Does OC your CPU actually shorten its life?

[Vince604]

By OC your system with good oc products does it still shorten the life of your cpu??

 

[Matisaro]

If you overvolt it can, however were talking about losing a year on a 2o year+ lifetime, no big deal.

The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark

 

[svol]

Matisaro is right, maybe there isn't a shorten in the life of the CPU with OC aftreall as long as you use good components.

THGC: before: :frown: , after: .

 

[Victory]

Well I've overclocked several systems from Pentiums to Athlons. I've never had a CPU fail because of this. I'm sure in extreme OC'ing you can kill your CPU, but I've personally never seen it. The real issue is with our incessant need for clock speed, who of us really keeps our current setups for more than 1-2 years??? My oldest system is a Celeron 633, followed by a T-bird 950, and my latest an XP 1700. The oldest, is from november of 2000, and the newest around 2 months. I highly doubt you'll kill a CPU unless you do something really stupid, or have such a crappy setup that you overheat your CPU to the point of frying in, which in highly unlikely with the quality of most HSF's these days and monitor setups that keep an eye on temps and let you know when you're way out of specs.


Save heating costs on your home, overclock your PC!!!

 

[Vince604]

well lets say it's an intel.. and how would you overvolt it? by giving the cpu more power it will shorten it? But if you overvolt doesn't it cause the cpu to get really hot? and if it does wouldn't the intel cpu automatically turn off since it has that safety throttle feature?..

 

[Vince604]

well I want to get a 2.2ghz as high as possible.... yeah I want to keep my system as long as possible.. Don't want to go out and pay another couple grand for a new one when the one you already have is good enough. To my point of view by having the fastest cpu in the world wouldn't really make a difference to what you have if you can't use your own at 100%....
Well I'm not that stupid to kill a cpu..... As long as you have a good heatsink/fan and thermal compound I'm pretty sure you'll be fine......but with athlons they seem to get way TOO HOT so I don't intend to get an Athlon. Have you guys seen that clip on this site when they show you what happens when the cpu cooler is removed? That made me switch to intel... but is that how it really works? like the intel not even burning or anything and still having such a low temp???
haha I've never seen anyone fry their cpu before and I'd say you have to be pretty stupid to do so..

 

[HonestJhon]

what do you mean by too hot tho?
i have an athlon 900 that runs under 40°C a lot of the time, and that is with my case fan turned down.
as for the heatsink falling off...
i dunno HOW often that happens.
but i havent seen it happen yet.
and it better not...especially because i just typed it.
too hot is like 65°C
that is risking it.
as for overclocking shortening the life of the cpu....heh....
if you cool it very well, and dont overdo it, and becareful when you remove and replace the heatsinks, then your processor should last a while.
i have a k6-2 350 that was clocked at 500 for a while...
and i have a k6-2 450 which was clocked at 550 (this was my friends, and he upped the voltage a bit, i think too much...but it works perfect and has for the past 3 years...even with a stock k6-2 heatsink!!!)

but what do you consider TOO HOT? just curious...

-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-

 

[Vince604]

HOT as I mean as if anything ever happens to your heatsink or fan. For example IF someone REALLY STUPID forgot to put thermal compound or grease on their AMD chip and just put on the heatsink and started their computer the cpu is already smoking. Did you see the video clip on this site? When they remove the heatsink off the cpu? If you did you'll know what I'm talking bout. Well if motherboard companys put the throttle feature built in their motherboard I wouldn't mind AMD... but they haven't so that's why they'll smoke and burn if there was a heatsink failure. And if the fan ever malfunctions or goes too slow your cpu would get too hot....
But with intel the cpu would just slow down to a safe temperature...

Well I plan on building a new system with Swiftech MCX478 heatsink using artic silver III thermal compound... I'm hoping that's enough cooling already..

well 100MHz doesn't seem much.. to me at least.. I want to go up to maybe 3GHz.
So how long is a cpu life suppose to be then? more than 3 years for sure then.

 

[Vince604]

HOT as I mean as if anything ever happens to your heatsink or fan. For example IF someone REALLY STUPID forgot to put thermal compound or grease on their AMD chip and just put on the heatsink and started their computer the cpu is already smoking. Did you see the video clip on this site? When they remove the heatsink off the cpu? If you did you'll know what I'm talking bout. Well if motherboard companys put the throttle feature built in their motherboard I wouldn't mind AMD... but they haven't so that's why they'll smoke and burn if there was a heatsink failure. And if the fan ever malfunctions or goes too slow your cpu would get too hot if your heatsink was a cheap generic....
But with intel, the cpu would automatically slow down to a safe temperature and continue working..

Well I plan on building a new system with Swiftech MCX478 heatsink using artic silver III thermal compound... I'm hoping that's enough cooling already..

well 100MHz doesn't seem much.. to me at least.. I want to go up to maybe 3GHz.
So how long is a cpu life suppose to be then? more than 3 years for sure then.

 

[dhlucke]

There is way too much talk about this today.

1. New motherboards are out and are coming out that have hardware protection for Athlons.
2. Motherboard Monitor provides software protection.
3. The HSF doesn't fall off.
4. Pentium 4's are hotter than Athlons.
5. Even a Pentium 4 owner doesn't want their CPU throttling, so they shouldn't be using a generic HSF with no thermal paste.
6. If you don't know how to build a computer then you shouldn't.

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America!</font color=red>

 

[Quetzacoatl]

If the CPU burns up because the heatsink "fell off on it's own", then whoever installed the CPU deserves to have it go up in smoke. Relax, if you install it carefully and put on the thermal paste, then Kudos. It's not exactly rocket science here!

"When there's a will, there's a way."

 

[Vince604]

How can P4 be hotter than Athlons??? Did you not see that cpu cooling clip?.. The Athlons were up in smoke!. Yeah but don't want to wait for new motherboards because after that something newer is going to come out again and again..

 

[Vince604]

Haha yeah I know. Just want to know how bad oc'ing can shorten the cpu life..

 

[Victory]

Overclocking 'could' kill your CPU. It's never happened to me though(or any one I know for that matter). As for it's life, well you'd be hard pressed to find many 5+ year old systems still in use these days because of speed restrictions. As for overheating, well Intel speed steps the P4's for heat protection. Us AMD users, use software based monitors to shut down our PC's in case of an overheat. This is done both through the BIOS(which most better boards have this installed) and through a GUI that runs through windows(mine is called Hardware Doctor that came with my Abit mainboard). So if my XP happens to go hot, if my Windows program doesn't catch it, my BIOS will. So it's truly not an issue.

Bottom line, if you stress a component too much, it's likely to fail sooner. If you remove your governor on your car and drive 120+ mph you'll work your engine out of spec and kill it sooner, if you cool your house with your refridgerator door open, you'll overwork the motor and kill it as well earlier, if you overload your washing machine, you'll kill it early. Then again, like most things these days, they have fail safe trips that shut down the motor when they run out of spec, so do the CPU's whether they be hardware encoded/software encoded, you're pretty much safe of burning it up. It can be done, but it'll have to have something pretty extreme happen



Save heating costs on your home, overclock your PC!!!

 

[Vince604]

Hmm thanks Victory. So it'd basically be pretty hard to ruin your cpu.... But if you stress a component are there still not safety features where you can only stress so much?..