Overclocking for Games?

[Andycrunch74]

Hi Guys

Ive been out the PC building game for a while and looking to get back and build a nice gaming rig, i want to use it for Primarly casual gaming although i do plan to start streaming. Ive never really looked at overclocking and do not know the first thing about it however i wanted to know if there was any benifit to overclocking for gaming? My plan is to either get a skylake i5 6600k or i7 6700k and a decent board (asus pro gaming or Hero) depending on my budget, now if i was to overclock as i dont know the first thing i would be buying a Motherboard bundle from a website that already overclocks it for you, however as you know the cost of all this is a lot higher. Also after thinking it over and already chatting on the watercooling forum i think i would be cooling the CPU by using the Noctua NH14 or 15, id love a AIO but would always be worrying about wether or not it will fail or leak.

so my question is would a overclocked bundle using an air cooler give me a decent OC speed and give me a better gaming experience or am i better off just getting a non K CPU and saving some money to spend elsewhere on my rig? (i have a GTX 970 and will be getting DDR4 3000mhz if that helps)

Apologies for the long and newbie type question.

Just realized ive posted this in the wrong forum section! so apologies again

Cheers

Andy

 

[WYP]

No need to apologize, we all had to start somewhere.

Overclocking will improve your CPU performance but when gaming the most important part is always the GPU.

If you can give us a budget and what the specs of the parts you have/ your current system is we can very easily make up a good list of parts for you.

As an owner of an ASUS Maximus VIII Hero and a 6700K myself I can say it is a great board for overclocking, so it is a good choice.

If you let us know what kind of budget you are working with we will help you make the most out of it.

 

[Kilbane]

To be honest, for gaming, non 'K' chips are more than adequate. My 4670K running stock will still give a good gaming performance. However running an OC @4.5Ghz does see a small fps gain, whether or not a 5% or so fps increase is worth it, is down to you .

Personally I run as high a stable OC as possible because I like to. Also because I do a lot of photo and video editing, the higher clock speed has massive benefits. Modern chipsets and CPU's make attaining a decent OC easy, even as a beginner. Have a look through the forum and you will see plenty of guides and advice previously given.

The fear about an AIO is a bit foolish to be honest. I personally have used AIO's from both Corsair and Fractal. Both have served their purpose well without any issues. My H100i is now in a second system and is still going strong after almost 2 1/2 years.

OC on air is more than possible with a decent cooler. GTX 970 is a good card, I run one myself. Have you considered Z97? Save money and never worry about the whole CPU bending issues.

 

[Andycrunch74]

thanks for your replies:

WYP, my budget is around £700-£1000. I dont have a system or any parts so far other than a GTX970 and a 128GB SSD. Im just in the planning stage at the moment so any help with planning a build would be apreciated. im looking to run this rig for at least 4-5 years only really upgrading the graphics card when needs be.

Have you considered Z97?

isnt this older tech and not worth it if im looking to run this rig for along time?

The fear about an AIO is a bit foolish to be honest

maybe you are right but i have very bad OCD and tend to worry alot if im honest so id always worry about this where as a DH14 or 15 would literally just be installing and forgeting about.

 

[TPC]

In the beginning you could start with a cooler like the Scythe Ashura with which I made really good experiences or the Scythe Mugen. Both very beefy and capable of overclocking also half the price of a NH-D

 

[Dawelio]

I used to have a massive anal OCD regarding water cooling and AIO. Today, it's hard for me to go air cooling... Unless I really have to. Which I do in the Silverstone RVZ01 case.
My H100i doesn't fit inside of it at all, the cooler is half the size of the case itself.

 

[Damien c]

What OS are you going to use?

The reason I ask is that if you want to stream and use OBS then you could run in to issues with high cpu usage, which is something I have found on my system.

OBS with a webcam and no game uses 75% of the cpu with a game running just in the background it uses the cpu to 100% and I believe this is a issue with, windows 10 as one of the streamers I watch has gone back to windows 7 because of not being able to use OBS on windows 10 with anything less than a 6 core cpu.

I have not tested windows 7 or 8.1 yet, but I have had to change OBS to use the NVENC setting under the encoding, section in order to be able to stream but the quality is not as good.

As it is I am watching a few items on Ebay which are LGA 2011 8 core Xeons and they are being sold for around £450 for a pair running at 2.6Ghz each, and these will be used in a streaming/editing system, but I am not sure about them as I cannot find a Xeon when searching google that matches that speed, and these cpu's are from america.


This one comes from china and seems to good to be true.




Have you considered X99 instead of Z170?

 

[barnsley]

What OS are you going to use?

The reason I ask is that if you want to stream and use OBS then you could run in to issues with high cpu usage, which is something I have found on my system.?

Windows 10 currently has issues with certain codecs (namely x264) but OBS (and Xsplit as well) are working on it. TBH if you're streaming using just your CPU, especially anything above 720p 30fps with a decent bitrate, you should aim to have a large amount of physical cores, not a hyperthreaded quadcore. As with most problems on 10 its a bit random as to who it affects.

/back on topic

Corsair will cover the costs if one of their AIOs leaks and breaks your PC. You have nothing to worry about with using AIOs unless you're one of those people who never cleans out their pc..

 

[Andycrunch74]

Hi Damien

appreciate the comments on OBS. Im looking to run windows 8.1 and leaving windows 10 for a while as i also was watching a regular streamer who was having issues with windows 10. I wasn't going to start using a webcam at first to build my confidence up.

I did consider x99 however that bumps the price up a lot especially if i dont end up continuing to stream.

 

[BigDaddyKong]

Are you guys using OBS Studio, or the vanilla version? I have streamed BF4 and Crysis 3 with my 3770K on stock clocks without a single problem on Win 10. With having separate chat windows open, watching my game stream on the third monitor, I doubt I hit 60% usage in games. All that was on my old 7970 GPU and OBS vanilla.

 

[Damien c]

Yep vanilla OBS with game capture, webcam and twitch alerts when using cpu it's hit 100% when I use the GPU it barely hits 50%.

 

[Andycrunch74]

Corsair will cover the costs if one of their AIOs leaks and breaks your PC. You have nothing to worry about with using AIOs unless you're one of those people who never cleans out their pc..

I always give my pc a air dusting one a month so hopefully if it does break i can notice it early. thank you, im slightly coming round to the idea of an AIO now lol

so for streaming would x99 be better then to cope with OBS? and the games etc

 

[barnsley]

I always give my pc a air dusting one a month so hopefully if it does break i can notice it early. thank you, im slightly coming round to the idea of an AIO now lol

so for streaming would x99 be better then to cope with OBS? and the games etc

AIOs are great . I never was that keen on them until I had my first one but now I don't think I can go back!

X99 is much more worth it if you can afford it. Especially for streaming and productivity.

 

[Andycrunch74]

so depending then if i choose x99 or z170, would it be worth paying the money to OC it for gaming and streaming or is it worth saving the money and spending on better hardware?

 

[Damien c]

Not sure about current CPU's, but based of my experience with cpu's since the I7 2700K there is barely any improvement in terms of fps when using a overclocked cpu, but sometimes they do feel more smooth.

You would get better performance normally iirc from a overclocked GPU than a overclocked CPU.

That is why my cpu stays at stock speed unless I am rendering a video as I only receive around 5fps more when running my cpu at 4.6Ghz compared to stock.