You’re well acquainted with how
memory tuning is at the heart of
all competitive overclocking. Even
though this doesn’t need LN2 as
such, it still seems that regular
users are not able to tell the
difference between the various
memory ICs and as such do no
tuning on their systems at all. Have
you found this to be the case when
dealing with your readers and
subscribers to your channel and
why do you think that is?
Yes, RAM tuning is way more
complicated than just changing
multiplier and VCore. There are
seriously a LOT of variables to
consider, and for relatively small
performance increases. This is
why most users aren’t interested in
tinkering with RAM variables. In that
regard, I still see a LOT of regular
users that don’t even turn their XMP
profile On!
What other things have you
discovered that you take for granted
8 The OverClocker Issue 41 | 2017
as an overclocker that you’ve
noticed regular users are just not
aware of?
One of the things that most
regular users not aware off when
overclocking is the work from
vendors to properly determine a
good ‘AUTO’ settings rule.
You see on most motherboards
there are ‘AUTO’ settings all
over the place that are neglected
by users when they are tuning
the systems. Sometimes, a
motherboard vendor may have to
apply a certain setting to make the
overclocking work, even though it is
left at ‘AUTO’.
Testing and validating these
‘AUTO’ rules takes an enormous
effort from the vendor to get it
right for most people (even with
the hardware variations) - but the
users usually don’t realize that his/
her settings work because someone
else tried hard to test all these
possibilities.
If you can, without getting yourself
in trouble (feel free to call us/me
out on my own nonsense here as
well). What do you find to be the
most troubling or disturbing trend
you see in hardware reviews of
late, assuming you see anything
concerning at all?
I can only talk about the things
that happen in Indonesia, as I’m
not aware of the stuff happening in
other regions. My biggest concern
is that the ‘review’ standards have
been falling constantly, to the point
that providing a video unboxing
some hardware + adding charts
can be called a ‘review’. Slowly the
reader’s understanding of what a
‘review’ is becomes skewed because
of these standards.
Sometimes the distributor of
that specific piece of hardware for
review will have no problem with
these type of review (they seem to
encourage it since they got more
coverage) for as long as it’s not
generating bad reviews.