Hardware Overclocking/Boosting an Intel CPU - Need help

[Jiehfeng]

First of all, my rig:

So I was wondering, if I were to overclock or boost my CPU clock to 3.8GHz, if I can that is, will I see a good performance boost in my PC? Games and regular usage included (rendering too). And is it worth it?
If yes, then I will inquire further on "how" I can do it. Any help appreciated.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Would you see an improvement? Yes.
Is it worth it? IMHO, it is not enough to be justified for normal use. Except if you want to mess with hardware, the feeling of tweaking things and having that extra performance that the system was not designed for can be joyful.

 

[Jiehfeng]

Would you see an improvement? Yes.
Is it worth it? IMHO, it is not enough to be justified for normal use. Except if you want to mess with hardware, the feeling of tweaking things and having that extra performance that the system was not designed for can be joyful.

Ahh yes, like overclocking a GPU.
But when you say "improvement", by how much? And what terms are considered to be improved?

 

[sarkwalvein]

Regarding games, your CPU is quite strong already and I don't think it is bottlenecking things, so I won't expect to see a noticeably improvement.
Regarding rendering, you can expect an improvement of a magnitude lower than the clock increase of your CPU.
So, if you increase your clock by 12%, expect less than a 12% improvement in rendering speed.
Sorry I'm not too up to date, last time I OCed a CPU was more than a decade ago, I made a Celeron 300MHz run at 450MHz stable. That PoS was able to withstand a 50% OC without additional cooling.
For that horrible CPU it made the difference between GTA3 being playable or not.

 

[Fishaman P]

If that's an i5 4670, and not the K version, you'd be lucky to get 100MHz more out of that thing.

 

[Duo8]

Get a good cooler and push it to ~4.5GHz max.

Also

If that's an i5 4670, and not the K version, you'd be lucky to get 100MHz more out of that thing.

 

[Jiehfeng]

I don't think 4.5 can be accomplished, the Intel page for this CPU says max 3.8.
I see an option in my mobo's BIOS to change the clock speeds. Shall I try setting it to 3.8? Then I could check if things are better, but will that put my CPU at risk?
Leaving the temperature aside, cause if it's too hot I'll get a cooler.

 

[Duo8]

I don't think 4.5 can be accomplished, the Intel page for this CPU says max 3.8.
I see an option in my mobo's BIOS to change the clock speeds. Shall I try setting it to 3.8? Then I could check if things are better, but will that put my CPU at risk?
Leaving the temperature aside, cause if it's too hot I'll get a cooler.

It doesn't matter. You can go as high as you want as long as your system is still stable. That's the point of overclocking.

 

[Jiehfeng]

It doesn't matter. You can go as high as you want as long as your system is still stable. That's the point of overclocking.

But doesn't overclocking reduce the lifespan of what's overclocked? Or is it really a minor difference or not at all?

 

[vincentx77]

But doesn't overclocking reduce the lifespan of what's overclocked? Or is it really a minor difference or not at all?

So long as you keep your temperatures under control, it shouldn't make a HUGE difference in the lifespan of the CPU. If you go for a crazy overclock that's on the edge of what your chip can feasibly handle, then yeah, it can. But those kinds of overclocks are much more difficult to cool. I have the i7-3770k, which is a generation behind yours. My default clock speed is 3.5GHz, but I can O/C to 4.3GHz and still let my motherboard handle the voltage for me. Yes, I can push it a little further, but the most I've ever gotten is 4.5GHz. When I do that, I have to do all of the voltage tweaks myself, and my CPU still runs considerably hotter than it does at 4.3. Going from 3.5 to 4.3, for me, causes almost no change in temperature, and my system does get a nice little boost from the overclock. I can't feel the difference between 4.3 and 4.5 at all, so I don't even consider it worth bothering.
It's honestly not going to make much difference in games. It'll make some system tasks faster, and more professional tasks benefit from the extra speed, especially video editing and 3d rendering. Your graphics card is the biggest system bottleneck, but unless you get a better monitor, I'm not sure changing it would help you much.

 

[Originality]

There's a lot of mixed information regarding overclocking. Most non-K CPUs can't really be overclocked except by certain motherboards (I forget which). As for if it's worth it, that entirely depends on what you need the extra performance for. You won't see any difference in gaming, but in multi threaded tasks like rendering and folding, you will see a small increase.

Now overclocking a part beyond the specs it's designed to operate at will reduce it's lifespan. However, CPU failure is rare, and even modest overclocks are considered comparatively "safe". It's only when you push the limits and pump far higher voltages (ergo heat) into it that the chances of failure increase exponentially.

Also, don't forget that the CPU overclocks automatically with turbo boost. It's a very tiny overclock (usually up to 400Mhz) by disabling cores, but it's still there. If you're going to force it to run at a higher speed, disable turbo boost.

 

[Jiehfeng]

Well since there won't be any improvements in gaming, and only a slight performance increase in rendering, I think I'll go with not overclocking my CPU.
Thanks for the help and info guys!

On a side note though, regarding rendering, how long does it take to render an HD video? Like say using Vegas Pro.
Cause on my rig, rendering game footage takes longer than I expect. The rendering preview shows me that the rendering is processing much slower than how the video will actually be played, if you know what I mean.

 

[vincentx77]

Well since there won't be any improvements in gaming, and only a slight performance increase in rendering, I think I'll go with not overclocking my CPU.
Thanks for the help and info guys!

On a side note though, regarding rendering, how long does it take to render an HD video? Like say using Vegas Pro.
Cause on my rig, rendering game footage takes longer than I expect. The rendering preview shows me that the rendering is processing much slower than how the video will actually be played, if you know what I mean.

Rendering HD video is pretty intensive. It typically comes down to what settings you're using and how well the program/codec you're using is optimized. It probably will should take longer to render the video than to play it, but you may have some settings turned up too high that you don't really need. You could also be running low on RAM. I just depends on what you're doing with your videos, tbh.

 

[trumpet-205]

You mean encoding a video? That completely depends on what encoding parameter you are using.

As far as overclocking goes, non-K CPU can only be overclocked by adjusting BCLK. Problem is BCLK is tied to other stuffs like PCIe controller, SATA controller, etc. So you won't get very far with increasing it before all sorts of problem occurs.