As such, if you’re already hitting the upper limits of your power supply (PSU), overclocking may tip it over the edge and cause system instability, or worse-irreversibly damage the PSU.įinally, bear in mind that overclocking may cause long-term damage and shorten the lifespan of your graphics card – especially if you crank up the GPU voltage to push frequencies to the max. Leaving your voltage alone and keeping max temperatures lower can help reduce the potential wear of overclocking. One last word of warning: depending on your card, overclocking might technically void your warranty.

Where the “right” peak temperature lies for each GPU varies, but generally speaking, you’ll want to keep it around or below the 90-degree Celsius mark.Īs mentioned, overclocking a graphics card will result in increased power consumption simply because it requires more power to run the card’s GPU and memory at higher frequencies. It’s easy to monitor your system temperature – any motherboard manufacturer worth their salt offer utilities to read the thermal sensors on their boards, and your system BIOS will report hardware health data too. The GPU-tweaking utilities we outline below will all report GPU temps as well. The good news is that most coolers used in most modern GPUs have some headroom to accommodate at least some level of overclocking, but if your card or system already run particularly hot, additional cooling may be required.

There are a few key points to consider before overclocking your graphics card, including cooling, power requirements, and general system stability.īy definition, overclocking a graphics card means running it above its stock GPU and memory frequencies, which will inevitably result in higher power usage and heat output.

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