Dear PC Industry: Please overclock responsibly

Chris Brown over at CNet has noticed a frightening trend. More and more review systems are coming in with insane overclocks that are neither stable nor is offered as part of the companies selection of options. Thus these systems have inflated scores and benchmarks and at the retail price that it comes with stock.

During the past two weeks we've tested three desktops with ambitiously overclocked Intel Core i7 920 chips. Two of those have failed Prime95, a publicly available benchmark designed to test CPU stability. One desktop last week blue-screened within two minutes of a Prime95 run. This afternoon, a PC that came overclocked to 3.73GHz throttled down to 2.4GHz (below the 2.66GHz stock speed for the 920 chip) after about 10 minutes. - Chris Brown

CNet is getting frustrated by these strings of failed overclocks that system builders ship them. What is the point of an amazing overclock if you get a BSOD every 5 minutes? The general gamer wants both speed and reliability. It is only the 1% of enthusiasts who want the extreme, even at the cost of reliability and survivability. Thus CNet has posted some guidelines which all system builders must follow to be considered for review.

So, PC Industry, consider yourself on notice. We weren't too concerned about your previous overclocking attempts that went 10 or 20 percent above stock. Now that you're aspiring to 50 percent performance gains, we're going to require two things:

You must acknowledge on your Web site that you offer CPU overclocking, and that the speeds you can achieve will vary from chip to chip. Most of you already do this.
Your overclocked PC must be stable enough to survive a 24-hour run of Prime95 in our lab.

If you fail to declare that you overclock and the limits thereof on your Web site, we will decline to review your PC above its stock component settings. If you send it to us anyway, we can send it back or clock it down, your call. We'll take failure to complete Prime95 on a case-by-case basis. Repeated failure will very likely result in a public reprimand. - Chris Brown

Check out the full CNet article here about this.

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AVADirect Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Visit Members Homepage Add to Buddy List AVADirect Admins Joined: 07 Apr 2008 Location: Twinsburg, OH Posts: 53	Quote Reply Topic: Dear PC Industry: Please overclock responsibly Posted: 01 May 2009 at 8:27pm
	Thanks for the input as we couldn't agree more. Regards, Misha Troshin

carsonmd Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List AVADirect Noob Joined: 05 May 2008 Posts: 27	Quote Reply Posted: 01 May 2009 at 4:43pm
	I was just about to link this article under your review thread. Cnet should have reviewed the other, nameless systems which were too overclocked and thus unstable. It represents an excellent opportunity to test an aspect of PC vendors which is never addressed in reviews (exception being HardOCP). That being post-sale customer support. In not following through with these systems, they are not serving their readers properly.

MattSlagle Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List AVADirect Guru Joined: 03 Apr 2008 Location: AVA HQ Posts: 1197	Quote Reply Posted: 01 May 2009 at 11:34am
	Dear PC Industry: Please overclock responsibly Chris Brown over at CNet has noticed a frightening trend. More and more review systems are coming in with insane overclocks that are neither stable nor is offered as part of the companies selection of options. Thus these systems have inflated scores and benchmarks and at the retail price that it comes with stock. During the past two weeks we've tested three desktops with ambitiously overclocked Intel Core i7 920 chips. Two of those have failed Prime95, a publicly available benchmark designed to test CPU stability. One desktop last week blue-screened within two minutes of a Prime95 run. This afternoon, a PC that came overclocked to 3.73GHz throttled down to 2.4GHz (below the 2.66GHz stock speed for the 920 chip) after about 10 minutes. - Chris Brown CNet is getting frustrated by these strings of failed overclocks that system builders ship them. What is the point of an amazing overclock if you get a BSOD every 5 minutes? The general gamer wants both speed and reliability. It is only the 1% of enthusiasts who want the extreme, even at the cost of reliability and survivability. Thus CNet has posted some guidelines which all system builders must follow to be considered for review. So, PC Industry, consider yourself on notice. We weren't too concerned about your previous overclocking attempts that went 10 or 20 percent above stock. Now that you're aspiring to 50 percent performance gains, we're going to require two things: You must acknowledge on your Web site that you offer CPU overclocking, and that the speeds you can achieve will vary from chip to chip. Most of you already do this. Your overclocked PC must be stable enough to survive a 24-hour run of Prime95 in our lab. If you fail to declare that you overclock and the limits thereof on your Web site, we will decline to review your PC above its stock component settings. If you send it to us anyway, we can send it back or clock it down, your call. We'll take failure to complete Prime95 on a case-by-case basis. Repeated failure will very likely result in a public reprimand. - Chris Brown Check out the full CNet article here about this.
	Matt Slagle AVADirect Research and Developement