ranking of any one overclocker in the Elite league . Do you still follow the rankings closely or are you focused on other leagues perhaps ?
I still do follow the ranking , but I ’ m spending most of my time benching for OC-eSports competitions .
Over the years I ’ ve felt that overclocking doesn ’ t need a reason to exist , much like any other kind of competition . The competition itself is good enough . For some reason though it seems overclocking is still having to convince users that it needs to have some great purpose . I could be wrong here and I ’ d like to know what you think the purpose or of overclocking is these days . Does it even need one ?
These days , for most PC users , meaningful overclocking can only be done in a specific setup to be able to make it worth the time , money and risk put into it . ( Example : Overclocking a Ryzen 7 1700 to match / surpass the Ryzen 7 1800X ). But the technical aspect
of overclocking and the relatively small gains for average systems has made more users reluctant to change any settings in their PC fearing it might break and / or be unstable .
For me personally though , overclocking goes beyond the ' action ' itself , and extended to a mindset of ' tinkering with stuff to better understand it , and make it perform better '. I do it purely because I like messing around with stuff - it ’ s fun , so I don ’ t think I need any reason to overclock since I simply enjoy it .
Given just how AMD and INTEL partners view overclocking , do you think it will continue to be around in say the next 7 to 10 years ? If so , how do you suspect it will change if it will change at all ?
I can ’ t predict the next 7 to 10 years , but for the immediate future , I ’ m just glad that AMD and Intel are still supportive in overclocking and continuously trying to give us some headroom so we can squeeze more performance out of it , even though almost all of the newly-released products are already operating near their physical limits .
( This is a bit different to NVIDIA where it seems like they are trying to lock things up , making it harder for even vendors to release an overclocking model and implement OC-specific feature )
As with a number of overclockers , we start out as “ gamers ” ( whatever that means these days ), but then end up being overclockers almost entirely . For the longest time we have wanted to make that difference very obvious . Do you think it is necessary today or you ’ re okay with everyone being classified as “ gamers ”?
I started overclocking as a gamer too , but I do think that ‘ PC gamers ’ these days are a bit different than ‘ gamers ’ 5-10 years ago . In the old days , being a ‘ PC gamer ’ involved more than just gaming - having proper knowledge to build and tune a PC was also a big part of it .
Now , because popular games are not usually heavy on the requirement side , most of PC gamers I know aren ’ t that interested in knowing the technical details and they just want to game .
So , I ’ d prefer to call myself an ‘ overclocker ’, rather than a ‘ gamer ’.
As a seasoned overclocker who also works as media . You have some different point of views when it comes to testing and writing your reviews editorials . How has overclocking helped you in doing reviews if it has helped at all ?
Overclocking indeed helped me to look at things with more depth and help me better understand how certain things work . I also have a different perspective of certain components .
The only problem now is that if I had to make ‘ normal ’ review for everyday user , I have to be careful not to look at things exclusively from an overclocker ’ s perspective .
For example , for a competitive overclocker , the two DIMM Maximus IX APEX is seen as a plus , since their ( ROG ) design can run a lot faster than most four DIMM boards . For normal users though , having two DIMM sockets might limit their upgrade capabilities .
Issue 41 | 2017 The OverClocker 7