Editing Overclocking (section)

===Enthusiast culture===

Overclocking has become more accessible with motherboard makers offering overclocking as a marketing feature on their mainstream product lines. However, the practice is embraced more by [[enthusiast computing|enthusiasts]] than professional users, as overclocking carries a risk of reduced reliability, accuracy and damage to data and equipment. Additionally, most manufacturer warranties and service agreements do not cover overclocked components nor any incidental damages caused by their use. While overclocking can still be an option for increasing personal computing capacity, and thus workflow productivity for professional users, the importance of stability testing components thoroughly ''before'' employing them into a production environment cannot be overstated.

Overclocking offers several draws for overclocking enthusiasts. Overclocking allows testing of components at speeds not currently offered by the manufacturer, or at speeds only officially offered on specialized, higher-priced versions of the product. A general trend in the computing industry is that new technologies tend to debut in the high-end market first, then later trickle down to the performance and mainstream market. If the high-end part only differs by an increased clock speed, an enthusiast can attempt to overclock a mainstream part to simulate the high-end offering. This can give insight on how over-the-horizon technologies will perform before they are officially available on the mainstream market, which can be especially helpful for other users considering if they should plan ahead to purchase or upgrade to the new feature when it is officially released.

Some hobbyists enjoy building, tuning, and "Hot-Rodding" their systems in competitive benchmarking competitions, competing with other like-minded users for high scores in standardized computer benchmark suites. Others will purchase a low-cost model of a component in a given product line, and attempt to overclock that part to match a more expensive model's stock performance. Another approach is overclocking older components to attempt to keep pace with increasing [[system requirements]] and extend the useful service life of the older part or at least delay purchase of new hardware solely for performance reasons. Another rationale for overclocking older equipment is even if overclocking stresses equipment to the point of failure earlier, little is lost as it is already [[Depreciation|depreciated]], and would have needed to be replaced in any case.<ref>{{cite book | title = The Book of Overclocking | first1 = Scott | last1 = Wainner | first2 = Robert |last2=Richmond | pages = [https://archive.org/details/bookofoverclocki0000wain/page/1 1–2] | isbn = 978-1-886411-76-0 | publisher = No Starch Press | year = 2003 | url = https://archive.org/details/bookofoverclocki0000wain/page/1 }}</ref>