The performance gains you get with modern chips aren’t as noteworthy as they used to be.
If you were a PC enthusiast in the 2000s or even most of the 2010s, you may remember how popular overclocking was at the time. Overclocking involves increasing a CPU’s clock speed past the manufacturer’s advertised specifications. In effect, it allows you to squeeze more performance out of a chip, making it perform better than its factory settings and potentially even matching higher-end CPUs.
But overcooking has fallen out of favor in recent years even though it’s still technically possible on modern CPUs. You won’t find nearly as many guides on how to overclock these days, nor is the hardware modding community as large as it once was. So what changed with CPU overclocking and why do even advanced users no longer seem to care about extracting free performance from hardware they already own?
Why is CPU overclocking no longer popular?
CPU overclocking hasn’t disappeared entirely, but the traditional methods have given way to a more automated and hands-off approach. Modern processors and motherboards now include features that push their clock speeds beyond their advertised capabilities whenever the workload demands it.
Many motherboards’ BIOS menu include a setting called Multi-Core Enhancement or Enhanced Turbo that algorithmically pushes clock speeds past their out-of-the-box defaults. You will have to manually enable this feature. In the past, you’d have to manually change the CPU core frequency multiplier and find a stable setting, so this feature takes a lot of the guesswork out of overclocking.
Many AMD Ryzen CPUs also include a feature called Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO). Unlike traditional overclocking methods, PBO uses an algorithm that automatically raises the CPU’s power and current limits when it detects enough thermal headroom. This allows the chip to sustain higher frequencies across more cores. PBO2 goes one step further with an adjustable Curve Optimizer in the Ryzen Master utility, which allows you to manually fine-tune the CPU’s voltage and frequency curve to reach higher boost clocks.
Finally, modern CPUs are simply designed to leave less performance headroom on the table. Chip makers were historically quite conservative with clock speeds. But thanks to improvements in chip fabrication, manufacturers can now produce more predictable and stable chips at scale.
In the past, a chip’s maximum clock speed would have been dictated by the worst performing batches. With that concern now out of the way, modern chips are now tuned to perform close to their practical limits out of the box.
Is CPU overclocking safe and a good idea?
Yes, CPU overclocking is still safe even if the practice itself is not as popular as it once was. The only downside these days is that you cannot expect as much of a performance uplift from overclocking. It will also cost you in terms of power and cooling.
If you’re using an air cooler that was included with your CPU, for example, chances are that it won’t have enough cooling capacity to handle higher temperatures. In fact, even first-party features like Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) benefit from a better cooling setup.
The stock AMD Wraith Stealth cooler was just enough to cool my Ryzen 7600 CPU, but with load CPU temperatures hovering between 85 and 90 degrees Celsius, there simply wasn’t enough thermal headroom to go beyond the factory frequencies. That said, you don’t need a top-of-the-line air or liquid cooling setup either. The tower-style Peerless Assassin 120 is a popular choice among enthusiasts — it retails for less than $50 and performs significantly better than most stock coolers.
On AMD platforms, PBO2 doesn’t come enabled out of the box so there’s a good chance you can overclock your CPU with little effort right away. It does take a bit of effort, as you’ll need to find the correct voltage and frequency settings for your specific CPU. Generally speaking, some chips perform better than others due to differing silicon quality and manufacturing precision. This is known as binning.
Intel doesn’t have an exact equivalent for this feature, but its modern CPUs also automatically take advantage of temperature overhead as well. So while manual overclocking isn’t as popular anymore, there are still benefits to buying higher-end motherboards that can support more aggressive power limits and boost clock speeds. Just remember to enable multi-core enhancement and PBO in the BIOS.
