Why would you risk buring up your cpu to get a slight improvement?

I did that when I first got my pc about 4 years ago. Yes, I know it is time to get a new one. It is a barton 2500 @1.8ghz can oc to 2.5. I did this and benchmarked it. I never really saw in reason to put the extra stress on the chip. Just pay the extra money and get the faster chip in the first place. I mean you're already spending a lot on gaming computer as it is. It would be what $100 for the cpu that is already at the speed your overclocking to. Then you have a machine that runs cooler and don't have to stress about over heating and extra fans and such.

Meh. Guess I just not hardcore gamer enough.

Is that an official quote from an official ATI "guy"?

I use ATI siimply because most of their cards are available in a fanless version. The ATI I have now, while not an overclocking champ, is good enough and doesn't sound like the Millennium Falcon landing on top of my head like a previous nvidia card I had.

I don't overclock really...
I might later, but I think it's safest for me to just leave it alone.

I have overclocked on virtually all my PCs since 1999, and none have caused me any problems.  Normally I don't go too high as I appreciate quiet, but the setup I have now lets me OC my C2D to roughly 30% (admittedly, not very high OC) and the temperatures remain only 1-2 degrees higher than stock, so why not?

The CPU under stress (read: Marathon S.T.A.L.K.E.R. session) is less than 40 degrees C and normally doesn't pass 38 degrees, and this is using one 120mm fan in the front, a matching one in the rear, Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 for the heatsink/fan combo and a 92mm side fan. Very quiet - it's audible, but it's a pleasantly low hum and I can definitely live with that! 

ur mother do you have your AC7 pro at full speed?
I have the same heatsink with my C2D too but I couldnt accept the noise level at 100%. Its very quiet on lowspeed, which I like.

The real noisemaker is my X1900XT...

I have my AC7 at normal, meaning the fan will speed up as necessary to lower temperatures, but then again, I never hear it at full speed (which is admittedly a grumbly loud, but not as annoying as "shriek" loud) becuase when your CPU is just at 38 degrees C at near-full/full load your AC7 fan will never kick into overdrive.

I think you may have a problem with your case ventilation if your setup is that similar to mine.

And yeah, most top-flight GPUs ( I assume yours was when you bought it) come out with the fan-cooling version first, something I try to avoid at all costs. I normally try to get the fanless version whenever possible, but in any case, if you have a 1900 series or nvidia equivalent and it's fan-cooled, you can expect some serious noise.

One other possibility for your AC7 to kick into overdrive so frequently may be due to your GPU sitting too close to the CPU and AC7 is actually *sucking* hot air from the GPU into the CPU, raising the temps! In such cases, you may want to add a side fan if your case supports it.

How much are you OCing your CPU and GPU? 

I'm personally a bit of a big time overclocker... I spend HOURS upon HOURS getting the highest stable setting that I can get.

I recently upgraded the PC and Graphics card, the card isn't the best available but it's the 8800GTS which is pretty respectable. That's overclocked by about 25%.

The biggest overclock is to the CPU and RAM. My CPU Standard was 2.4Ghz it's a Core 2 Duo E6600 which I've put a Thermaltake Big Typhoon on, one of the biggest air based coolers you can get without going to water cooling. I've cranked it up to 3.7Ghz which is a 54% overclock.

With the overclock my 3D Mark 06 scores went from 7771 to 10913 which is a HUGE gain for this graphics card and processor setting, so I was majorly happy with that.

SuperChunk - there isn't anything to worry about with overclocking, it's probably not something someone who doesn't know what they are doing should attempt, but if you know what you are doing there is relatively 0% danger on current PC's as most boards are built with some form of Overclocking in mind. As for the minimal gain, I beg to differ, the 'feeling' of my PC has increased by a huge multiplier going up from 2.4Ghz to 3.7Ghz... In the past CPU's might only just go up by 200 - 400mhz MAX but whe you can pull a 1.3Ghz benefit, the thing just SCREAMS along.

That's just the feeling in Windows, in games things like Company of Heroes which is a pretty hugely taxing game has gone from a barely playable 18fps at the best settings, right up to 29 - 43fps for most of the time... that's a pretty significant gain I think and I believe i can still pull more out of my Graphics card.

The gains are good, but I also get a massive amount of enjoyment out of modding, volt modding boards, building PC's and cranking the absolute max (RELIABLE) power out of it, it's a bit of a hobby and a past time of mine.

Next project is creating a Home Theatre PC that is in-audible using ONLY case fans... that's probably going to require under clocking and under volting the board to a good acceptable level and using a fanless GPU, there are lots of obstacles to overcome with that project, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun :D

Origin,

What are your CPU and GPU temps at idle and at full?

oh no no, I have my AC7 on auto too so I hardly hear it. Its doing fine for a $20 cooler.
right now my E6600 is at 3.0ghz and I havn't attempted to go any further.
I'm scared of adding voltage and stuff lol.

OCing the X1900XT is pretty much out of question. Idle temperatures are very high (mines around 50) and the fan becomes a hairblower during games on stock speeds! ATI cards and its heat and noisy fans...

CPU Idle Temps - 37 deg
CPU Load Temps - 55 deg ORTHOS stress, so that is absolute max, anything else is 47 - 51deg

GPU Idle Temps - 66 deg
GPU Load Temps - 81 deg


My setup is inside a thermaltake armour which has 6 total fans so the airflow is really good.

Oh yeah... the CPU needs 1.475 volts for the 3.7 clock.

For day to day running i'm probably going to go back to 3.6 as it only needs 1.41 for that, so the gains aren't great to get to 3.7.

The Big Typhoon helps a lot though :D