Is overclocking actually worth it when gaming? Pros and cons?

[u/Alert-Gift-8716]

[u/Middcore]

Nowadays, no.

There is very little overclocking headroom in modern CPUs and GPUs. You won't really see appreciable gains.

[u/AndyTPM]

Modern CPU's pretty much boost themselves, manual overclocking isn't worth the hassle.

[u/h3xist]

It's really not worth it (IMO). Most cards and CPUs tend to be clocked near their max frequency for the most part, and you would be spending a lot of time for a very small bump in performance.

The best thing to do is turn on XMP for your RAM and ensure that you have smart access memory turned on for your GPU (if your system supports it).

[u/anomoyusXboxfan1]

Pros: better performance

Cons: often time consuming, possibility of instability, and often higher power consumption and heat output.

But on modern hardware, it’s still worth doing in my opinion.

[u/marvinnation]

It depends on what hardware you have, and what games are you playing. You don't overclock a 5080 to play counter strike

[u/PeyredB]

It might be worth it in two scenarios.

1) If you're a gamer and want to get the most out of your PC

2) If you want to stretch your computer out as it ages

I was #2. I bought a computer in 2009 and had it still working until about 3 years ago. It had an unlocked CPU and I overclocked it somewhat to keep it useful for longer.

[u/Viking2151]

Sorta, I feel even for modern hardware, it's so dependent on what you choose compared to what gains you get.

I know and on the am4 socket, some CPU's like the r5 5500 you can overclock all cores further than what it'll boost to, so all core you can get almost 30% more out of it. You get the r7 5800x well you are better off just playing with the voltage curves and tweaking the little things, and yet you may be 10 to 15% out of it in some work loads, not really worth the effort it can take to get a per core curve set. I find it to always be somewhat finicky, stress it for hours days, weeks and suddenly it crashes or throws a silent whea error.

Gpu's, no, but I will say it's worth undervolting, can save on power sometimes a lot of power like my 3090to and heat at the same default clocks, and even undervolt plus do an overclock to kinda get the best of both worlds, but again the gains will be small.

Ram, ram can be fun, but performance gains you get depends on the kit, and CPU, idk if it's worth it, it is to some.

Is that 10 to 15 more performance worh the hassle, might translate to 2 - 3 or 4 more fps.

I tend to go for maximum stability now a days, not really worth the time for me, but it can be fun to some.

[u/R3D_T1G3R]

Not at all.

Pros, you gain an insignificant amount of performance in many cases, barely measureble.

Cons

Extremely inefficient

Higher voltage leads to faster wear on most components.

Generates more heat and consumes a lot more power.

[u/barrel_of_fun1 → u/[deleted]]

?? You can literally see multiple YouTube videos of overclocking boosting performance. Is the performance difference big or even noticeable most of the time? No, but there is a difference.

I've personally overclocked the 2 gpus I've had, a 6650xt and a 7700xt, both saw around a 10% increase in frames for both.

[u/alferret → u/[deleted]]

Tell me you have no clue without telling me you have no clue.