Building and selling overclocked systems

[Guest]

I was planning to buy some Celerons and/or Durons and build overclocked systems for sale as budget systems. I would clearly mark the systems 'overclocked' and explain to customers what this meant (possibly shortening the life of the CPU, invalidating the manufacturer's warranty etc.), and would obviously use really good cooling, and give something like a 5 year chip guarentee. but people have asked me for these, so I'm sure there's a demand.

What I was wondering was this: are there any legal implications in doing this? Could Intel/AMD take me to court etc? I don't buy direct, I buy through suppliers, so they don't know who I am. What do you think?

 

[Crashman]

Let's see, you bought the processors, so you OWN them. In that respect, overclocking is legal. You would sell them clearly marked overclocked, so that's legal. You would mark them as being warranteed by your company, not by the manufacturer, so that's legal also. The only illegal item would be if you misrepresented them, which you are not doing. But Intel won't like it! (Not that they could actually do anything about it!)

 

[Guest]

You many know more about this than I do (which is nothing), but I wouldn't be too generous with the chip warranty. I've not seen a place that offered more than a 1-year warrany on an overclocked system, though they may be plentiful.

I'd also be a bit leary of someone cranking it up to see how high it can really go, but I guess you'd face that with any PC. Selling to the little old lady down the street may be fine...until her grandson comes over after school, having just spent a full hour reading this forum. Heh!

Mike

 

[Guest]

I know I have read somewere about a company that was selling o/c systems and AMD threatend them with legal action if they didn't stop. I read this about 4-5 mounths ago and don't remember where.

I also sent AMD a couple of emails asking about there opinion on overclocking and legal issuses, but they never responded. (for school)

 

[Crashman]

Look at it this way-you can legally put a pair of high performance heads on a Chevrolet Camaro if they have an California Clean Air Board Exemption Order Number, but you'll void the factory warrantee. And a lot of companies do this as a business. So, following the same logic, you boost the performance of a computer in a way that does not affect it's FCC certification, and although it may void the warrantee, it's still legal. It's only if you sold the PC as the speed you made it without mentioning overdriving or the void warrantee that it becomes fraudulent. You have to let the customer know what they are buying.

 

[scarecrow]

Makes sense to me. Know if only THEY saw it like that.