No overclocking for mainstream Nehalem?

[Bobsama]

I never said the majority of the E2xxx sales are from overclockers. I said "a lot of". Yeah, the vast majority of the sales are from OEMs. I know.

Again, quite wrong. Now with the "a lot of". As I said, maybe 1% of consumers will overclock their computers themselves. If you look at the number of overclockers, which I'd estimate to be about 200,000 people at a maximum, you also have to consider non-overclockers too, which accounts for many millions of users. Maybe the entire base of people who will build computers is 3%--I find that quite likely and very believable. Not everyone who builds a computer...
1) Knows what they're really doing
2) Chooses the best components
3) Plans to overclock
4) Overclocks
5) Has a limited budget or a lust for 100+% overclocks

You see a lot of people who do things we may consider stupid. I consider buying high-end OEM computers to be stupid. I'm a computer enthusiast--I know enough about computers to know about overclocking, and I know enough about overclocking to overclock.

Really, 1% of the market is not "a lot". We are a niche--and we will buy computers nonetheless. Intel would feel very little recoil if they decided to disable most overclocking--they'd still have a fraction of the overclocking market who will spend $1000 on a CPU and $350 on a motherboard. Arguably, those are the people you'd rather serve, as the profit margins are extraordinary. Intel's real cash cows are the OEMs and "Extreme-edition" enthusiasts. Intel really makes little money directly off of non-"Extreme-edition", especially compared to OEMs.

As I have said before--I highly doubt that Intel will lock all overclocking on non-enthusiast processors.