Overclocker Upgrade (IndustrialCraft 2)

File:Grid Overclocker Upgrade (IndustrialCraft 2).png
 Stackable | Yes (64)

An **Overclocker Upgrade** can be used to speed up basic machines at the cost of higher energy consumption. Place one or more Overclocker Upgrades into the four right-most slots to upgrade a machine. Each upgrade reduces the operating time to 70% of the previous value and increases energy consumption by 60%. The overclocker upgrade's effects stack exponentially. For example, two upgrades makes the machine operate at half the normal time (100% faster) and will use 2.56 times (139% more) more energy than normal.

Overclocker Upgrades result in poor energy efficiency. While building multiple machines makes better use of a limited energy supply, overclocking allows for reduced space and wiring requirements when time or compact construction are more important or energy is plentiful. The reduced efficiency can be mitigated by combining both approaches, dividing a number of Overclocker Upgrades evenly between a handful of machines.

An overclocked machine's speed cannot exceed 1 operation per tick, so adding additional Overclocker Upgrades beyond that point causes the machine to stop working.

Take note that an Overclocker Upgrade increases a GregTech machine's energy needs by 4 times while only doubles its speed. To offset the lack of energy, one can apply Transformer Upgrades (usually one or two) until the machine is able to handle High Voltage. After applying these, one can apply an HV-Transformer Upgrade; the first application brings the machine's maximum voltage to 2048 EU/p and the second application up to 8192 EU/p. One generally needs to pair an Overclocker Upgrade with a Transformer Upgrade, otherwise the possibility exists of modifying machines that will simply not function unless you provide it with massively larger amounts of power.

## Statistics

Normally, without overclocker upgrades, IndustrialCraft2 machines (Electric Furnace, Macerator, etc.) operate more slowly than equivalent machines from other mods such as Thermal Expansion (Powered Furnace, Pulverizer). Later on, once enough upgrades are acquired and enough power is available, they are the fastest machines in the game, as overclocker upgrades can be stacked to reach any desired speed up to one operation per tick. Normally, one real-life second is 20 ticks (unless the server is lagging).

The number of overclocker upgrades to install depends on how quickly it is desired to perform a certain operation, how many machines are available (or how much space is available to be devoted to the machines when the cost of the machines isn't an issue), and how much power is available (i.e. whether the machines are powered by a single BatBox, or 8 MFSUs in parallel, as well as whether enough power is being generated to keep the machines running). For example, if the amount of power being generated is limited, and energy stores are depleted, a machine will run more quickly with *fewer* overclocker upgrades as otherwise the machine is repeatedly stopping and restarting, slowing down progress.

Machines have internal storage roughly equal to the machine's base EU/operation. If EU/tick approaches or exceeds this value, the machine will not be able to run as quickly as it should unless an Energy Storage Upgrade is installed.

Generally, since each upgrade multiplies the power consumption by 1.6, while also multiplying the operation time required by 0.7, it is expected that the energy cost per operation is multiplied by 1.12 for each upgrade (i.e. 12% more energy is needed per operation, stacking multiplicatively for each upgrade installed). However, energy consumption is always rounded *down* to the nearest integer EU/tick, while operation time is rounded to the nearest integer number of ticks (but cannot equal zero). While energy requirements do tend upward when adding upgrades for a moderate amount of upgrades (where the effect of rounding is minimal), there are a few areas where the general trend breaks down:

* For the first overclocker upgrade, the EU/tick is low and the power consumption increase is less due to rounding. The result is that energy requirements increase only modestly or even decrease.

* There is a critical number of upgrades that will allow the machine to perform an operation in just one tick rather than two ticks. This reduces EU/operation by about 20% over using just one fewer upgrade.

* Exceeding this critical number of upgrades increases cost without providing any additional benefit and must be avoided. Values are tabulated only up to the critical level.

Values in **bold** indicate local minima for energy consumption, while *italicized* values indicate that equal or better efficiency can be obtained by installing an additional upgrade.