Yay I wanna be hip, too! Okay, here is the deal: never cared about overclocking, always bought hardware that was sufficient for my needs (higher middle range) with the possibility to upgrade at a later time, so I never really looked into it. With my latest PC I made it quite the same and I'm still happy with the performance (though I bought a different graphics card in a fit of madness since then).
BUT: Win7 is there, DX11 is coming, DX11 graphic cards are already available and so on - it will be time for some speed boost soon (my guess, middle 2010). Unfortunately, it seems as if I messed up a bit on my latest rig and actually bought hardware a bit higher on the evolution ladder than the times before. Well okay, right now I got:
CPU: Intel Q6600 (Stock speed, 2.4 GHz) Sockel LGA775
Mainboard: Something MSI P35 chipset (I'm at work, can provide details later)
RAM: 2x1 GB 800MHz OCZ Platinum blah
Graphics: Ati 4850x2 (yeah, I know. Don't really know why - I mean it's a beast, but... ah it could be a whole different thread)
So.. obvious upgrade possibilities would be the amount of RAM, a faster CPU or the latest generation graphics card (not really needed IMO). CPU-wise there are a couple of models in the upper range that would fit on my mainboard, but I don't feel like it is worth it. I think the latest model, that would fit on my mainboard is Q9550. Which would be about 20€ more expensive, that what Q6600 is worth now, have smaller build size, 440 MHz faster clocking and more cache. But all in all, I don't think the trouble with bying it and selling the Q6600 is worth it at all. I mean, sure it's a bit faster, but not a real upgrade.
I don't feel like going to the i5 or i7 cores just yet (plus it means new mainboard and RAM), so it looks like the only way to significally upgrade anything for a low cost would be to go for overclocking. I heard that it is possible to overclock Q6600 to 3.6 GHz from 2.4 Ghz in some cases, which is a bit extreme and don't think I need it, but it seems like there is a lot of potential, which has got to be noticable on it's own, right?
As I said, as of now I'm perfectly happy with the performance (and using the Win7 RC I know it manages just fine), I just want to see how far I could go, when I really need it - like say, if I buy more and faster RAM and a DX11 compilent graphics card end of the next year? If it works out, it would be a relatively cheap upgrade with quite a long time until I'll need anything else, just how I like it.
So, very long story short: OVERCLOCKING TEST!!!
Okay, I have a midi sized tower, all cables are hidden nicely and there is a 120mm fan on a front and on the back of the case. Before I got that monster of a graphics card I didn't even have those and it was all fine (my old was GeForce 8800 GTS). There is also an additional 80mm fan on the side of the case (but I don't think it does much, as the airflow from it is blocked by the graphics card for the most part).
The RAM has some small heat spreaders on it (looks like this:
http://regmedia.co.uk/2007/02/07/ocz_gold_1.jpg), but I don't think they actually do much, more like bling bling...
I have the boxed intel fan on my CPU if I remember correctly, it did a good job before.
Now to the graphics card. It's a 2 GPU on one card type of monster, with two 80mm fans on it, taking two slots, but in some fit of idiocy it doesn't have any openings on the back of the case, so all the air is staying inside of the case and has to be transported out by the case fans. I didn't notice this little fact, until my PC crashed for the first time when I first built it in (without the 2 case fans) - my CASE was almost too hot to touch it afterwards. The two case fans fixed the problem with it now barely reaching 60° on full throttle (with fans rarely going over 30% speed). One big problem: it's freaking loud. I don't want to know what those fans sound like on 50%. Seriously. The upside: I don't care about the volume of any other fans, so if anything is needed to get a better cooling during this experiment, it's not a problem.
Not sure about the current temps on the CPU, last time I checked (without 120mm fans and with 8800 GTS inside) it was about 45° when idling and about 55° on 100% usage. Not really sure on this, would have to take a sample again.
Anyway, where would I have to start now? If there is any meaningfull performance gain from this, I might as well let it run like this, but I actually just want to see how far I could go, when I upgrade the RAM and possibly the graphics card sometime next year.
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