Worth the overclock?

[Alexander Lynskey 1105924]

Is it worth overclocking my intel core 2 quad q6600, to over 3ghz, preferably to 3.2-3.4?

I havnt bought the computer yet, but will it make a differance running resource intensive addons?(pmdg, orbx etc)?

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

as long as you have the cooling sure will.

 

cooling is key tho, you dont want it overheating otherwise youll be in the market for a new pc soon after been there done that

[Alexander Lynskey 1105924]

Thanks Ernesto.

I'm getting the thermatake (spelling?) 120 extreme and another fan to add to the six Im the computer.

What performance increase should I expect to see?

[Justin Marcus 1131402]

Ive got the same cooler on my i7 - works realy well.

If your getting ~1000mhz increase you'll be very very happy with the perf increase in FSX. Should be able to turn most dials quite abit more to the right.

[Ivan Kovacevic 920456]

As said before, cooling is the key

I'm not much of a fan of ThermalTake products, since they are usually a peg or two inferior to some other coolers, which are almost equal in price, but far superior in performance.

 

For example, I saw a 15*C improvement from the ThermalTake BigTyphoon Pro switching to a cooler called the 'Megahalems' using a slower (and quieter) fan.

 

I currently run my quad core i5 at 3.8GHz and it never goes above 55*C in 100% load, with a single 1300RPM fan.

[Luke Kolin]

cooling is key tho, you dont want it overheating otherwise youll be in the market for a new pc soon after been there done that

 

Any modern (ie. last 3-4 years) CPU will automatically throttle itself down when it detects an excessive temperature, and in the worst case shut down. On my latest Q9550 I had the heatsink mounted incorrectly and I didn't realize it until I saw the CPU refusing to hit its rated clock (reducing the multiplier from 8x to 6x) and the CPU was approaching 90C.

 

There's also a misconception that CPUs perform better when cooler, and people are overly focused on CPU temperature. Unless it's near or over the thermal limit, whether you are 10C or 20C below that limit won't make a difference to your CPU.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke