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Overclocking is the buzzword in the enthusiastic PC-building community. According to the Oxford dictionary, the term means running (the processor of one's computer) at a speed higher than that intended by the manufacturers. In practice, it is more about tinkering with the settings to hit the performance sweet spot.
However, many experts will express their concerns about the processor's longevity and cooling potential. While there are always potential risk factors of overclocking, including exploiting its thermal headroom to void warranty certifications, the pros significantly outweigh the cons.
However, gamers should make an informed decision before pushing their latest RTX 40 series or any hardware to the maximum.
An overview of overclocking and the potential risk factors associated with it
Overclocking involves increasing the clock speeds of any piece of hardware manually. This is how the performance is increased. Sometimes, the process can involve tweaking the voltage delivery to the components as well.
Both of these can be dangerous, not just to the respective components, but to other parts of the PC as well.
Risks associated with OCing hardware
First off, there is always a potential risk of corrupting the Windows installation. This can be caused by multiple failed boot attempts while powering on a PC. Overclocking hardware can also cause system stability issues. They can end up corrupting video games and other software.
Applying more than the safe voltage can also potentially fry some components, although it is pretty rare. Thus, there are a lot of gray areas within the process. However, this should not scare PC gamers from pushing their hardware to the absolute maximum.
OCing has become safer these days
Manufacturers know that most PC users these days like to extract the maximum from their components. Thus, most graphics cards, CPUs, and RAM sticks come with pre-applied overclock settings or are specifically designed to extract more performance from them. This includes setting maximum limits to the voltage inputs and frequency limits to prevent overclockers from frying their hardware.
A classic instance of this limit-based overclocking can be seen in the MSI Afterburner GPU OCing utility. It is arguably one of the safest ways to push a graphics card to its maximum. This has made OCing more accessible to PC gamers. It allows mainstream users to extract more performance without spending money on the latest hardware.
However, these limits can be turned off. This allows hardcore xOC guys to push their hardware to the absolute highest humanly possible. These results are the ones that make it to the charts.
However, most gamers can only overclock via a safe and limited approach that is enabled by default and call it a day. Not all CPUs and GPUs are built to hit world records.
Thus, all gamers can overclock and push their hardware to achieve maximum performance.
While some potential risks come with overclocking, manufacturers have introduced sufficient safety measures and limits to make the process feel safe and secure for the majority of users out there. This wards off any serious risks to the hardware.
