Windows 7 - OC'ing: Worth it these days?

Agreed. Actually if it had been explained to me in the way you just did when I first started it 4 years ago, I would not have taken the chance of doing it. If I ever do get another computer, I surely want one with a bios that allows for all these goodies to be allowed. Which this one sorry to say does not. I do get a modest 380mhz. gain from the cpu by doing it. The graphics card I get more than a modest gain from 550 to 672mhz. on the core clock, 500 to 600mhz. plus on the memory clock, and 1375 to 1527mhz. on the shader. Which I find I like well enough, that not having it; would make me miss it very much.

That's about 20% extra for the good guys.

There's another 20% extra on the graphics end, too.

Overall, nothing to be ashamed of.

Thank you. I do wish it were more though. Maybe someday.

My motherboard lets me do anything I want to. Please keep this in mind. Most any thing you do, if it's wrong it won't boot or stay running. No big deal, set back to default and try again. Things that will kill your computer are volts and temps. Cpu volts and temps being the most important. Watch them all the time you are clocking. Most over clocking is trial and error because no two computers are the same. While you are trying things and like me getting confused, read some more and learn. Watch those temps always. I my case it is simple. I don't need or want a three thousand dollar toaster.

Agreed for sure. Thankfully I did not pay that much for my computer when I bought it. I use Speedfan, and Coretemp to watch the temperatures closely. Though they never have varied much since 4 years ago. Even when I added PC26400 ram this year, they have not gone more than a couple of degrees more overall. I hate slow. If I get another 4 years out of this puppy I will be real happy. Oddly enough, my 2 year old Macbook Pro is about the same overall speed, and that one can not be overclocked.

It sometimes is more subtle on the volts and temperature. For instance, if you enable Load Line Calibration at the higher overclocks, voltage overshoot when load suddenly changes can damage your CPU and make it unstable. Damage from overclocking can result in dead CPUs for sure, but that is rare. More likely your CPU will become flaky and its useful lifetime significantly reduced if you are not careful. For example, some BIOS voltage auto settings in an overclock tend to way overvolt. I found my P55 memory XMP voltage on auto @ 1.7V out of the box, even though the memory was 1.6V XMP. This was a serious overvoltage,

Having said that, I think that, if you know what you are doing, have the right hardware, and are careful, a 1GHz 24x7 overclock is a piece of cake nowadays.

With the Nvidia Ntune the only things I can really overclock are the front side bus which at normal with the pc26400 memory is 800, that runs at around 952mhz. and the graphics card. Since the bios does not permit anything at all. All runs pretty good except for a lockup every once in a while, which mostly has come from running things like Itunes or movies. But, they seem to be very infrequent to say the least. This only started when I went to the new memory.

overclocking the I5 2500k to 4.5ghz or so puts it on par with the higher 9XX series Cpu's anyways (for the most part in games). so basically, you're just Putting an I7 990 On your board (minus the HT and cache obviously) deeming it well worthwhile. It's what I plan to do. Also, the "K" series is made for overclocking, which is what I want to get into as it allows more Overclocking headroom. Considering you're getting it on the LGA1155 platform, it's a solid future proof build which will dominate games for the next 3-4 years. (most games these days are just GPU intensive)
Just make sure you've got the cooling and aftermarket thermal paste. It's very easy to OC said chip (not having to play with voltage etc if you do it manually easily). I'm getting a build somewhat similar to yours very soon.

Overclocking was generally just to get the most out of your older Pc's, but it's much more then that now, Personally for me. Overclocking is fun, interesting, and easily done with the K series, so Have fun KazeNoKoe23 :')

Thank you for the kind reply. I don't exactly know how soon I will get a new pc. But, it's clearly on my mind. And it will be one that allows the bios to do all these fun things that we like to do with our machines. I find as I have stated before, if I believe something can do better than thats what I will do. I am leaning towards though I may hate to say it, something with all AMD in it. Nvidia is fine but, sometimes their drivers are more finicky. I have older ATI HD200 256 meg. card that I pop in every now and then. And minus the lack of memory on board and the speed difference compared to the Nvidia card, wow what a rock solid performer otherwise. Sounds like you are going to build a really nice rig. Please let me know how you progress on it.

My big likeness among other things in computers is graphics. And I love a new theme, icons, and other desktop enhancements on a regular basis. I hate the same desktop too many days in a row. Also I must admit, the only place this old man can multitask is on my computer, so I hate waiting for anything.

Let me ask you your thoughts here a moment. I have a 7200 rpm 1 trig. lead disk, and a 5400 rpm 500 gig. second disk internal. Is that ok? Or does it slow things down much? Also have a couple of older (9 years I think) external 80 gig each ethernet 400 externals. May be I should retire some of this older equipment. Your thoughts?

Also I have a 3 year old usb2 external dvd recorder by Sony. I have an internal dvd recorder that is Sata. Maybe I should retire the Sony dvd recorder too? Thanks and again looking forward to hearing how your new build goes for you. And I will do the same when I get ready too also.

Just to add here that I finally got around to over clocking the memory and it working very well, no locking up at all. It runs great!