Hi Rusty, thanks for the response. Yeah, the opening comment was in poor taste, I'm just a bit frustrated.
I've done a fair bit of research over the past few days on this topic, but the more I look into this the more questions I have.
1.) I'm aware that the SOC will "throttle back" but there does seem to be people who've bricked their Pi 3's while OC'ing. (Of course I have no way to verify whether this is true, I can only take their word on it.)
2.) Yeah, I've heard that the double-sided sticky pads can actually create more heat or at best, do nothing at all to reduce heat, but after watching numerous videos of people using heat sinks while stress testing and OC'ing, it seems that in general their temperature drops and it drops by a significant amount. I've yet to see a temperature increase and most of these people are using the heat sinks that came with their cases, which probably aren't of the highest quality (regarding the pads). Maybe instead of using the pads I can instead buy some Arctic Thermal Compound? Or what would you suggest?
*There's also passive cooling cases which are aluminum such as the FLIRC Pi 3 2nd Gen or the Wicked Aluminum that are better for cooling than a dual fan heat sink combination with a third heat sink covering the bottom RAM chip. This would be ideal for me as it seems a lot of the fans that come with cases are LOUD/high pitched/fail frequently and they don't offer better cooling. The downside of the aluminum cases are WiFi and BT interference. However, the FLIRC case has a plastic bottom portion so that may be ok. Still, from reading numerous comments some people do experience WIFI/BT issues and some don't. I really don't want to spend money ordering stuff that won't work, which is why I'm digging into this topic as much as I can. I'll take a look at 3m thermally conductive double sided tape per your suggestion.
3.) Well, if my Pi 3 can handle it, I'd want an OC of 1400. But not all Pi's are created equal and I might not be able to accomplish an OC that high. And if that's the case, I'm mostly fine with that. For me this is about experimentation and increasing my own understanding of electronics--however, I clearly don't want to spend money on something that won't work. Yes, I'm aware of various emulators like N64 are very taxing on the Pi. Also aware that Recalbox handles N64 games better than RetroPie for whatever reason. Even if I don't plan to OC shouldn't I be invested in some sort of cooling solution anyway? I think once the temperature reaches 80 or slightly over the SOC begins to throttle back? So as long as I keep the temp lower than that the OC should improve my game performance and perhaps even GUI performance? Without cooling solutions I imagine some of these games push the temps up quite high (higher than what they should ideally be).
4.) I'm from Canada, so unfortunately I don't have access to a lot of the Pi 3 cases that are advertised on Amazon.com
I'd prefer a simple easy to put together case though - The Smraza Case for Raspberry Pi 3 is getting rave reviews but seems like a real pain in the ass to put together and that fan would be annoying. It was either this or FLIRC or something more minimal with easy access...
-Do you have any good reading recommendations for me? I want to learn more about Recalbox, how to OC from within Recalbox, themes, how to set up my ROMs/CHDs etc. The reason I ask is because you clearly know what you're talking about and when it comes to my MAME Windows 10 setup, I've encountered A LOT of outdated/irrelevant information and that really stifled my learning process when I was beginning. I don't want to make the same unavoidable mistake with Recalbox/Pi.
