timby
New member
I thought that I would pose these observances to this August crowd for edification as well as comments:
While I consider myself a rank novice compared to some on this board, I'm far from a nooby. My tech career started in the 70's as a bench tech. I got to handle some of the worlds first CPU's (4004, 8008, etc). Technology has come a long way since then. Several years back I decided to start building my own PC's and have built a few 486's. I played with OCing a little in those days but wasn't very successful as there weren't many that had the knowledge and we didn't have the hardware (water cooling, big heat sinks)to accomplish the task.
Enough of the past and on to meat of my topic. My previous build a single core AMD Athlon 64 for a combination of gaming as well as some other IT/Tech work. I successfully OC'd my processor nearly 500 mHz on a stock air cooled heat sink. Well this got my feet wet and I decided to embark even further on any future builds.
Last year I was able to accumulate what I would call a small fortune, considering I'm a displaced IT person, to build a better more potent rig than my old AMD 64. So I decided, after some considerable gleaning on the internet, to build a new i7 rig. After much consternation and research my meanderings brought me to building an i7 - 860 rig as it gave me the best bang for my buck considering my limited funds. So I purchased some of my components form a local brick and mortar as well as New Egg. I got the CPU at a great price (less than $200 US) and a HAF 932 for a steal. The rest I bought from New Egg. After expending nearly all of my resources, I managed to complete the build (with little difficulty).
Once the machine was up and running, I decided to delve into the dark arts of some serious OCing. With the help of my online resources I was able to OC my new rid to 3600 with no problems. The Corsair H50 seemed to take my little OC well in stride. While I'm sure TT will be aghast that I didn't decide on a Noctua for my cooling chores, I had a stable rig.
I then decided that maybe I could go a step further and see what this new rig would really do. So after some more time on the web, I learned the i7 - 860 could go a little further. So upping the BCLK I did. This brings me to my observations. Keeping temps in mind, I noticed that I could vary my multiplier and base clock and get similar results. To my untrained eye the only differences were the temps. This got me to thinking, what else was I missing. Why would folks only use BCLK to OC as opposed to adjusting the multiplier? Also, I noticed what I considered a strange phenomenon. It seems that while the results of the OCing seem similar they effected the power usage of the rig in different ways. It seems that if I were to utilize a lower multiplier and more BCLK the power usage on the CPU whet down nearly 20 watts. Also, the effect on the CPU temps when utilizing Prime95 were significantly different. The changes lowered my temps several degrees.
So has anyone really checked out the effects of their OCing on system resources? Certain combinations of OCing, utilizing different multipliers and BCLK settings, resulting in significant reductions in power usage. So this is the crux of my questions. Dose anyone ever truly monitor these effects? Or do we just see how much performance we can eek out of our current configuration with out any thoughts on what effects they may have on system resources? Could we get the same performance without upping the strain on the PSU and in turn reducing the stress on other components in the rig (due to heat)? Would we be able to cut power consumption significantly enough to cut wear and tear on other components as well as reduce heating our environs (computer rooms)? As I noticed form many of TT's reviews OCing his systems seems to greatly effect the ambient temps of his computer testing facility.
So I open this topic for comments in hopes it will generate some thoughts concerning my observances. Also, please excuse the length of this topic.
Thanks
While I consider myself a rank novice compared to some on this board, I'm far from a nooby. My tech career started in the 70's as a bench tech. I got to handle some of the worlds first CPU's (4004, 8008, etc). Technology has come a long way since then. Several years back I decided to start building my own PC's and have built a few 486's. I played with OCing a little in those days but wasn't very successful as there weren't many that had the knowledge and we didn't have the hardware (water cooling, big heat sinks)to accomplish the task.
Enough of the past and on to meat of my topic. My previous build a single core AMD Athlon 64 for a combination of gaming as well as some other IT/Tech work. I successfully OC'd my processor nearly 500 mHz on a stock air cooled heat sink. Well this got my feet wet and I decided to embark even further on any future builds.
Last year I was able to accumulate what I would call a small fortune, considering I'm a displaced IT person, to build a better more potent rig than my old AMD 64. So I decided, after some considerable gleaning on the internet, to build a new i7 rig. After much consternation and research my meanderings brought me to building an i7 - 860 rig as it gave me the best bang for my buck considering my limited funds. So I purchased some of my components form a local brick and mortar as well as New Egg. I got the CPU at a great price (less than $200 US) and a HAF 932 for a steal. The rest I bought from New Egg. After expending nearly all of my resources, I managed to complete the build (with little difficulty).
Once the machine was up and running, I decided to delve into the dark arts of some serious OCing. With the help of my online resources I was able to OC my new rid to 3600 with no problems. The Corsair H50 seemed to take my little OC well in stride. While I'm sure TT will be aghast that I didn't decide on a Noctua for my cooling chores, I had a stable rig.
I then decided that maybe I could go a step further and see what this new rig would really do. So after some more time on the web, I learned the i7 - 860 could go a little further. So upping the BCLK I did. This brings me to my observations. Keeping temps in mind, I noticed that I could vary my multiplier and base clock and get similar results. To my untrained eye the only differences were the temps. This got me to thinking, what else was I missing. Why would folks only use BCLK to OC as opposed to adjusting the multiplier? Also, I noticed what I considered a strange phenomenon. It seems that while the results of the OCing seem similar they effected the power usage of the rig in different ways. It seems that if I were to utilize a lower multiplier and more BCLK the power usage on the CPU whet down nearly 20 watts. Also, the effect on the CPU temps when utilizing Prime95 were significantly different. The changes lowered my temps several degrees.
So has anyone really checked out the effects of their OCing on system resources? Certain combinations of OCing, utilizing different multipliers and BCLK settings, resulting in significant reductions in power usage. So this is the crux of my questions. Dose anyone ever truly monitor these effects? Or do we just see how much performance we can eek out of our current configuration with out any thoughts on what effects they may have on system resources? Could we get the same performance without upping the strain on the PSU and in turn reducing the stress on other components in the rig (due to heat)? Would we be able to cut power consumption significantly enough to cut wear and tear on other components as well as reduce heating our environs (computer rooms)? As I noticed form many of TT's reviews OCing his systems seems to greatly effect the ambient temps of his computer testing facility.
So I open this topic for comments in hopes it will generate some thoughts concerning my observances. Also, please excuse the length of this topic.
Thanks
....TO GOOGLE! lol
