Should I leave it overclocked?

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imjouster

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Jun 15, 2013
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Complete Overclocking noob here. Just bought a computer about a month ago from a guy. it was basically a brand new computer he built for a buddy, but his buddy couldn't pay him for it so he sold it to me for cheap. He had it overclocked to 4.2ghz (computer specs are i5 3570k, with a Corsair 100i water cooler, Corsair 600T Case). Computer is having 0 problems staying cool, it constantly is running at ~32C, and maxes out on me at ~38C.

Problem is I don't have any use for it to be Overclocked right now. None of the applications I'm using are going to be slowed down at all if I took it back to stock settings. That's not to say I might not overclock it in the future, but right now I don't see the point.

Now one of the things I'm really wanting out of this comp is to get a good 5-6 years out of it if I can, and I'd hate for my CPU to smoke on me because I've had it overclocked needlessly for its entire life. Is this something I would have to worry about with such a minimal overclock and with this cooler? are my chances of it smoking greater with it being overclocked or not?

Thanks for the advice.
 
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Roland Of Gilead
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markwp

markwp

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Jan 22, 2013
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Depends on how the o/c is done. If it is set up to run at 4.2 regardless of load, then I would put it back to stock. If the o/c makes use of load demand by varying the clock depending on cpu needs, it's probably ok to leave it.

Ask the builder how he set up the o/c. If it is set to run "on demand", you should be good to go.

Mark
 
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Roland Of Gilead

Roland Of Gilead

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Aug 8, 2008
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Well to answer your question, yes OC'ing can decrease the life span of your hardware. But there are a number of variables that can negate that. And temps is a major one. But with your water block, and those temps at full load not even hitting 40 degrees, you don't have to worry about that.

The purpose of OC'ing is to eek out every last ounce of performance from your hardware. Is it worth it? In certain circumstances, it is. Particularly gaming where FPS is king, and dictates how smooth your gameplay is.
For normal day to day tasks, is it necessary? Prob not, with such a high end CPU. saying that, even with day to day tasks, if your CPU is overclocked then you will have some increase in performance, although it may not be perceptible to your eye. So from a performance point of view, it can be worth it to overclock.

I have a 6 year old Q6600 with an overclock from 2.4 to 3ghz. Its been running smooth and fine since way back when. So yes, even with the overclock on your system you could get 5+ years, but remember, that each chip/system is different and so it's not a rule of thumb, just a guideline.
 
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imjouster

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Jun 15, 2013
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I'll ask him and see how he OCed it. And it really is staying really cool regardless of what I'm doing to it. Although I've never really used much of an application/game that really pushed it very hard at all. Appreciate the input.
 
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