What do YOUR friends/family think of overclocking?
 

My dad thinks its useless and only thinks about the bills :rolleyes:
Almost all of my friends are afraid to overclock because they think their system wil explode...

What do the people around you think about overclocking?

My wife finds it silly....

nowadays OC is a "hobby"; it used to be about getting more value for your money; in those days I could convince others to OC without too much hassle.

today I run my systems at stock speed, or even underclocked, CPU power is no longer about raw MHz nor is the increase in speed noticeable in 99% of everyday apps. Same goes for VGA cards, although it took a bit longer there, and only recently with the thermal envelope surpasssing PCIe/ATX spec and manufacturers also pushing for multi-GPU solutions for high end, is the raw Mhz no longer that important, especially if running the card overclocked risks your machine crashing; no fun in that :)

of course, that's just my opinion

I share jmke's opinion. Back in the days I overclocked both for fun and for getting more value for my money (I had for example a Barton 2500+ running at 3200+ speeds, for free), but ever since Intel stepped of the Mhz wagon, overclocking became more a competition rather than a way to get more bang for the bucks.

The OC field has changed a lot the past 5-10 years. Almost nobody dared to use LN2 for overclocking, only the hardcore overclockers knew how to use it properly. Nowaydays, yout 14 year old neighbour could be overclocking his CPU with LN2 :no:

So, back on topic. Here at home, nobody cares what I do. My mother and my sister have no clue about what I'm doing and the only thing my father knows about overclocking is that it can damage hardware.

At school, most people know a thing or 2 about overclocking, but only a few dare to do it (which is a shame for and ICT-related study) and they are perfectly fine with overclocking, tough they've probably never pushed 2.2V trough a CPU |D

I admire those guys who are overclocking and promoting their hardwares to extreme performance, while, it is impossible for me, I am afraid that will kill my hardwares and waste my money, instead of saving money for me, though I know most of hardware have excellent overclocking performance, I would not take the risk.

The risk depends completely on how far you're willing to go. Simply upping the frequency usualy won't kill your hardware. Once you start increasing voltages you're taking a risk, but the risk depends on how much more voltage you apply (and to which component).
Increasing the frequency also does not significantly increase the power consumption so you're less likely to fry your hardware. Upping the voltage on the other hand creates a lot more heat, thus more risk (tough most hardware has good protection, CPU's and GPU's start downclocking at a certain temperature and shut themselves down at a critical temperature).

Stock cooling won't kill your hardware. Replacing it with beter air cooling will only kill it if you do it wrong. Watercooling can leak and subzero cooling (peltiers, dd, LN2, ...) can cause condensation.

It just depends on how far you're willing to go. I can overclock my T2300 from 1.6Ghz to 2.15Ghz at stock voltage, free Mhz at low risk ;)

My girlie just goes to bed once I put the Dewar in the living room :p, the kids love every second of the LN2 action :)

Haha, I'd love it as a kid and I'd still love it :p

My family? Save for my brother, no one understands the technobabble involved in overclocking.

Friends? There's a wide range of reactions. Some think it's cool, some think it's silly, and others fear it. That said the number of people asking me to overclock their rigs (or at least test the waters) has gone to nearly zero.

My coworkers and employer? They view it as a testament that I'm serious about my IT job (and passion). Always helps if you can tell them that you assembled your first pc at 12 years old and a Pentium 200Mhz MMX chip overclocked (stable) to 300Mhz was your first serious overclock. :)

Jmke is of course more or less correct. The huge gains that could be won in the old days are gone, but you can bet your *** that I'll still be tweaking memory timings and such on any new rig I'd buy. But it's just not the same thing. Both PC hardware and overclocking have become fairly mainstream. Once upon a time, you could REALLY damage a PC by wrongfully assembling it. Nowadays, you can't really jam something wrong into a wrong slot. Same with overclocking. There's so much protection and software programs that it's no longer a real challenge to get a respectable OC. Where's the time where you could melt a CPU through the motherboard (on purpose, of course)? Damn, those were good times. :naughty:

I kinda find the context of this thread silly and useless TBH.

We're geeks doing geek things and that basically what the majority of our families are going to think unless they have a similar affinity for tech. and PC's.

My wife does say anything about "Overclocking" cause basically she does not know anything about it, all the are concerned with is that "XXX" is playing on the computer....again

not to be argumentative here, just my personal opinion on the whole thing.

K.