Why overclocking means you get what you pay for.

I spent a lot of time this weekend doing research to buy parts for a new machine.

One thing I realized is that people are stupid. Even technical people.

Specifically I’m talking about the overclocking crowd. Now I’m all about getting as much for your money as possible, but there are LOTS of people on newegg who complain that they overclock chips and they don’t work.

I don’t know if this is how it works anymore but in the good old days, intel or whoever would build a chip to the best specifications that it could, then test it. If it tested reliably as a 3ghz chip, it was sold as a 3ghz chip. If it only tested reliably at 2.5ghz, it was sold as a 2.5ghz chip.

Now in the days of quad cores, I can see where it would be hard to build a chip where all four cores tested reliably at 3ghz, which is why those chips are so much more expensive than the 2.8ghz for example. So people buy the 2.8ghz then try and overclock them and complain when they don’t work.

Do they not understand what’s going on? If it didn’t test reliably at a higher speed, then it’s not going to work reliably when you try and use it at that higher speed.

That’s why you pay more for it to go faster.

If you take your Chevy volt and try and go as fast as a Ferrari, it’s not going to work, the volt wasn’t tested reliably at ferrari speeds. That’s why you paid less than a Ferrari.

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