Re: Overclocking VS. Better CPU
 

What kind of cooling were you using?

Re: Overclocking VS. Better CPU
 

On what? The two CPUs? They weren't overclocked, they burnt out for other reasons. First was a store computer, first I ever had, and they hadn't attached the heatsink properly. Second was the one I told you about before. My 2400+, back in Jan. The fan failed, it didn't tell me. I didn't realise till I smelt burning and the screen went blank.

As for my graphics card, when I first overclocked it I had it running on its original alluminium heatsink, no problems, at those speeds I mentioned. But after a while I think the bearings on the fan started making a rattling noise, so I went out and bought a copper Thermaltake cooler, with copper memory heatsinks. Now purely for lifespan reasons I've turned it down to just above normal speeds.

I OC my AMD xp2500+ to make it runs at xp3200+ speed and all with water cooling. :rock:

Re: Overclocking VS. Better CPU
 

Ok, I see your reasons matt. I have heard that overclocking will take approximately half the life of the component. For CPUs, this isnt really a problem, since the will last 20 years normally, and most people upgrade the comps before there CPU is 10 years old. But still, if your going to sell your used parts, the value is probably higher if it wasn't o/ced.

C'mon people, we need more votes! Only two people have voted since the start!

Re: Overclocking VS. Better CPU
 

Yeah, there's a lot of people out there who aren't gamers, and don't need to upgrade very often. So they buy second-hand components which run at much higher speeds than they actually need, but are much cheaper than brand new stuff. I was one of them, in fact. Till I got into PC gaming, this household was still running an old 386 PC. They're about as old as me, lol. The PC I've got now, instead of selling off the parts and refilling the case, I'm going to get a hold of some extra parts like monitors, CD ROMs and peripherals and network them together, have a permenant LAN to play around with. By the time I'm finished with these, they'll be worthless, so I might overclock them.

And yeah, sorry about that. Forgot to vote :S

Re: Overclocking VS. Better CPU
 

Its really fun to overclock old stuff, like pentium 1's and below, because if you get the right cooling, its really easy to do a high o/c because they often leave the multipiers unlocked. Plus, the heatsinks and fans are cheap, as is everything else. Just go down to your local goodwill and you can pick up a couple of old systems cheap, and then you can just lay the components on the floor on anti-static bags and experiment.

Re: Overclocking VS. Better CPU
 

I was thinking of starting out on old stuff. We've got a lot of old components strewn across the house from my dad's computer-building business ventures. I might look into it.