What Is MSI Afterburner, And Is It Safe To Use When Overclocking Your GPU?

When it comes to gaming on a PC, a lot of the culture is about maximizing the performance of your computer. PC gamers spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to optimize the perfect systems, and even when money is not a factor, they tend to want to squeeze every last drop of performance out of their hardware with whatever tweaks they are capable of safely pulling off. This includes overclocking CPUs, graphics cards, and even RAM, increasing the clock speed beyond the factory default to enhance performance at the risk of more energy being used and more heat being generated as a result. 

Those focused on reducing energy consumption and heat generation may, on the other hand, opt to undervolt their GPU, CPU, or RAM, bringing down the energy use and heat production to the most that the user is comfortable with while still performing at the level they're seeking.

There are plenty of software tools that can be used to overclock the various applicable computer components, and one of the most well-known for overclocking GPUs is MSI Afterburner. Available from, of course, MSI, a graphics card OEM, it's not necessarily an MSI-developed product: Under the hood, it uses the same core as RivaTuner, a well-known freeware utility, just with MSI layering its own user interface over the top of the application. Even with a shiny utility from a graphics card OEM, though, overclocking can be intimidating, so let's take a look at how it works and if it's safe.

Yes, it's safe to overlock your GPU, particularly if you're using a tool provided by the OEM and/or one with a long history like the non-branded original version of RivaTuner. Even if you push it too far, your computer has failsafes that will simply cause itself to freeze or crash while avoiding hardware damage, necessitating that you just lower the GPU clock and try again. Exactly where that breaking point is will depend on just how good the cooling is on your GPU, with more robust and potentially complicated aftermarket coolers providing the most flexibility. In particular, liquid cooling systems are famously good at combatting the excess heat caused by overclocking, allowing for greater fine-tuning than the more simple fan-based coolers. 

MSI Afterburner, to be completely clear, works just fine on non-MSI graphics cards, which makes sense since it's basically just the brand-agnostic RivaTuner under a fancy new skin. Afterburner includes not just conventional manual overclocking tools but also an "OC Scanner" tool that allows for automated, one-click overclocking. The OC Scanner process takes about half an hour for Afterburner to figure out the custom overclocking profile that it decides is best for your GPU. When it's done, you can save the overclocking profile (there are five custom profile slots total) for future use. Afterburner lets you switch between the five custom profiles as your default settings with keyboard shortcuts, making it easy to fine-tune different profiles for different games.