A Few Misc Questions

[tshayter]

Heya, it's me (surprise) with another little question.

If you order an overclocked CPU from PCS, how long do they stress test it when they're working out how far they can overclock it? My relatively new understanding of overclocking leads me to believe that you increase the speed by an amount, then test it to see if it crashes. If you're good to go you can increase it further. Repeat until you crash and you'll know your limits.

If this is in fact the correct way to overclock, how long do PCS test each increment of overclocking? My concern is that an overclocked cpu and speed X.4 may seem like it's stable but after 14 hours (for example) it might fail. If that's the case then I would prefer it clocked at X.3 if that meant that it could endure a stress test indefinitely or something.

The thought process being here that the longer something can go before failing (or if it can pretty much keep going forever), the less likely it is to fail on you randomly.

Thoughts?

Also, do they overclock manually or automatically? If anyone knows.

 

[keynes]

Only one can answer is PCS as I can only speculate.

 

[tshayter]

Mmm I'm probably going to sound like a noob here again but I was under the impression that his is the place to come to find out things from PCS (and from other customers) - There's literally zero sarcasm in that sentence by the way so I hope it's not taken the wrong way!

Don't some of the mods work for PCS/might know about some things like this? Or is it all just voluntary work? I'm quite naive with these forums hehe.

--

If none of that is important I'll ask the silly question of 'Has anyone bought an overclocked system from PCS and ever had any problems with it?' - silly because I highly doubt the answer to it will be anything other than 'yes.. and no'.

Or if that question is too silly to even be bothered with how about 'How well do PCS overclock their systems? If you're experienced in overclocking, do you ever need to bother tweaking their OC once you get it home?'.

 

[keynes]

Well the forum is not an official channel of support and most members do not work for PCS. I have zero idea on how long they test the machines for or what additional steps they take with or without pre-overclocked systems. I think you need to forward that to PCS directly. Whether you get the overclocked done by PCS or do it yourself there is always the possibility of instability issues and tweaks you should be prepare to do.

 

[Rakk]

Don't some of the mods work for PCS/might know about some things like this? Or is it all just voluntary work?

Anyone with an 'Admin' tag works for PCS - they check the forums when they can, but probably not as often as they would like; anyone with a 'Moderator' tag (like myself) does not work for PCS (99% of the time) and we do it voluntarily.

 

[steaky360]

None of the Mods (as far as I know) work for PCS only the site admins do (most of them have PCS logos in their pics) - your best bet to find an answer definitively is to send an email (or call if you can...).

The overclocked systems are covered under warranty so if you have any issues (or notice any failures etc.) PCS will help you out and provide different settings / discuss what ones to change etc.

I appreciate it doesn't really answer any of your questions but as Keynes pointed out the only folk who will know for sure are PCS themselves

 

[tshayter]

Well that's cool though guys, thanks for your input!

I'm really considering getting my build overclocked already (even though I don't think I need to right now) just so that I wont need to do it myself in the future. I would have to increase my warranty though for sure to be smart which is a fair downside because holy damn my budget would die.

I've seen a lot of info about how overclocking just isn't as worthwhile these days like it was back in 2003 or something with how good processors have become but then I've also seen things telling me that as long as you overclock correctly with voltage and have good cooling, there's really no drawback to overclocking (as you wont really be harming your CPU then) and I've seen videos where gaming performance has increased by a noteworthy amount in some games. Granted some other games only showed an increase of 1 fps as it does largely depend on the game.

And yeah I know that overclocking GPUs is a better way to improve gaming performance but fingers crossed I plan to be doing some video editing and stuff in the future so a faster CPU would improve that, not to mention whatever games seem to get a nice kick out of a faster CPU.

I dunno. My money should finish transferring today (I hope) or tomorrow at the latest so I'm just buming around with ideas while I wait. It would be easier to not overclock as then I would save a little money + I wouldn't bother increasing the warranty or risk my CPU lifespan but with that said, if there's not really any harm in doing it (as long as it's done right) then I'm sorta thinking 'why not?' if I can have someone do it for me under warranty.

A faster CPU now wont make a difference in my build I don't think but a faster CPU in 2-3 years might make a lot of difference. And again, I don't really fancy doing it myself hehe. I dunno.



Edit: Mmm I don't think I will overclock looking at it. The cost just goes up too much if I increase the warranty which I think is a must with overclocking due to the added instability risk. My current CPU has been good to me all these years and I have to think my gaming performance is still being held back by my GTX 275 rather than my CPU still so I suppose I will be fine without overclocking.

It's the smart thing to do I think. Having a nice uber leet haxorz overclocked CPU might sound cool but I guess it's not for me. At least not just yet

 

[Jmooney]

I bought an over clocked i5-760 back in 2010, 2.8ghz upto 3.8ghz, and it has ran perfect from that day and continues to do so. If you are going to want to over clock and your not confident in doing it yourself I would buy a pre over clocked system at least then it's covered by the warranty whereas if you do it yourself and damage the system it won't be covered.

 

[tshayter]

We do not offer a Collect and Return Warranty for orders that are delivered to countires outside the UK. The warranty service is strictly Return to Base. This means that should a fault develop with your order it will be your responsibility to return the faulty goods to us at your own expense using your own courier and insurance. Once we have repaired or replaced the goods we will return them to you at our expense.

There we go! I knew I read it somewhere!

 

[keynes]

We do not offer a Collect and Return Warranty for orders that are delivered to countires outside the UK. The warranty service is strictly Return to Base. This means that should a fault develop with your order it will be your responsibility to return the faulty goods to us at your own expense using your own courier and insurance. Once we have repaired or replaced the goods we will return them to you at our expense.

There we go! I knew I read it somewhere!

Is that from the t&c?

 

[tshayter]

It was outlined sometime during the order process.