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Can a 2016 Macbook 12" be overclocked?

Z

zman25

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 23, 2017
4
0
Hello all, a friend purchased used a 2016 Macbook 12" from Craigs list and after the deal was done, a few week later that person that sold it sent my friend a email saying that he overclocked big time for watching for 4K movies and could have damaged the computer.

My friend wanted to know if anyone know a software program that can be purchased that would tell if it was ever overclocked or maybe some damage?

I did some checking and in a Bootcamp in Windows you can get programs to speed up the video and FS buss but more interested if any damage could have been done as it was erased and reinstalled the OS and works fine.

So if anybody know of a program that would tell him please post and we know that he can just sue it but knowing is important to my friend.

Thank you for your help!

zman25
 
Unless log files are kept, there's no way of telling if a system has been overclocked in the past. As far as I know, it's impossible to overclock said machine, under Windows or macOS. Programs like MSI Afterburner, can overclock some GPUs even in Macs (under Windows only), but as far as I am aware, not integrated GPUs. If the machine works fine now (I recommend stres test applications to make sure), then there's nothing to worry about. Could it potentially die a year earlier than it otherwise would have from having been overclocked? Yes. Overclocked or not, thermal safeguards apply and if it gets dangerously hot, the system will turn itself off automatically.
Regardless, under macOS at least, the MacBook can do 4k fine.
Oh, there's also Apple's own diagnostics tool, but if the system appears to function fine, I'm 99.9% sure it'll report the same.
 
Cool and thank you for your info. Do you suggest a testing program that he can use?

zman25
 
zman25 said:
Cool and thank you for your info. Do you suggest a testing program that he can use?
Click to expand...

In terms of stress testing - I recommend running Prime95 (CPU+memory) alongside Unigine Heaven (GPU). Running both at the same time, don't expect the scores to be as high as the machine is actually capable of when running them independently, but in terms of stress testing the system to make sure all is dandy, those should do the trick. If Prime95 fails it'll tell you, or your system will just shut down. With Unigine Heaven, you might have to pay more attention, as problems don't necessarily mean shutdowns or error messages, but could manifest as visual glitches, like extreme flickering, areas of the screen going entirely black, etc.
 
Thanks! My friend found and got TechTool Pro 9 and ran it a few times and all passed! So far looks good? Should he run Prime95 & Unigine Heaven GPU?

Thanks
zman25
 
casperes1996 said:
To be honest, I don't know this tool, but quite honestly, I am 99.9% sure that the computer is perfectly fine and there's no problem
Click to expand...

Great and thank you! I do think there are some special programs that do some type of Overclocking I read in Google but unless someone here has or knows more I hope my friends Macbook 12" 2016 is fine!

Anybody else have more info?

Thanks
zman25
 
zman25 said:
Great and thank you! I do think there are some special programs that do some type of Overclocking I read in Google but unless someone here has or knows more I hope my friends Macbook 12" 2016 is fine!
Click to expand...

Well, the CPU isn't possible to overclock on non-K processors at all (at least not by multiplier boosting). Apple's logic boards have no support for hardware manipulation like overclocking pre-boot, so all there's left, are tools like MSI Afterburner that can overclock GPUs whilst booted, but they generally don't work with GPUs integrated onto the CPU, so I don't see how that would work. But even if it has been successfully overclocked, if it doesn't exhibit signs of damage, it's fine.
 
casperes1996 said:
Well, the CPU isn't possible to overclock on non-K processors at all (at least not by multiplier boosting). Apple's logic boards have no support for hardware manipulation like overclocking pre-boot, so all there's left, are tools like MSI Afterburner that can overclock GPUs whilst booted, but they generally don't work with GPUs integrated onto the CPU, so I don't see how that would work. But even if it has been successfully overclocked, if it doesn't exhibit signs of damage, it's fine.
Click to expand...
You can OC a iGPU just fine. Just depends on the tools used, and if its supported by those tools.
 
casperes1996 said:
Even without having access to OC options in the BIOS?
Click to expand...
Yesh it's called software Overclocking. Not usually much support for the iGPU though, but I've done it before. No real reason to, as often it rarely gives a noticeable performance increase. I used to do it on an HP laptop with Intel GPU just to see how far I could take it and be stable, but it was more just out of interest, I think I at most got a 5% boost in benchmarks, and in a game when its already only pulling maybe 20FPS, getting 22-23 was basically not helpful at all.
 
AltecX said:
Yesh it's called software Overclocking. Not usually much support for the iGPU though, but I've done it before. No real reason to, as often it rarely gives a noticeable performance increase. I used to do it on an HP laptop with Intel GPU just to see how far I could take it and be stable, but it was more just out of interest, I think I at most got a 5% boost in benchmarks, and in a game when its already only pulling maybe 20FPS, getting 22-23 was basically not helpful at all.
Click to expand...

Didn't know it was possible for anything not in a PCIe slot, but fair enough. There I learned that, hehe. But yeah, I didn't expect you could gain that significant a boost from it. At least not without doing a lot of work, like retrofitting a whole new cooling system on the machine and whatnot.
 
Queen6 said:
I think he maybe referring to the video out to a 4K external display as default on the rMB is 30Hz, however it's possible to push this to 60Hz with a tweak
Click to expand...

The default used to be 30Hz. All MacBooks now run external 4K displays natively at 60Hz over USB-C.

This suggests even if the owner had previously done 'the tweak', it won't have damaged the MacBook!
 
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