to do it, what not to do, what to watch out for, how to monitor and test for stability and temps, but I would say that given my lack of legitimate education and experience in the matter I am doing rather well for myself... only had two things break on me in the process of learning: a GT 335M chip in my Alienware M11X R2 (my first official attempt... I went a bit extreme with that one x-P), and a GTX 560 Ti-448 by Zotac, which failed because of some faulty capacitors on the board, not because of an unstable or dangerous overclock. As a result of this, anyone who I talk to about overclocking immediately condemns it. One of my good friends, who is in the process of landing his IT certifications, seems to be of the mind that any time I have an issue with anything PC oriented that it is the result of my "damn overclocking" (admittedly, he has the mind of an 8 year old). Even my girlfriend, who does her damndest to be supportive of this endeavor of mine, kind of downplays it in the process of talking about it.

Maybe I am taking this all a bit too seriously. I guess it's all because I am currently seeking a degree in Computer Engineering, and I feel like this kind of ties into everything, considering that I ultimately intend on pursuing a career with one of the major video chip producers (I don't care which one, they're both great in my book). A lot of QQ about nothing, I know. I guess it just bothers me that people don't seem to understand why I would take something as potentially "costly" as this so seriously. Everyone has passions that drive them, yet mine always seem to not be important. This same thing happened when I went to automotive school to try my hand at being a professional technician and was trying to actively pursue a career in high performance automotive engineering and tuning.

Again, perhaps this is all a bunch of QQ about nothing. Maybe I picked the wrong place to try to vent about this, as there tends to be a lot of trolling done everywhere I go, as if they are irrevocably drawn to me. I guess I am posting this all here because I figure the lot of us that ARE here have been in a similar situation at some point in their lives to some capacity or another, and since I IMAGINE we all share a common interest that some people might understand. I don't think I'm really even looking for any comments or advice per say. Truth be told I don't know WHAT I intended by posting this... I guess I just needed to vent int he best way I know how: written word. Often times my voice fails me or falls on deaf ears, so this tends to be the default.

I guess this is the end of the rant. I've re-typed this last paragraph so many times, I don't even rightly know how to end it lol. I do feel better now though. To all of you on the TTL crew, OC3D, and the forum community, thank you for providing such a strong community and for providing a place for people like me to continue to pursue their passions and dreams in the midst of others who feel much the same way.

 

[Ya93sin]

I personally knew nothing advanced about the different components of a custom computer, but the following things helped me:
-Reading reviews, AnandTech, silentpcreview, OC3D, bit-tech, those kinds of websites. They will often give a lot of background information which helps you to understand how exactly the component being reviewed works.

-Watching YouTube videos and reviews, especially TTL/OC3D videos, it's pretty in depth, I think if you listen to Tom when he does all the overclocking you will get a thorough idea of how to correctly overclock, what things to overclock and what not to risk.

-My PSU actually failed and I had several replacements, finding out what had gone wrong from manufacturer help forums (Corsair) was useful for me, I learned a lot about how things worked.

At the end of the day, if you are very keen on computer engineering, then read about it. Look at the history of how computers have developed, how the circuitry has changed, but also look at the future, what is next to hit the PC market. General knowledge is great to have imo.

Then if you are really keen just study component by component, look at how everything works and you can go in to whatever depth you want afaik, there will always be a reviewer who goes into more depth on certain components.

Overclocking itself isn't costly so long as you make sure you stay within some sort of boundary, a couple of months after a CPU is released then generally there will be some sort of "max" voltage to not go above, but iirc as you go past a threshold, you see performance gains get lower and lower and at that point is when I would stop.
If you OC in moderation it is fairly difficult to go wrong, but one thing is for sure-make sure you invest in a great CPU cooler, fans and a case to keep temperatures down.

In terms of cost, most tech things are expensive, if you aren't damaging hardware then you have the choice to re-sell and not keep the hardware you don't use. But if it is your passion, then you should pursue it, learning about computers and how it all fits together is going to be very helpful if you want to take Computer Engineering. You just might need an extra job to support the financing of it as you go through university.