Do you want stock cooling or do you plan on overclocking?:

What does this question mean?

it means you will need an after market cooler, if you plan on overclocking your CPU.
even if you don't OC your cpu, it's nice to have an after market cooling over the stock, especially if you got AMD's cpu cuz their stock coolers sux

Overclock = stock + x.x ghz.

So if u get a 3.4 processor and u want it to go 4.0 ghz u need to overclock it to achieve that. When u overclock, temps increase so u have to get a better cpu cooler to keep temps as close as possible to the stock temps (or better if u can)

Okay so
stock cooling = slower pc but normal temps
overclocking = faster pc but higher temps, so buy after market cooler

Am I understanding this okay?

sorta,
stock doesn't mean necessarily slow pc.. just means u get the performance as expected.
overclocking it will give you free performance boost.

Overclocking is for totally maximizing your PC performance. I doubt you could ever find a pre-built computer that has been overclocked by the manufacturer. Basically, overclocking is something you do yourself with the risk of shortening the CPU's life depending on the cooling setup you have.

This post was edited by twobyfour on Nov 14 2014 05:48am