The Overclocking Perspective, Should You Overclock Your Sim Rig?

Big patch energy meets practical rig wisdom. We kick off with the long-awaited Assetto Corsa Evo 0.4 update and why it’s more than a car-and-track drop. From the Ferrari SF25 and F40 to BMW M8 and M3, Road Atlanta, Monza, Oulton Park, and multiple Nürburgring layouts, there’s plenty to tempt you back. The real headline is the depth: improved tire damping and thermal behavior, smarter rolling resistance, drivetrain refinements, unified hybrid systems, and audio that finally matches the on-track feel—turbo pitch tied to boost and RPM, VTEC detail, better scraping, and even raindrops at idle. UI and multiplayer quality-of-life updates round out a build that feels closer to a true 1.0.

Then we shift gears to the question every sim racer wrestles with: should you overclock? We unpack CPU-bound vs GPU-bound titles, why single-core performance still rules iRacing and ACC at scale, and where safe, vendor-approved tuning (XMP, EXPO) outperforms risky manual tweaks. The truth: a five to twelve percent FPS bump isn’t worth an unstable system, thermal throttling, or mid-race crashes. We outline a smarter path—cap frames to 120 Hz for consistent motion and headroom, prioritize track and shadow clarity over crowds, and test changes in full grids while monitoring temps. With good cooling, clean airflow, and current BIOS/chipset drivers, your rig stays cool, quiet, and fast where it counts.

If you’ve been away from AC Evo, this is the patch to revisit. And if you’ve been tempted by “free FPS” videos, consider this your reminder that stability is speed. Subscribe, share with a teammate, and drop your rig wins and horror stories in the comments—what tweak made the biggest real-world difference for your lap times?

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:30 Announcements
• 8:30 Main Discussion
• 55:32 Closing Remarks

Transcript

Jason: 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Trophy AI, the ultimate performance coach tool for simracers. Hello and welcome to the Chicane Podcast, where we discuss all things in the simracing world. I'm your host, Jason Rivera, and I'm joined here by Mr. Jeff Smart. How's it going, bud?

Jeff: 0:42

How you it's going well. It's going well. The magic is a good one. Welcome back to the island, bro. I am back in the studio. So it's a good one.

Jason: 0:49

You got two studios, bro. That's amazing.

Jeff: 0:51

I would it's like 1.1 really so far, but the transition will eventually happen and we'll have back to one. 1.1, huh? Yeah, because the other one is a work in progress. This one.

Jason: 1:03

So the early one's like an early access. Is it gonna take a year? Early release, sort of.

Jeff: 1:08

Two years or early release. Yeah, which the switch over to full, uh, you know, um, full release will be a little bit more.

Jason: 1:14

You can sense my energy, right? With the recent news, which we're gonna go over real quick. But uh how are you, buddy? I'm doing good, man. Um, what did I do this week? We were gonna do the we were gonna do the uh endurance race, but it's the holidays, man, and some people can't attend. And it's just got busy. We got busy, and I don't think we're gonna be able to make the the 24. The guys are a little burnt out from the back-to-back two 24s basically in a row.

Jeff: 1:46

Quick turn.

Jason: 1:48

Yeah, so we're gonna skip on spa. It's uh a little unfortunate, but we don't want to be reckless out there either, and nobody feels comfortable right now. So, including myself, uh, I'd have to I hadn't had time to really put lap down, and and we're looking at the we always look at the deltas from the top splits, always. And if we're not near those deltas, we will not participate. Oh, really? That yeah. So we looked at Daytona Delta deltas, and we were in the top split. So we're trying to be a little more, how do you say this? Realistic about participating in something like that, you know? It's it's you know, this isn't Ferrari from F1, the the F1, you know, real life, that they just make shit up as they go.

Jeff: 2:47

They just roll anything they got, they just roll it out.

Jason: 2:50

Both freaking drivers are unhappy. No, no points in the nowhere, nowhere near the points.

Jeff: 2:56

They got the anchor dragon behind them.

Jason: 2:58

And that's another thing. This weekend is the close of it. Already happened, actually, by the time we're watching this, right? This is this weekend.

Jeff: 3:08

This is true. This is true. So next week we have the we'll have the recap of our F1 predictions from back in the season when we did your uh, you know, who we thought was gonna do better. So I'll go back to that. Dig dig them up, and uh, that'll be a nice point to talk to see how we thought the season would go and how it went in reality. But it should be a banger of a weekend as we have three people that are kind of in in the mix for the uh the championship, and two of them are on the same team, which is even spicier.

Jason: 3:36

If I have to hear that anthem that I just don't want to mention, dude, what a comeback it would be. Get the hell, bro. Let's not get into it, bro. How was your week, Jeff? It was great, it was great.

Jeff: 3:50

I mean, it was I I jumped in a plane for you know, I don't know how many hours, 16 something hours with a two-year-old and an eight-year-old. So I made it. Thank you. Um, it actually wasn't terrible, but we're back here too bad, bro. To start the big transition and move.

Jason: 4:06

The eight-year-old should be playing his iPad and playing the iPad, yeah. Easily. So the the two-year-old is probably the biggest concern, I think.

Jeff: 4:16

You know, yeah. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse saved us a bunch.

Jason: 4:19

Oh, yeah.

Jeff: 4:20

Shout out to Mickey Mouse.

Jason: 4:21

I know they're getting all the views and all that on YouTube. They're they're killing it right now and ad revenue.

Jeff: 4:28

So and shout out to uh Starlink on Hawaiian Airlines that saved the day too.

Jason: 4:32

Oh, yeah, they always come in clutch. Um I gotta see what my options are. I'm flying Japan Air the other side, the other way back, and see what that is. But you know, Stranger Things, guys, un uh sim racing related. I will be flying close to the finale. So no spoilers, please. If you if you drop a comment with spoilers, I'm deleting it. That's it. So uh, anyways, I'm glad you had a safe travels back. That's always good to hear. Uh Jeff stopped by just earlier, picked up some some some cacoction goods that I make every single year. And I think this is the final one. So I'm thinking, you know, Jeff's been a great friend to me, so he's worthy of my recipe. If he, you know, when this time comes around back in Boston or you know, back next to the iRacing headquarters that I got a picture of. Uh, which we should have put this up. Um, next time we'll put a picture up of what they're yeah, I don't know if we should know that they were.

Jeff: 5:41

I was like snooping around their headquarters, you know.

Jason: 5:44

Well, we just told them, Jeff. I mean, as I think that's fair.

Jeff: 5:47

We did tell them, yeah.

Jason: 5:48

So you know, we don't edit none of these out.

Jeff: 5:50

The edits do happen by yours truly, but they stay the content is once we say technical reason is why we have to do any type of edit, not content related.

Jason: 6:00

There you go.

Jeff: 6:01

True.

Jason: 6:02

I don't know if we're gonna do uh not sure if we're gonna do we're gonna be able to do a show to this holiday special like we usually do. And it's because of the time zones kind of killed us the last time. So we're gonna see. I can't promise I I really want to do it, so we might take a different approach with that. Um, because that coincides with my travel plans. That's really the reason why. So if you guys we'll figure something out.

Jeff: 6:34

It's and just to kind of you know explain this a little bit, like this is what 83 in a row that we haven't missed an episode in a week. So um, we've done our best, we're gonna continue to do our best. It's just hard with travel, the holidays, etc. And we thank you, you know, the listeners very much for you know hanging uh hanging in there where if we do miss a week, we're gonna do what we can, but it might happen.

Jason: 6:59

It may or may not, right? Because Jeff's in the middle of a move on top of all of that that I just mentioned. He's in the middle of a massive different, you know, across the globe move um back to the east coast. So yeah, that's we're we're trucking along for now. So stay tuned. If I need to make an announcement, just just check your uh check the face, the uh probably the Instagram or the YouTube uh community posts, which I know none of you really look at because honestly, I never notice one when when the people I follow, they you know they post things and I don't even I don't even notice them because your feed is drowned by other videos. So just know that from the get. If you don't see an episode, default to that. Default to going to the track go simracing page and clicking on the um the community post. And if there is something like that, it'll be in there, and that's it. That's really it. So, anyways, exciting week this week. Um, the new Aceto Corsa, the long-awaited Aceto Corsa update, which is still not a 1.0, it's still a 0.4, which I'm not too happy about, but there is some massive changes, and Jeff has the changes. Um, there are a lot of them. I'll tell you now, if you go on to their website or their social media, you'll find them. But we're just gonna summarize those for you so you know uh what to expect. If you want to pick the game up at a discount before paying for the full price of the game, that may take, I don't know, maybe another maybe in 27. We'll have how it's gonna say.

Jeff: 8:45

Why don't you tell us your thoughts after we give the summary of this thing?

Jason: 8:50

I can't, bro. I can't. This this freaking this thing that I'm drinking, it's not even alcoholic. It's called it's it's liquid death. And it's I've heard I've seen those and I'm like, it's just seltzer, it's sparkling water.

Jeff: 9:02

Oh, it's not high test, there's no no alcohol in there.

Jason: 9:05

I know, I I know I failed you guys, really. So yeah, 100% no alcohol. Oh, I thought it was a little too much for Thanksgiving weekend. I was kind of I I had a beard, you know, I was all raggedy. So, but uh I'm back to it, man. I'm back to it. But uh yeah, Jeff, if you want to uh cover those and and and let's get into that real quick, just uh quick update on there.

Jeff: 9:29

Yeah, so there is a certified shit ton of uh changes and updates, like Jason said here. So I'm gonna cover uh you know some of the bigger points here, but we'll get into it here. So uh first data point is the daily races and uh the competitive kind of ecosystem that they have here. Is um they've uh done an update to access the races and registers. You can join directly from um from browser or in the game. They've done some uh rank ranking systems updates um from your uh grid rating. Uh some new cars. Here's whatever the it's kind of like new cars and tracks are like the big thing that people look for. Um yeah.

Jason: 10:06

So this was like their most exciting things.

Jeff: 10:08

Yeah, absolutely. And and honestly, me included for this time around, and I'll get into why. But uh, yeah, so they got I think it's eight or so. So they got the BMW M8, uh, the BMW M3, the Daytona, or excuse me, the Ferrari Daytona SP3, the Ferrari F40. That's a sweet car. The Ferrari, here you go, drummer, please. The Ferrari SF25. That's the uh um Lewis Hamilton's uh Formula One car. So this would be the super. I will start getting into Evo now that they got some sweet cars going, or in my opinion, some sweet cars. So um they got the Ferrari, bro. The Ferrari's been kind of like the anchor anchor behind it or something like we alluded to already.

Jason: 10:49

What happened to Mercedes or or McLaren?

Jeff: 10:52

Come on. They must have some deal with Ferrari, right? Because they had their like formula car from the 80s or something, you know. Umly 90s. I'm teasing. I'm teasing. Yeah, fair enough. So they got a bunch of other cars, uh, upnotable. Uh they got a Toyota Supra, uh the Turbo, which is cool, Mini Cooper, and a Porsche 718 uh GT4 RS. So that's super some super cool cars that they're adding. Um, some new tracks, the Nuremberg Ring. We got five layouts, Olden Park, two layouts, Road Atlanta, and Monza. So that's some dope tracks and um cars that they're pushing out. So uh quick update on some graphics. The car paint uh and some branding has been updated. Um they've done some dash displays and texture colors in some cars, uh, fixes for some certain material types. Uh, you got some the MX5 Cup, which is a popular car, at least in iRacing, um, some updates there, the Porsche GT4 Cup car, um, some minor visual updates, same with the Huracon, the M3, um, and some updates to the OEM accessories for the Honda 2000. And the same as for updates for the Audi RS3, RS6, and the Huracon STO. Some fix some wheel uh steering visibility issues with external driving cams. I think that means when like you're watching it from a replay or from a different camera angle. Correct. You can actually see the wheel moving, um, much like you would if you were in the cockpit, like the the the camera view that you should be using. Um, Jeff's opinion here. Uh also added additional backfires, so that's cool. Everybody loves backfires. Um, and driver assists for the F1 cars uh for and for all liveries. So we kind of get and here I'm gonna move into the audio updates, and we kind of got some crap from Larissa listeners for giving iRacing a hard time about um but dude, look at this the quote unquote lack of updates that I enhanced V Tech effect, you know.

Jason: 12:46

Come on, bro. You know, I don't know what that is.

Jeff: 12:49

Is that like the bouncing off the red limiter or something? Yeah, yeah. Who doesn't love that? Um so sound or new scraping.

Jason: 12:58

No, you don't remember those memes, Jeff, that you sent me before that it's a car like going across, and you hear dun d remember the ones that bounce off the V Tech, bro?

Jeff: 13:09

Oh, gotcha. Okay, all right, fair enough. So, like, this is awesome. There you have an updated raindrop sound when the car is stationary.

Jason: 13:17

Oh, that is yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.

Jeff: 13:20

If that's not attention to detail, I can get behind that. These types of things.

Jason: 13:23

So and and and you know what? Let me let's back it up a little bit. The people that let the folks that left those nice comments for us, you're giving iRacing a little too much slack. I don't care if the video that we presented was 10 years ago. It doesn't matter. What you what iRacing is done by now. Yeah, iRacing is yeah, if it was 10 years ago or two years ago, whatever the hell it was, why are we seeing graphical and graphical upgrades over sound, right? Over sound. The sim looks great. Leave it alone for now. As a matter of fact, the sim, the more graphical power you add to it, which we're gonna get into another topic that has something to do with that, the harder it is on those old school. We have a lot of old school iRacing guys, you know. I know this is about a settle, just real quick, iRacing, right? iRacing can learn from the attention to detail that's going into the audio package here on an unfinished game, and you can see how much you know care it's getting. But let me give it back to Jeff and be respectful. No, don't worry and hold hold hold my horse's back until he's done, and then y'all hear my final thoughts on this.

Jeff: 14:40

Yeah, so to your point, Jason, they've updated the turbo pitch is now related to the boost and RPMs directly. Who would have thought? New transmission sound set management, the Honda NSX improved VTech crossover sound with pure samples. I don't know what pure samples is, but it sounds badass. Um, and a lot of other, you know, audio updates I can keep going, but those are some of the bigger bigger ones.

Jason: 15:04

But it sounds like care. That's what this sounds like.

Jeff: 15:07

They didn't talk about doing audio updates, they did audio updates. Like, yeah, I hate to be passive aggressive here, but I'm finished. Take some note here, right? Take some notes. Yeah, take some notes. All right, so let's move into some physics updates. So this is where it kind of gets real. You want to talk about details, boy. It's huge, yeah.

Jason: 15:24

It's huge. I can I can split this up with you, Jeff, if you want me to. It's a lot. So sure.

Jeff: 15:29

I'll I'll start a little bit here and then you can, you know, I'll leap it to you here in a couple. But develop new tire dampening methods to increase compliance and driving situations. Um, some of the inner inertia, and they took into account, I'm paraphrasing here what it says, but if a car has wider tires than other cars, it gives it more traction. Like, what a novel idea, right? Um, adjusted thermal behavior for tires, um, along that adjusted for rolling resistance, which is crazy, right? Because I've always had different vehicles that rolled better than others. You know, now they take that into account in this for the top speed, right?

Jason: 16:02

For that realistic top speed, that's crazy.

Jeff: 16:04

Yeah. So um implemented new driver train wobbling thid. Um, I don't necessarily know what that means, but like if they're taking that level of detail into it, adding this type of stuff, this is fixing to be whatever comes out for full release, a banger. Uh adjusted wear uh tire wear compounds. Obviously, I think that's pretty probably should have came out uh before this, but uh um improved consistency and all available compound range. This is for the early modern cars, removable. Uh what am I looking at here? Improved hybrid powertrains. And here's a here's an interesting one. And this was potentially, hopefully, will go to the SF90, the formula car that they're they're just releasing, is implemented in uh undef unref unf unfined. Unified Unified, excuse me, k uh KERS and ERS behavior. So um your uh your battery that you got in your car when you can push, you know, or push the pass. Um so it that's I don't because I don't think iracing has one car that has a DRS and the battery that you can use, which the formula car should have. Um, but I don't they let you use DRS, but they don't have the push to pass or the battery usage in the same car. So that's kind of cool that they're working on it. Uh improved dual clutch transmission behavior to be more seamless. Uh implemented electronic brake bias, revised battery features. Um, what else we got going on here? Uh so a lot of in-car adjustments. So turbid you can make some adjustments for the turbo, the damper, differentials, a bunch of fixes for the Ferraris. Um, Jason, you want to take over a little bit here? I've been talking a bunch, but I can keep going. Go ahead.

Jason: 17:46

Yeah, so some improved physics models for cars with solid axles. Um, Jeff said that the Ferrari 296 GTB is getting a numerous of fixes. Um, they implemented soft lock features for steering wheels, which is kind of cool. So our our wheelbases already do that. So, but if you have a wheelbase that just is not giving out the telemetry, I'm guessing I'm assuming that's what they mean. Because again, this this patch comes out tomorrow as the time of this recording. We're just reading the patch notes. It doesn't mean that we've tested all of this yet. We we could probably do a follow-up, but yeah, so soft locks were implemented, uh created multiple physics events to allow more nuanced car audio. So huh. So the fit oh, that's kind of cool. So the audio again responding to the physics of the car, not just uh guess physic. Uh huh. You you know what I mean? Uh fix the potential crash. Okay, those are general fixes, various adjustments to turbo um engines, turbos, drag and down force, various adjustments and fixes to car defaults. Okay, so we've had a plethora of corrected things uh for individual cars. So put it this way instead of reading this and and basically power pointing you to death, um, if you play the sim and you picked up your favorite car and you drove it, I would highly recommend the obvious is to install this update and revisit those cars. Like let's say they felt bad or they didn't drive so good or they didn't sound so good. The best thing you can do is hey, let me take this for a drive again because I have corrections for a Mazda MX5, an Alpine A uh 110, uh the Golf GTI got changes. Uh it looks like the Ferrari heavily got got changed big time. There's a lot of fixes there. The BMW M2, which was an utter failure on i Racing because i Racing isn't perfect. We're not an iRacing podcast, and we will call iRacing out, even though a lot of our fans. Are iRacers and they will defend it? But you know, that's like their second mom. Updated and unified. I'm almost done here, guys. Updated and unified all car names. Okay, in the setup folder. That's minor. Uh, so that way you can find them easier. Fix unwanted vibration and torque vectoring differential, sanitize and updated TC and ABS behaviors on all cars. Fix engine uh crippling behavior of early iterations of track control, attraction control. And again, the game's not done yet, so you have to pardon it with this kind of change log because they're still trying to find the balance of it, you know, even though I'm not too happy with them taking so long to do this. But at least it's not taking three years, you know what I mean? Or they say, hey, uh, we're working on this, and it'll take us about four years. Yeah, I don't want to hear that, you know. So, anyway, so some changes to the gameplay, right? Some new implementations and fixes and fixes on the penalty manager. So you got uh move to Imla finish line. Okay, some changes to Imola, some tweak logic for autumn automatic grip population, uh plethora of AI fixes. If you race AI, uh they fixed a bunch of things happening in the pit stops, uh, positions for various fit um physics functions, uh, some crashes, updated AI uh data again, rework track limit save zones, and all cars no longer get warnings and penalties. Okay, I don't know what that's about. Changing audio force feedback effects now take effect inside the session. Thank god. So you can make your changes there on the fly. The UI is again general improvements. I'm gonna say rework the clients, they the server list got changed. Uh, new car selection flow for multiplayer. They added missing car locations, uh strings, implemented track maps on the HUD and the pit lane page, chat widget. So, again, guys, the the when I showed this to Jeff, we were like, holy crap, like that's a lot to cover on uh on an hour podcast. So I will encourage everybody to go and read these changes. Um, and again, give the game a second shot. Like, if you purchase the game, the sim, you have nothing to lose here by updating it and trying it out again and see how you like it. I still don't like the fact that the game was supposed to release in September and it's not, and it's not September, it is December, and we're still at a 0.4. So, you know, I know how to do math, Jeff. And usually for you to get the one, right? You know, that's like six more updates unless they decide to straight up jump the gun and release it and call it a 1.0, and yeah, they're still fixing it in the background.

Jeff: 23:07

Maybe you could probably help out here, but here's a question basic question for you. Like, what did dictates the full release? Could they have uh done this update and called it the full release?

Jason: 23:17

This is totally on them. So version numbers with software is right, if it's a zero, it it can if it's a 0.0, that means tech standard, it it'll mean alpha build, you know. A 0.4 is more of a beta because it's before that 1.0 release. So they can name it whatever they want, they can name it 4.265, you know. So the the numbering goes by milestone. They believe that it went from 0.3 to 0.4, that's a major milestone for them. And it and it shows because if you look at the amount of changes, now, for example, this update releases tomorrow, you install it, and it crashes your your sim, your it crashes something, and they have to implement the fix, then you'll see a 0.41. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like as a as a quick, as a hot fix, is what they call it. So that that's a settled course of Evo. Thank you, uh, Jeff, for covering the majority of that. Um the the exciting thing here is new cars, new tracks, and multiplayer is live, and it seems like uh it's about that time that we all go back and and see what this is all about, especially with the Formula One car. I know Jeff's excited for to see what a modern sim with a Formula One car, you know. Yeah, because we haven't had that. And F1, the F1 games don't count. No, they don't count, even though, even though um, I have some plans for the show, and yeah, that person uh drives the arcade F1s, so uh they will put us to shame a little bit because that's what they love to do, and we can't judge what people love to do. But, anyways, let's move on with that or there. I had to back I had to backcycle that because I mean I'll never change my feelings unless there's an F and unless there's an F-126 that blows me away, and then I will come back running to it. I think I saw happening.

Jeff: 25:31

I think I saw that they're not doing an F-126, they're just gonna do an update.

Jason: 25:36

Which makes it even worse because that means that they're building off of the same model, and the model is not a sim model, it's it's an it's a sim cade model. So I mean, God bless them and Godspeed, but not on this rig. I don't know. Not with no mouse support, so come on.

Jeff: 25:57

Oh, don't even get me started again. We got better stuff to talk about than that.

Jason: 26:01

I know we do, we don't have to dread on that. But today's topic, main discussion today, we have two for you. Um, we have on the list, I have the first one for overclocking your PC and how it can help you in sim racing. So I bet you anything, the tech, the tech people, their ears just went like that, like a chihuahua. Like straight up. They mentioned overclocking. Here we go. So here's the here's the re here's the reality. Here's the here's the how do you say this? Here's the rub on this. I don't know what kind of hardware you're running, and every piece of kit is different. So I'm going to approach this in a way that you can kind of understand what overclocking is, and if if you should or should not be doing this. Um, so overclocking, what does it mean for us sim racers? It means pushing your CPU or your GPU beyond the factory speeds, right? So that's like taking your engine and the rev limiter stops at 7200 and you want 8,000, even though it's in the red, and and red means dead, but you want it you want to do that.

Jeff: 27:24

So that's go faster, right?

Jason: 27:27

Yeah, everyone wants to squeeze out the max power, right? Max power. So just a quick help uh rundown for CPU, CPU bound sim uh titles, right? CPU bound, meaning they rely more on the CPU than the GPU. So you could buy Jeff's fancy brand new 5090. But if you have a shit CPU, the sim doesn't give a sh it, it don't matter, it's irrelevant. You know what I mean? It's gonna tank. It there's gonna be uh it's gonna tank. Okay. So the the the CPU bound sims at the moment are iRacing, R Factor 2, BMG, Automobilista 2, and ACC. And I can I can confirm three of those. Actually, I can confirm four of those because four of those titles I play heavily. And I tell you what, iRacing and ACC is probably the biggest uh CPU bound um you know Sims out there. So the GPU bound, so if you got a not so great GPU, it's gonna hurt, you know what I mean? Um ACC again is one of them, automobilista as well, but automobilista only when you're running VR is when it's GPU bound. So F-123 and 24 is one of them, and for is a motorsport uh 2023 and and up. So it if you still play those, okay. So why is it useful? Simracers like iRacing, right? i Racing rely heavily on single core performance, low latency and high stable clock speeds. So if you have a multi-core CPU, it's not gonna use all those cores. Like the way, like, how do I put this in plain English for you? If if I gave you uh a fork and a knife to eat a steak, but you still use a fork to eat that steak, it's gonna be harder on you, right? But you but you have the fork, you're just not using it. Great analogy. Yeah, in a simple way, you know? Like you have the tools, but you're just not utilizing them because you weren't programmed to use them at the time that your engine was built. It doesn't recognize them, and they're trying to fix that with other things. So the gains by overclocking, you can see a 10 to a 25% increase in FPS and I racing depending on your CPU. You can get much smoother replay, AI race starts, um, rain grids, and VR. This is iRacing. So what matters is the clock speed, temps under 85 Celsius. And I will tell you with a caveat if you run an Intel processor that high, you you run a risk of destroying it. So CPUs, when they get hot, they do two things. They get hot, there's no warning. They're not gonna tell you, hey, I'm getting hot. They just they'll do two things. They'll under, they'll how do you say this? They will uh they'll throttle back if they're reaching a temperature, they won't use their maximum power, and that's where you see a frame go down way, your frames go way down, and it's trying to compensate that for temperature to keep the temperature in a safe zone. If you have a BIOS, a modern BIOS, and it's updated, and I'll update a chipset and it's all up to date and it's doing what it's designed to do. In the old days, that was never happening. You would just get a black screen, not a blue screen. The whole thing would just shut off, and then when you turn it back on, it didn't turn back on no more. You know, there was no warning. Yeah. And they started, you know, they started trying to fix that, and they would, you know, boards back then, mid-2000s or something, they would just restart out of nowhere, and that was your your clue. It was like one or two things is wrong here. The PSU is going bad on me, or um, my CPU is going bad. It's just like a car, you know, it's just like a car. You if your CPU was going bad on you, it would just be a restart. If you're most likely, if if your PSU was going on on you, your power supply unit, and it did a full shutdown, that's not good. That means loss of power, meaning I I I freaked out, I couldn't handle it. And and yeah, PSUs back then were 25 bucks. Now we're paying what $300, $400 for a freaking these. It stings a little more. Yeah, it stings a little more. So um, so just to keep it simple, right? Because I can give you numbers on uh different processors and stuff like that, but my highest recommendation is to buy a board that's reputable, buy a CPU that's reputable with an X3D clock on it. Why? Because that clock is specifically was engineered for gaming, and most motherboard, uh, most motherboard bioles have a protocol for overclocking it safely, meaning you're overclocking your CPU, but you're overclocking it using the manufacturer's recommendations, right? So you have something called XMP, and you have the other one. I think um what is it called? Jeff, help me in. I think it's called Expo. Um, yes, Expo and XMP. I think Expo up from the top of my head, I think Expo is the protocol for AMD and XMP is the protocol for Intel. Um and that's basically what overclocking is. I mean, the realistic improvement is a five, the realistic is a five to 12% FPS increase. But here's the thing you're gonna burn, you're gonna run your hardware harder. It's not gonna last as long as you think it is running it this way. Um, unless you're using safe, you know, overclocks that are safe, that are technically designed. If you start doing a custom overclock, you know, your system becomes unstable. And what I mean by unstable is somebody would call me and say, I overclock my CPU and I'm getting 30 more frames a second. And they open up Word document and it crashes the entire PC. Want to have a live coach available on demand? With Trophy AI, you'll be able to practice with Mantle AI at your convenience, a real-time coach in your headphones to navigate and guide you through the track, helping you achieve race pace. This tool is awesome as it provides full brake, throttle, and steering telemetry on screen with a live review getting you ready for your next big race. Check links to Trophy AI in the description and also use Shicane12 in all caps for a 12% discount. That is what I mean by unstable. Like there's instabilities in the system that are there, the system is trying to work, right? But it's unstable, right? It's not tested fully, you know, and there's no real way to test that either. You can run benchmarks, you can go on YouTube and watch videos. I don't care what the internet says, your hardware is every piece of combination of hardware is most likely a very specific and unique to your setup. So that is the best advice I can give you. And in my personal opinion, overclocking is never worth it. Never. I rather I much rather a cooler machine that runs cooler and I have consistencies because what do we do when we're gaming? We're not just sim racers, are not just sim racing. You're running overlays, you're running sim hub that needs those, that needs that CPU power in the background. And if you're like me, you're streaming, you're what are you saying? You're you're making your system way more unstable than you think. And it's it's always better to start with the default and go change by change, meaning you if you change something in the graphics, monitor that change. Remember the other you remember a few months ago, Jeff? You called me over and you was like, dude, I made some changes, and I can't get this frame rate back to what it what it was. Remember that? And we went back to the drawing board and I said, forget about everything you just did, just uninstall the whole thing. Let's start from the beginning and let's do the settings that I know that we both know work with your system. And then you're like, okay, I like the way this looks, but I want a little more detail on the cars. Let me change that and then look at the frame rate. And don't just go on a track by yourself, go on a track full of cars that way you're loading that you're loading your graphics card and your CPU up to see how it takes. You know what I mean? That is the best advice I can give you. These setup videos, I can make that shit all day. I'm sorry, excuse me, I can make a setup video right now and it'll probably do really good on YouTube, but those are not realistic.

Jeff: 37:31

You know, the thing is it's not your system.

Jason: 37:34

Exactly. Unless I had the exact same system that you have, and that means the same monitor, the same RAM, because I haven't even I didn't even get into RAM timings. That's a whole nother freaking story. The same CPU, the same GPU, the same motherboard, and I need to be on the same version. I need to be on the same version of Windows, I need to be on the same version of iRacing. There's way too many variables, right? Someone once asked me if I can make a video on how to build a PC in less than two minutes, and I said that is not that is that is impossible. You know what I mean? It impossible. Impossible.

Jeff: 38:17

Just the you you could, but it wouldn't be worth the two minutes of your time.

Jason: 38:21

You could, but I'll be lying.

Jeff: 38:22

Yeah, yeah. Or yeah, or you know how I do a two-minute video?

Jason: 38:26

I tell you, hey, a CPU needs a GPU, a CPU, and a power supply and some RAM and a case. Happy shopping.

Jeff: 38:34

And they all connect to each other. Good luck.

Jason: 38:35

How much was that? It was 10 seconds. Yeah. I just beat the record. You can't possibly. There's no easy way with this. This is the PCs are the most difficult part of our hobby. It is. Because if you bought a pre-build. You well, you bought a pre-build, but you how much did you learn about you know what I'm saying?

Jeff: 38:57

I was this close to doing it myself. This close.

Jason: 39:00

You could have, and you easily could have. But you got a deal, right? You saw a deal, and it was good. It was too good to be true, and it was actually true, and it's in solid reality, which I'm happy for you. So, but you know what I'm trying to say is that sim racers on the PC, you need to know some things about how computers and what Windows, uh, how Windows works, right? How it operates. Because the more the more knowledge you can get out of that, the less out of the Reddit forms, because that's what you're gonna do. That's what you're gonna do. I already know I already know the pattern. You're gonna go to Reddit, you're gonna go to the forms, some random person typed up something, you're gonna click on something, make a change to your motherboard that you don't even know what that thing does. You you don't, but you but somebody said to click on that. You know what I'm saying? So I tell you this let things, in my opinion, fact you can't beat factory settings. You can't beat factory settings. I had this argument about GPUs, about the fastest GPU, about the highest clocked GPU, right? And I'm like, why do I need the highest clock GPU? How many frames do I need to see? Did I not tell you about the reigning frames? And about the frames. Yeah, it was like about the frames everywhere.

Jeff: 40:17

You get frames. You get frames. Yeah.

Jason: 40:18

These monitors back here, these TVs, they're they only max out at 120 Hz. They do. If I run them at 144, I lose all kinds of image clarity and color. So I'm not going to do that. So 120 Hz is why I'm locked to. So if I get 121, I lost the frame. If I get 100 and if I get 200 frames, I'm throwing away 80 frames.

Jeff: 40:42

Wasting. Wasting this GPU.

Jason: 40:45

So what I do, what I do with my system is I lock it to 120. And what that does is says, okay, now I'm using this power for the game. Now I have all this other power for your stream, for simhub, for YouTube. You know what I'm saying? And the temperatures, nice and cool, nice and stable. This computer, these TVs, they run for 24 hours. I mean, I run them to hell, you know. I've never had a single overheat. You know, and it's it's just following logic, guys. You don't have to have the highest numbers on the on the market, you know, to do a what do you do? You install it, you run a benchmark, and you send a picture to your friends and you show off. How does that help your racing? You know what I mean? So just overclocking. Is it worth it? It depends. It depends what kind of CPU you're running. If it's an outdated CPU, I would, I'd say you have nothing to lose, right? It's an old CPU and you're trying to get the most out of it. Um, if it's good hardware, I would not good hardware, meaning like a CPU that was built in the last three years or two years, I don't see the gains. A 10% gain is not enough for me to risk instabilities in my system.

Jeff: 42:09

I mean, that's like putting crowd or the the people in grandstands from medium to low. Exactly.

Jason: 42:18

Yeah, because what what people, you know, iRacing, especially iRacing, is that's all the C that's all CPU power. There's really no difference between medium and low, but if you go to high, it's a massive difference, right? It's a massive because now you have a 3D, they're 3D or something, and they they're pulling power when you're flying by the crowd at 150 miles an hour. Do you think you're gonna see them? You know what I mean? That's how come you know, you you could get away with the replay. You can have your crowd stand up high, right? So that you that way you can appreciate the replay when you save it and you show it off. But while I'm racing, I'm vision is here, man. Track cars. I care about the car models, more about the foliage or the you know, give me road textures and all that.

Jeff: 43:10

Yeah, give me road track, give me shadows.

Jason: 43:13

Yes, give me shadows so I can see tire marks on the road, or give me puddles so that I know there's a fucking puddle there. I don't want to drive through that because it's gonna hydroplane, it's gonna lose the car. It's gone, it's gone. So, I mean, again, I am not that person that's gonna sit here and nerd talk you to death to your ear about overclocking. I'm going to tell you how to make your computer work more efficiently, what to buy. We always recommend um the X3D processors. Any of them, any of the newer ones would be would do just fine. Jeff has a God tier one, he has the 9950 and I have the 9800 X3D. And even the ones previous to that would still be a decent contender. I don't recommend Intel. Intel used to be the king back in the day, back in a long day ago. And for those of you that use Intel, no, no offense, no, how do you say, um, more power to you, you know? Do use what you got. You know what I'm saying? But just be mindful of when you purchase a motherboard, make sure it supports the two protocols that I mentioned, which are the XMP and the uh what was the other one, Jeff? I forgot already. Uh EM EM Expo. Expo, there you go. Expo and XMP. That way you know for sure that that board is it's a little more, it's I I would I would feel a little safer, right? Running uh the CPU uh a clock to a slightly higher. And then you have the other folks before I end my topic here, because I need to mention those, that like to underclock their CPU. And underclocking is a nice way to get more frames, believe it or not. Some some CPUs like to run at a lower clock and it can save you a lot of temperature, it can save you a lot of it, it can run efficiently, but that doesn't mean stability because that's not the base clock. And if I update my chipset and you don't change my base clock, then why didn't you default to that? Why isn't this the default? There's a reason for it.

Jeff: 45:38

So these companies didn't spend gajillions of dollars paying.

Jason: 45:43

Yeah, again, I'm not into the nerdy part. Yeah, I'm not into the nerdy part of it. Like we can go ham about freaking, you know, GPU teraflops and how much uh megahertz and all this other crap when it don't really matter. You know what I mean? I I the Jeff has the 5090, but before then I had a 4090. That was the most powerful GPU you can buy in the for its time back back when it came out. And there's really no point in me uh or overclocking anything because again, look at your hardware, look at your monitors. This isn't Call of Duty. We're not spinning around with an 8,000 dpi mouse that the character needs to move like this, you know what I mean? Racing is is not that fast, it's it's it's a smooth transition, you know, it's transitional. There's cars moving in like this, yes, but it's not that fast. You don't need that many, you don't need 200 frames, and frames don't make you faster. I've heard that too. I couldn't believe that I heard that. I I just couldn't believe it. That frames per second make you faster. They make you, I mean, oh sure. You know what? This coach uh jacket gives me uh a few tenths down the road, too.

Jeff: 47:05

That's the funniest thing I heard a long time.

Jason: 47:08

I'm telling you, bro. Oh yeah, I got my my my sim runs at 300 fps, and I'm I'm a tenth faster. Um I wish that that had an effect on me.

Jeff: 47:21

I'd run singles, right?

Jason: 47:23

That I didn't know the exactly that I didn't know the truth. But um, unfortunately, I took the damn blue pill, bro. I know the damn truth.

Jeff: 47:33

So well, it sounds like in summary, Jason, if if I can give you a readback here, is juice is worth what do you what do you think?

Jason: 47:40

Yeah, what do you what do you think?

Jeff: 47:41

Juice isn't worth a squeeze. And if you're gonna do it, do it very incrementally, keep track of what you're changing, you know, test that out. Uh very small increment, uh, increase again, test it out, and just go slow with your increments and watch, keep keep uh you know some data on your hardware. Is that a fair readback?

Jason: 48:03

Yes, mainly your temps. Mainly your temps because GPUs max out uh at around 80c. If your GPU is getting hot, the first thing I would if you if any of your hardware components are getting hot, the first thing, the first thing to do is to A find out what's the source of the is there anything around it that's super hot? Is it on the floor? Is it on a carpet? Is it dirty? Is it full of dust? Um those are the basics. Um but yeah, a GPU should not reach nowhere near those temps. You know what I mean? The highest I've seen is maybe 70, and that's really wreck it rough, like pushing it on a GPU. A CPU, it depends, man, because CPUs can really CPUs can heat up within a like milliseconds. It can go from 50 degrees to 70 degrees, like in an instant. Um, and yeah, you can add a cooler to combat this. Uh, I mean, I I still recommend a proper, you know, AIO cooler, like you know, air, like not air, excuse me, um uh water cooled, right? All in one. That's what they call it. AIO is all in one. So you have the the fans, the cooler all together, and they're easy. They you're not reinventing the wheel, and again, there's a lot of fancy setups out there that that make it look like a tube and a little filter and some bubbly thingies and some and some and some lights and all kinds, it looks cute. I don't need we don't sim racers, us. We don't see you, you don't see my my PC is behind that. I don't even see anything of that the glorious thing that I purchased is back there hidden, tucked away.

Jeff: 50:01

I was like, get rid of it. I don't care about any of that stuff. That they all that colored light shit, get rid of it. I don't want to pay for it.

Jason: 50:07

Yeah, the RGBs and stuff, and that's another I mean, that's a whole nother topic, right? The whole RGP, the R, excuse me, RGB uh versus the non-RGB. I mean, I mean nobody, first of all, nobody cares about that. Honestly, um, I would rather I would rather choose the performance, right? I would take what runs cooler. If anything, I would shut them LEDs off because it would annoy the shit out of me, is what they would do. Um, kind of break immersion. So, yeah, I mean I I guess we touched a bit heavy here, Jeff. Um, we're reaching our time limit here, but I will say this. Um, if there's any specific questions that you have for a particular set of hardware, I would love to share my advice to you. I would love to. If you value my advice or if you value Jeff's advice, any of us. Um, and if you feel inclined to do so, then send us an email at theshanepodcast at gmail.com and address us by name, and we will get back to you on the very following episode. Uh, that is today. We're caught up on questions. So if you guys have any for us, let us know. And um yeah, it's a topic that it's really difficult for me to sit down and talk about because there's a lot of there's a million different opinions on this. And I always prioritize on taking care of what you bought, you know, taking care of what you paid so much money for. You know what I mean? These things are not cheap for you to just um treat them like that, is is all I'm saying.

Jeff: 51:51

Uh I think you can get you know kind of in trouble because when I was starting to research it, you know, because we all want to squeeze every bit of performance out of what we have. I think that's part of you know, sim racing and motorsports, right? So you're like, oh, I can squeeze another 10%. Oh, sure. What do I have to do? And there's tons of YouTube videos that I mean, I was guilty as chart, you know. Oh, yeah, this dude got some extra performance out of his stuff or no cost. I think you articulated that it might not be a cost, but it could be a big cost.

Jason: 52:21

Yeah, it could be a big cost. And that 10% could mean a 7% for you, or it can mean a 12% for you. But then you run a different sim and it may not run as nice as you think it's gonna run. You know what I mean? Or you run a flight sim and it might not like the changes you made. There's a lot of stuff, you know, that that we can go on and on about, honestly. But um I've had these battles and discussions, and I usually I usually just let them have it, you know, because some people learn the hard way, you know. Uh some people are hard-headed and they learn the hard way and guilty as charged with some things. No, not you. I'm guilty as if I'm I went through the same thing. That's how come a lot of these topics are being discussed on this show, and it's kind of to put it out there and say, hey, be careful what you watch on YouTube. Now, let me ask you something, Jeff. Let's say you're working on your boat and you gotta change the what do you give me something, the valve cover on the on the on the engine.

Jeff: 53:31

Spark plugs or something, sure.

Jason: 53:33

Okay, spark plugs is little, yeah, okay.

Jeff: 53:36

Fuel filters, okay, okay, water separators, bunch of stuff.

Jason: 53:39

Let's say the water separator, because I don't know what that is, but it sounds like something involved with something that that switches, right? Um, I don't know, whatever it is. Some both people correct me, but uh what I'm trying to get at is the the point of this is you watch a YouTube video. Some people just don't, some people are just desperate, and they're like, remove this cable, and you hit pause, and what do you do? You go to the filter and you remove the cable, and then you hit play, and the video says, But before you remove the cable, you first gotta drain the damn water, and if you don't do that, you just fuck the whole thing up. And I was like, Oh shit.

Jeff: 54:24

Or you do it and you're like, it's not there, yeah, it's not there, and it doesn't exist, or they tell you I told you eight millimeter, I'm sorry, it's ten millimeter.

Jason: 54:35

You just strip the shit out of your pole, you know, like yeah, two point or you know, because there's a lot of videos out there that say the best settings on iRacing, and I'm like, okay, I take those with some of those tips are awesome. I'm not saying that they're not, but take them with a grain of salt because the best settings are not always the best settings, bro. First of all, when did this video come out? If it came out today or this week, oh okay, that might be a good, you know, you know, material. And I'm just waking your mate, just we're not sheep, guys. We're wolf, we're wolves. And the Chicane podcast, we're all wolves here. We're not sheep, we're we're the wolf. So we'll we will sniff it out, whatever it is.

Jeff: 55:17

I don't know. Hey, that that and I I got this equipment from the manufacturer, but they are not gonna control what I said.

Jason: 55:26

There you go.

Jeff: 55:27

Same thing, yeah.

Jason: 55:28

They got the stuff, and just they pay attention to what you're looking at. Pay attention to what you're looking at, right? Yes, pay attention and pay attention to your temperature. Even Jeff's computer, right? Jeff's computer is a monster of a machine, it really is. The stuff he has, everything is top of the line on it. Everything like the CPU, the GPU, the this a lot of the stuff, like it is a god tier PC. And I would still tell him when he moves to really take a look at what they put together, right? Remember, I told you this make sure everything is nice and tight, make sure the software is up to date, make sure the bios and all the files are up to date. Because just because something is new and someone said it was God tier, that don't mean it have bugs. It don't have bugs and that patches don't exist. You know what I'm saying? And I think that's it, man. I think uh I think I rambled enough.

Jeff: 56:26

Yeah, I think it was good, it's good contact.

Jason: 56:28

Probably pissed some people off, which I enjoy thoroughly.

Jeff: 56:32

Listen, we like to say sometimes the truth hurts.

Jason: 56:35

The truth hurts. Uh straight note chaser here.

Jeff: 56:38

Straight note chaser.

Jason: 56:39

Yes, yeah, push but chill, guys. And we really mean that because you can push the PC, but you gotta chill. You gotta, you know, you gotta chill. So Jeff, thank you so much for coming on again. My pleasure. Again, our viewers. We uh thank you so much for following us. For wow, we're we're we're reaching our hundredth episode, which is insane. Um, we need help. We need subscribers to subscribe. I'm noticing a lot of views and no just click the button, subscribe and like. Easy. It'll do us a favor, it's free.

Jeff: 57:14

Um, we get notified when our new stuff is.

Jason: 57:16

I'm guilty as charged too. I need to sometimes I watch a video. I don't even I'm guilty of it too. I'm I'm I'm real, I'm real on the show. I'm I'm I'm guilty of it too. But um, yeah, it will definitely help us out and it'll bring a smile to our face. We always like to see the views and we like to see the numbers go up, and that way these types of videos can reach a bigger audience, right? And we can we can do more of this. So Jeff, thank you. You have any uh last things before we before we wrap it up here?

Jeff: 57:48

No, buddy, a blast as always, and uh drive fast and break late. We'll see everybody again next week. Off to you, buddy.

Jason: 57:55

All right, man. Well, everybody, thank you so much. Um yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed the rest of the week. And we're in we're I don't know, man. I'm I'm a little happy right now that I don't know the results to F1. But I got a bad feeling about this, man. We're gonna find out on Saturday. So my face not be as happy next week that you see us. But, anyways, thank you so much, everybody, and have a great start of your week. Thank you.