I agree with the guns to drugs analogy provided by grassyknoll.
Guns do work as intended, and are therefore largely kept legal unless such a circumstance arises, and then the weapons are removed from the market.
Extending this analogy with zero manipulation... like prescription drugs, firearms are very useful tools in a limited window of circumstances, and similarly have a tangible danger associated which rises exponentially when potential misuse is factored in. You or a member of your family is approximately 20 times more likely to be killed by a weapon in your home than an intruder (Source: Kellermann AL. "Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home." Journal of Trauma, 1998; 45(2):263-67. That's peer-reviewed primary literature as well, so any bias will be small, and the science will be correct).
To safeguard against this as much as possible, the FDA heavily regulates the prescription drug industry. To gain access to any prescription drug, you must provide a demonstrated need to a licensed physician and obtain his direct approval for your limited use of this substance.
This substance being anything from allergy medication to high-power narcotics. All we ask, is that firearms, which I think we can all agree possess a potential danger at least equal to that of any prescription drug, be regulated similarly. Actually much less regulated since all you have to do is prove that you're the law abiding citizen you say you are and keep your nose clean and you can have all the firearms you want. You don't even have to have a clearly tangible need. I actually am a proponent of mandatory testing of proficiency as well, and can see no reason to not expect this.
If you hand a man a gun that is capable of magnifying the power of a single finger action to definitely lethal proportions, then I want to know you're capable of safely operation such a device.
I would no sooner prefer an untrained handgun owner living next to me, than say... an untrained and unlicensed crane operator working on the side of a highway. The potential for accidental death or injury during use is commensurate.
Anyone CAN do it, provided they attain a certain level of knowledge about A. How the hardware functions to do it's job, and B. How to INCRIMENTALLY increase the performance of the system (by tweaking of individual component parameters to affect the whole). Most of the secrets can be found in wonderfully written how-to's on enthusiast websites.
It's not easy, but it's not very hard either. Rather it's time consuming, but as a previous poster mentioned it also delivers very tangible rewards much like a "70% off" coupon on your next processor purchase, and presumably many if not most of all CPU's you buy after that.
Also, while the methodologies are architecture specific (AMD, Intel), overclocking is somewhat akin to romance languages, in that once you learn one well, the other falls into place with much less effort.
No, the cooler is dissipating previously evolved heat generated by the amount of electricity moving through the processor. It's just wasted E left over from processing. To reduce the amount of power consumed by the processor, one must manually (or automatically in some cases) reduce the voltages associated with the operation of the CPU (Vcore) or throttle the clocks on the CPU.
You can do some low V overclocking with very good cooling. You should also be able to run your voltages at lower temps even at stock speeds, due to the overall temperature of the silicon comprising the CPU core. Lower temperature means lower Temp induced irregularities in the paths, hence (at least theoretically) you would require less V to "jump" these irregularities. I don't think anyone can argue that a CPU/Cooling solution that could hypothetically maintain near 20C temps at load would be capable of nearly sipping power.
This is all highly variable though, as I'm sure "gap jumping" isn't the sole duty of the energy moving through the processor, most likely leading to a very non-linear or diminishing returns relationship coming into play.
Also, the drops in voltage afforded by superior cooling at stock speeds are minimal (0.3V normally), so the cooling solution would almost have to be passive, or the marginal energy savings would be immediately, and in most cases drastically outweighed by the power consumption of any active cooling, be it fan or liquid cooling pump.
Disclaimer: All of this knowledge is based on hobbyist overclocking experience. I am not a hardware engineer nor claim expertise, so the letter of the law may have discrepancies, but I feel that the spirit of the message is largely intact.
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Guns do work as intended, and are therefore largely kept legal unless such a circumstance arises, and then the weapons are removed from the market.
Extending this analogy with zero manipulation... like prescription drugs, firearms are very useful tools in a limited window of circumstances, and similarly have a tangible danger associated which rises exponentially when potential misuse is factored in. You or a member of your family is approximately 20 times more likely to be killed by a weapon in your home than an intruder (Source: Kellermann AL. "Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home." Journal of Trauma, 1998; 45(2):263-67. That's peer-reviewed primary literature as well, so any bias will be small, and the science will be correct).
To safeguard against this as much as possible, the FDA heavily regulates the prescription drug industry. To gain access to any prescription drug, you must provide a demonstrated need to a licensed physician and obtain his direct approval for your limited use of this substance.
This substance being anything from allergy medication to high-power narcotics. All we ask, is that firearms, which I think we can all agree possess a potential danger at least equal to that of any prescription drug, be regulated similarly. Actually much less regulated since all you have to do is prove that you're the law abiding citizen you say you are and keep your nose clean and you can have all the firearms you want. You don't even have to have a clearly tangible need. I actually am a proponent of mandatory testing of proficiency as well, and can see no reason to not expect this.
If you hand a man a gun that is capable of magnifying the power of a single finger action to definitely lethal proportions, then I want to know you're capable of safely operation such a device.
I would no sooner prefer an untrained handgun owner living next to me, than say... an untrained and unlicensed crane operator working on the side of a highway. The potential for accidental death or injury during use is commensurate.
It's not easy, but it's not very hard either. Rather it's time consuming, but as a previous poster mentioned it also delivers very tangible rewards much like a "70% off" coupon on your next processor purchase, and presumably many if not most of all CPU's you buy after that.
Also, while the methodologies are architecture specific (AMD, Intel), overclocking is somewhat akin to romance languages, in that once you learn one well, the other falls into place with much less effort.
No, the cooler is dissipating previously evolved heat generated by the amount of electricity moving through the processor. It's just wasted E left over from processing. To reduce the amount of power consumed by the processor, one must manually (or automatically in some cases) reduce the voltages associated with the operation of the CPU (Vcore) or throttle the clocks on the CPU. You can do some low V overclocking with very good cooling. You should also be able to run your voltages at lower temps even at stock speeds, due to the overall temperature of the silicon comprising the CPU core. Lower temperature means lower Temp induced irregularities in the paths, hence (at least theoretically) you would require less V to "jump" these irregularities. I don't think anyone can argue that a CPU/Cooling solution that could hypothetically maintain near 20C temps at load would be capable of nearly sipping power. This is all highly variable though, as I'm sure "gap jumping" isn't the sole duty of the energy moving through the processor, most likely leading to a very non-linear or diminishing returns relationship coming into play. Also, the drops in voltage afforded by superior cooling at stock speeds are minimal (0.3V normally), so the cooling solution would almost have to be passive, or the marginal energy savings would be immediately, and in most cases drastically outweighed by the power consumption of any active cooling, be it fan or liquid cooling pump. Disclaimer: All of this knowledge is based on hobbyist overclocking experience. I am not a hardware engineer nor claim expertise, so the letter of the law may have discrepancies, but I feel that the spirit of the message is largely intact.