Does overclocking really save you money in the long run?

[DeepBlue]

I have talked to people on madonion.com, hardforums.com and seen web sites such as this one that claim that you can save money by overclocking.
The site pcstats.com says:


<< Let's be honest, we all want more than what we paid for. Overclocking is the most common method of getting more for your hardware dollars. Sure 800Mhz is darn fast, but what if it was able to do 1Ghz or more? Coincidentally, overclocking can save you some money too! >>



Yet what I believe they forgot to take into account was the cost of operating the equipment that enables them to overclock.

Let's say I purchased a 1.3GHz Pentium 4 CPU from Google Gear for $165. Then I purchased an 80 watt peltier for $25 from 3DCool.com. For a total of $190. After that I put together my system and with the peltier I manage to overclock my system to 1.5GHz for a gain of 200mhz. According to Anandtech's weekly CPU price guideI saved $39 by taking the original price of the CPU which is $165 adding the $25 from the cost of the peltier and subtracting that from the price of a 1.5Ghz which is $229. So it is: $229 - ($165+$25)=$39.

Electricity in my area which is San Diego, California costs about 8 cents per kilowatt hour. This comes from my local electric company's web site:

Historical Price of Electric Commodity

So if you do the math by multiplying .08 kilowatt hours (the amount of electricity the peltier uses to operate) by 8 cents (the price per kilowatt hour in my area) it costs about .64 cents an hour to run the peltier. So it is: (80/1000)*8 = .64.

At .64 cents an hour after I had the computer on for 6093 hours amount of money that I on overclocking would completely gone. Any time after 6093 hours I would actually start to lose money. I got this by dividing the amount of money saved which was $39 by the amount it costs to operate the peltier which is .64 cents an hour which gives you the number of hours until you lose the amount of money you saved. So it is: 39/.0064 = 6093. Or you can do it by multiplying .0064 by 6093 to get 39. So it is: .0064*6093=39. Since I leave my computer on pretty much 24/7 for cracking purposes after 8 months or 253 days the money I saved would be gone. Any amount of time after that I would actually start to lose money. Not to mention the fact that here in California the price of electricity can sky rocket at the drop of a hat and I could end up paying a lot more for that peltier than it is worth.

In conclusion I really don't see the point of overclocking in an economic sense. While this is only one particular overclocking set up the fundamental problem I see with overclocking is the equipment that enables you to overclock incurs a continuous cost due to the extra electricity it requires to power it. So after enough time the amount of money you saved by overclocking will be gone. After that point you will actually start to lose money by overclocking.

 

[MaxImuMAdVaNtAgE]

hehe...it's really not about saving money, it's just about tweaking out what you have to the best of it's ability...

it's kinda like those rednecks who buy a piece of crap nova and spend all of their time and money to put on big tires and loud mufflers and beef up the engine and what-not...it costs them money, possibly enough that they could have just bought a better car, but to them that's not the point...to me, THAT'S overclocking...

MaxImuM

 

[Renob]

What he said.

 

[snidy]

me to

 

[CTho9305]

small OC's can save money... i can put my 700@750 on the junk it came with, but of course the OC is not noticeably beneficial in anything but benchmarks

 

[WarCon]

I believe along time ago (couple years) when lets say a processor could run $500-1000 for the newer ones. Sure it saved money, big time. But once you overclock, it becomes an addiction. Now that the processors are within a couple hundred dollars of each other its simply to squeeze every last drop out of what you got for the fun of doing it, not because its cheap. I suppose there are people doing it and justifying that the speed they have now was a little cheaper, but not if you throw time into the equation.

You don't add mag's and a new timing chip to your car because its more fuel efficient. You do it because its going to be faster and look cooler than your neighbors........

 

[nicowju]

yeah I don't do it to save money. I do it for fun. And to have the ability to say that I have the er... fastest computer in my neighborhood

 

[Rand]

Remember that not everyone is going to go out and buy the 80Watt Peltier to help them overclock. many people will just overclock using the regular retail HSF unit, and for them they would be saving money by overclocking since they would not be spending anything extra on cooling that they would not regularly need even when not overclocking.

 

[techwanabe]

Rand,

Thank you for saying that! I thought I saw a straw man being set up to knock down at the beginning of this thread!

I am one of those people who saved money overclocking. I specifically set out to do that when I researched and built my PC. I was on a limited budget and wanted to build a PC which I could extend the life and usability by overclocking. I knew by the consensus and articles that my PIII 550E FCPGA could over clock to 733 or higher with the stock fan and standard voltage settings. To me, that is a significant increase in speed for little or no additional money, thank you very much. As it was, I did spend a measly $13 on a better HSF to run a little cooler for my own peace of mind (Taisol).

So to sum it up, I think a goodly number of people overclock to save money. I know I did.

 

[DeepBlue]

<< Rand,

Thank you for saying that! I thought I saw a straw man being set up to knock down at the beginning of this thread!

I am one of those people who saved money overclocking. I specifically set out to do that when I researched and built my PC. I was on a limited budget and wanted to build a PC which I could extend the life and usability by overclocking. I knew by the consensus and articles that my PIII 550E FCPGA could over clock to 733 or higher with the stock fan and standard voltage settings. To me, that is a significant increase in speed for little or no additional money, thank you very much. As it was, I did spend a measly $13 on a better HSF to run a little cooler for my own peace of mind (Taisol).

So to sum it up, I think a goodly number of people overclock to save money. I know I did. >>


My investigation is not a straw man. Yes, there are cases where you can save money overclocking. Granted you take a risk doing it but you can save money if you do not use any equipment that incurs extra electricity costs. I realize this yet most of the overclocking sites I have been to do not advocate using a small inexpensive heat sink fan. They push all kinds of fancy stuff like the peltier I used in my investigation. The same people on some forums who use this kind of equipment told me they were saving money. That is what this investigation is about.

 

[Boonesmi]

when your using a peltier or other hardcore cooling and overclocking devices your not doing it to save money

when i bought an asus a7v with a duron 600 (over a year ago)
with the stock heatsink and default voltage it was able to run 900mhz
you have to remember this was before intel released the first 1ghz cpu
and the fastest cpu's from intel and amd were in the $400 range or higher, and my little duron was $89

hehehe i didnt even have to unlock the cpu, it was before amd started cutting the L1 bridges.

 

[xroyal]

I used to be paid a lot of money to crunch numbers, analyzing fine points. One can twist numbers anyway you wish to make a point, be it pennys or millions of dollars. You've really come to the wrong place if you expect to assign an economic value on the fun of hands-on overclocking and sharing it with like minded people who love to experiment.

I'm a small budget player in this realm, and I have saved money, not in the pure act of overclocking, but in the extended time (spelled between upgrades)I have taken to extend the life of the entire system, buying and reselling components (personal use only). So maybe you spend a little extra for a HS/F, but how about the $300 USR Courier V Everything modem I picked up for $21. It's a honey.

Following the forums I have picked great advice to enhance my total system, including the wisdom of what NOT to buy resulting in savings that's rough to calculate.

These great forums probably would not exist if it weren't for the overclockers!

 

[fetuchin]

tho i'm just a beginner, i admit overclocking is not an economical question but kind of a competition trying to surpass the limits that your parts resist to trespass.

 

[Celeryman]

Basically this is it.... Overclocking Just Plain Rocks. HEHE

 

[Colt45]

well if you have one of the lucky celeron 366's that do 550 with retail hs/f, i'd say your saving money (at least in its heyday)

 

[ledzepp98]

for starters, i dobn't think that overclockers (especially the hardcore overclockers) are doing it mainly for the $$ saved...however, circumstances vary. you can save money by being happy with a duron750@950 instead of buying a t-bird 950 (just a rough example). however, you raised a point about people investing extra money in peltiers and extreme overclocking devices...while you might be right that in general, the price of a 1.3@1.5ghz cpu + overclocking equipment is equal to just buying a 1.5ghz cpu, i will attemp to VERY LOOSELY apply some economics --> the initial investment might seem pointless if it ends up costing as much as just buying the faster processor, but it is just that...an INITIAL investment, basically a sunk cost. it might cost the same to get the 1.3 to 1.5 as it does to buy the 1.5, but once you decide to upgrade, you already have the overclocking equipment (peltier, watercooling setup, etc...) so now you can get your new 1.7ghz to 1.9ghz without spending the extra money again. anyway, does that make sense?

 

[The_Lurker]

I thin it's more a hobby for all of us. Also a way for people to bond, we can get together on forums or a chat room and talk about something we can all relate to. Economically, it could really help. I konw for a fact that it took me $199 Cdn dollars to get a 750 PIII that does 930mhz. If i were to buy a 930mhz, i woulda cost me around $300 or so, so i'm saving there. Yes i might be running up an extra 20 dollars on my electric bill for the extra fans i have, but it's all good and fun, sine it's more a hobby.

 

[mp3turbo]

hello deepblue,

man, overclocking CPU's &amp; everything is not just about cost of electricity in California. Sure, today when prices of CPU thanx to AMD/Intel war dropped significantly, the situation changed a bit, but two/three years ago it was something different. I'd agree with another member that OC is nowadays mainly (and historically it has been) PRIDE of a man and wonderful feeling of success - take into consideration all those orgasms of other members in this same forum when someone overclocked Athlon to 1.6GHz and I'd bet that he/she WOULD NOT SEE/FEEL ANY SERIOUS performance gain over 1.45/1.5GHz one. Everyone is doing 1.45 today and nobody is screaming about that - but when you have 1.6, you're boss. Nevertheless, I'd definitely like to have that chip but I won't want to pay for it when I can have ~150$ less expensive one doing ~200MHz less - I don't need 1.6GHz, I'd be completely fine with 900, but why not to buy 1GHz athlon instead of 800MHz one (being that 20$ less) - and you can overclock that 800MHz baby only to 950 and finito, while 1GHz will take you to the 1.4 barrier. Every motherboard now is capable of 100/133MHz bus, so you can have 33% overclock even from the cheapiest ones - you don't have to buy ASUS/ABIT/anything 2x more expensive than regular MB, just paint those L7 bridges so you have 1.85V (when MB does not have adjusters) and go, baby, go!

But what about this: you're talking about buying Peltier and its consuption and price. Fine, that equipment is pretty expensive, compared to cpu prices today. But you don't need peltier to OC and what about other benefits the speed will bring you? You'll buy 1GHz AXIA/AVIA chip and you're (almost) guaranteed to do 1.33 with standard cooling, maybe on standard voltage - anything above that is BONUS But when you are working on dual monitors with 1600x1200 resolution, you'll get pretty BIG performance hit compared to 1024x768 single monitor. Aaaa, you know where I'm heading to. For basic home user, it's not an issue whether he will go to sleep at ten or ten past ten (ehm) because of typing that looong ten-page document ten minutes longer. But for business folk, earning >30$/hour, it makes pretty nice difference if he can save 30 minutes daily. Fine, you'll ask why he can't buy 1.4GHz original but there are also many arguments for this. First, if you'll overclock 1GHz chip to 150x 9.5 or 150x 10, you'll have noticeable performance gain over that original not OCed 1.4GHz at 133MHz. Second, take my situation, for example: 1GHz athlon costs 5200,- SKK in my country (that's ~100$), 1.4GHz eats almost 9.500SKK (almost twice as much, average salary in my country: ~12000SKK/month!!!, OK I'm pretty above average but... you got that, there are some markets where overclocking is unbelievable help - I could buy 5 machines for my father's small business and older car for me from &quot;savings&quot; on overclocked processors). Why should I buy the second one more expensive chip when I can get little bit better parameters from the first one, not to mention that price difference is (little) important for me?

So to sum it up... overclocking does cost you almost nothing (except knowledge, we are not talking about buying $80 mc462 fans &amp; $150 motherboards for god's sake) and except good feeling/joy/callithowever can/will bring you increased productivity. That counts!

bye, mp3turbo.

 

[Neos]

Echo ...do we have an ECHO?

I too ...do it for the fun. Sometimes I also do it for the aggravation ...cause that is what it can be at times.

Neos

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Extreme overclocking doesn't save money (but can be quite a bit of fun), however moderate overclocking can save money. I took a $110 850 Athlon to 1GHz when 1GHz Athlons were $180-190. I didn't have to buy anything extra.

 

[rogue1979]

Overclocking doesn't save money? Come on guys, the price of a 1GHz 266fsb thunderbird is $90, the 1400MHz is $169. Most of the 1000 266fsb are AXIA these days, some vendors like newegg.com pretty much ship AXIA's everytime. Even a standard 1.4 takes a premium heatsink these days, almost every single AXIA hits at least 1400!!! My Voodoo 5 5500 is tweaked out to run as fast as a Geforce GTS and looks better than any video card out there, with quality at least equal to the Geforce 3 if not better (I haven't done a direct comparison with the Geforce 3, but I have with everything else). Old drivers and all it is ultra-compatible with all games, and sells for about $120. If you choose carefully you can save yourself some money by overclocking. I needed more power from my power supply, so instead of shelling out $65+ for a 400-watt I simply wired an existing 250-watt in my case and now have 550-watts total. I wanted to upgrade my monitor and found a 20&quot; Dell Trinitron with a full 3-year warranty for $295 shipped on E-bay. Go here: http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/compare/index.htm to review the performance of sound cards. I found the Diamond Monster Sound M80 on E-bay for $21. A Turtle Beach Santa Cruz still goes for over $70, but if you look at the specs you'll see the M80 is almost identical! A little research goes a long way into saving big bucks!