OverClocking

cmmpro1 · 23 Sep 2018

What is meant by overclocking and what does it do?

Helmut · 24 Sep 2018

All it means is operating some electronic components in a PC at a clock speed over what they were designed for.
This also increases power consumption and temperatures, and eventually to instability, shorter life without additional cooling.

The gains in performance are very small, certainly not worth the effort for most users.

Fanatical Gamers will say different.

Steve C · 24 Sep 2018

You can get some performance gains particularly by overclocking the CPU - but be careful to use good CPU cooing and monitor the CPU temperature under load. I only do modest overclocking of the turbo frequencies allowed under load.

CountMike · 24 Sep 2018

Once upon a time. overclocking meant doing physical changes to MB and other components, changing crystals for frequency adjustment and resistors for voltage. Nowadays most MBs, CPUs and GPUs have some kind of OC built in. Simply said, when they make a let's say a CPU, not all of them can run at same frequency while holding the voltage and heat (TDP) at designated minimum although most of them can so they just choose that minimum to designate their "speed".
Most also have a"Turbo" mode which is kind of automatic overclocking of one, some or all cores. Overclocking them to that limit so they work at highest turbo speed all the time is quite safe but somewhat of waste of energy,
OC-ing further than that requires some other considerations, like capability of MB and it's power section (VRM =Voltage Regulation Module), better (than factory supplied) CPU and case cooling etc. It carries some risks with it and higher you go it produces diminishing gains with it.
Keep in mind that some CPUs and MBs are locked so no OC apart from Turbo mode is possible. Any OC should be done thru BIOS, software OC is not reliable.
Other parts that could be OC-ed are also RAM and Graphic card although some monitors can also be OC-d too
RAM usually has some OC profile built in (XMP = eXtreme Memory Profile), also type of planned, automatic OC which can be enabled in BIOS.
GPUs are also overclockable but mostly thru software (MSI Afterburner for instance).
Although mostly complicated and carrying some risks with it, careful OC can prolong usage of such system by providing good performance longer without having to upgrade parts or whole system.