Once upon a time, not overclocking your CPU meant you were missing out on a major free performance boost. A smidge of manual tweaking and a bigger cooler would have yielded you a significantly faster clock speed, even just a few years ago.

Fast-forward to today, and overclocking your CPU is largely an exercise in time-consuming marginal gains rather than a large performance boost, to the point that people may prefer to undervolt their CPU. Modern CPUs tend to have features that automatically push your processor close to its ceiling natively, meaning that you'd be putting in a whole host of effort for very minimal payoff.

Overclocking is well and truly dead, and this isn't because users have lost interest, but rather because the work isn't worth the payoff. I haven't overclocked my CPU in years; I just haven't felt the need.

The culprits

Modern-day CPUs have caused the death of overclocking

In comparison to older models, like the Intel Pentium 4, or Intel Core 2 Duo, which were extremely popular models for overclocking, newer Intel CPUs now take advantage of Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB). This feature has rendered overclocking useless and is the reason I haven't bothered manually overclocking my CPU.

TVB constantly checks its thermal headroom, meaning it will monitor whether your CPU can handle further heat to provide more power. If your CPU is running cool, it automatically increases the clock speed beyond the standard max turbo frequency, which will push your processor as close to its safe limit as possible — all without overheating.

AMD CPU's make use of a similar technology called Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO). This feature will boost your modern AMD Ryzen chip until it hits its power, current, or temperature boundary — whichever it reaches first. This means you can take advantage of much faster clock speeds without having to worry about damaging your PC at all.

While you can overclock your CPUs beyond what these features allow, both TVB and PBO allow for your processor to reach much higher speeds, which are significantly closer to your computer's ceiling already. Overclocking further would only allow for minimal gains beyond this.

Overclocking is no longer 'free' gains

The investment just isn't worth it anymore

Alongside minimal gains, it's worth noting that manual overclocking now also results in a significantly hotter CPU as you're pushing it even further. This means you have to put in a lot more time, work, and money to ensure you are effectively cooling a manually overclocked processor.

In order to achieve proper cooling for a manually overclocked modern CPU, you'd have to opt for an exotic and expensive cooling system. Custom liquid loops or phase changes, which would be required to keep your PC cool enough to take advantage of an overclocked CPU, could set you back $300.

Let's say you spend this money to effectively overclock your CPU; you may be able to go from 5.2 GHz to 5.4 GHz, giving you a gain of 200 MHz. This increase in speed would only lead to a few extra frames per second in-game or a couple of seconds off on a benchmark score, such a minimal change that you likely wouldn't even notice.

By this point, you'd be better off spending that money on picking up a better CPU or even investing in a better GPU. Both of these investments would have a significantly better performance payoff for the same cost.

For the majority of users, you'd be better off investing that money in another element of your PC or your setup. You could opt for a better monitor, a new keyboard, or even more RAM for under $300. All of these would give you a much better gaming experience than overclocking your system.

Overclocking still exists

Just in other forms

While traditional overclocking isn't really worth the time and financial investment, this doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all. Instead, the best way to overclock your PC now is to ensure your system is optimized to allow TVB, PBO, or any other automated overclocking feature your CPU may have to take over. Ensuring that your CPU is cooled effectively means that these automated systems can kick in automatically, overclock your PC, and push your system to its full potential.

While the good old days of overclocking may be firmly behind us, that doesn't mean that modern-day CPUs aren't superior in every way. Being able to tap your CPU's full potential without manually overclocking your system is a major advantage, as it keeps your system safe and lets those who may not be as tech-savvy take full advantage of their processor. I've fully embraced this new efficiency with my 14th Generation Intel CPU, which I run on stock settings thanks to Thermal Velocity Boost.