“It needs one to step back and
reflect upon overclocking’s
discourse over the years
without the rose tinted glasses.”
isn’t necessary. Of course using
a custom power delivery method
via the seemingly popular VRM
boards is an exercise for the highly
skilled. However, barring those
users, one can buy a graphics card
that is ready for your overclocking
with absolutely no modifications
required. At least no modifications
that need any physical change to the
component.
These components are designed
by vendors to cater to overclockers,
something that previously didn’t
happen and it is just one example
of how much more accessible
overclocking has become. The
vendors who invest in such
hardware are also able to sell these
very same components to regular
users. Indirectly, this ever growing
overclocking community has served
as a means in which vendors can
sell even more specialized hardware
at even higher prices. A decade ago,
this would have not been imaginable
outside of a few vendors that
had an active overclocker within,
voicing their passion on behalf of
the overclocking community. The
great motherboards like the ABit
NF7-S (v2.0) and many others even
in those early days addressed the
overclocker’s needs. Not always
successfully, but the drive was there
and continues to exist even today.
The best overclocking board from
10 years ago for instance is for the
most part substandard by today’s
measure. In fact many would not
even bother with it. Not because of
the performance, but because of the
18 The OverClocker Issue 34 | 2015
quality we’ve come to expect from these components.
Predictability and reliability. Two things that were
anything but common at the time.
When one speaks to some vendors, they may tell
you that financially times are tough and that is true.
However that doesn’t not mean overclocking is the
cause or at least overclocking products are the cause.
It is simply because as a whole desktop computing
has taken a downturn, much like some other markets.
Overclocking does in fact not cost anymore to take part
in from a vendor point of view than other marketing
exercises. The only difference is that with overclocking,
there’s a certain level of validation any one component
needs to reach before it may be considered a worthy
product or f [Z[ Hو