Voided Warranties, Huh?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

Everything related to overclocking has plenty of disclaimers about how as
soon as you overclock, your manufacturer's warranty is voided. We've got
legalese warnings even on the amature 'how to' sites.

My question: How on earth would the manufacturer know that a particular
piece of hardware had been overclocked? I mean, other than the obvious,
sending back a lump of charred metal and plastic, etc. If a piece of
equipment is OC'd to a fairly low degree, then it seems like you should
still be able to take advantage of the warranty.

Anyone have any experience returning OC'd components?

-Franco

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco" <franco@francisco.com> wrote in message
news:SuednU2AArmvlkPcRVn-pA@adelphia.com...
> Everything related to overclocking has plenty of disclaimers about how as
> soon as you overclock, your manufacturer's warranty is voided. We've got
> legalese warnings even on the amature 'how to' sites.
>
> My question: How on earth would the manufacturer know that a particular
> piece of hardware had been overclocked? I mean, other than the obvious,
> sending back a lump of charred metal and plastic, etc. If a piece of
> equipment is OC'd to a fairly low degree, then it seems like you should
> still be able to take advantage of the warranty.
>
> Anyone have any experience returning OC'd components?

Many times I've seen a temp sensitive sticker on the bottom of a CPU. If it
melts/changes color/etc the warranty is invalid because you did not provide
a proper cooling solution.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco" <franco@francisco.com> wrote in
news:SuednU2AArmvlkPcRVn-pA@adelphia.com:

>
>

Theorectically, the clock settings could be saved in non-volatile memory like
the BIOS. All the manufacturer would have to do is read the settings to know
what the highest setting has been in the past. The fastest settings could be
saved by doing a compare each time the clocks are set to determine if new or
old settings are faster. This could be done totally in hardware. I don't know
if any manufacturers actually do this. Actually, all the manufacturers would
need is a single bit that is set when you exceed the specified clock speeds.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

John Smithe wrote:
[...]
> Theorectically, the clock settings could be saved in non-volatile
> memory like the BIOS. All the manufacturer would have to do is read
> the settings to know what the highest setting has been in the past.
> The fastest settings could be saved by doing a compare each time the
> clocks are set to determine if new or old settings are faster. This
> could be done totally in hardware. I don't know if any manufacturers
> actually do this. Actually, all the manufacturers would need is a
> single bit that is set when you exceed the specified clock speeds.

The CPU doesn't get told the FSB speed, and can't determine the FSB speed
very easily either. So sure, it could store the multiplier in NV storage,
but since you can only operate the P4 and K8 at multipliers that AMD/Intel
allow you to (which does not include multipliers above stock) that doesn't
get them anywhere. AMD/Intel could possibly build some sort of reference
clock into the die itself, but I think it would be fairly challenging (as
far as I know, which is not very far in this case ) to make it accurate.
In the same way that some chips overclock better than others, I suspect that
the die reference clock would run faster/slower depending on the chip, and
the danger of false positives (from slowly running reference clocks) would
require a reasonably large tolerance.

--
Michael Brown
www.emboss.co.nz : OOS/RSI software and more
Add michael@ to emboss.co.nz ---+--- My inbox is always open

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco" <franco@francisco.com> wrote in message
news:SuednU2AArmvlkPcRVn-pA@adelphia.com...
> Everything related to overclocking has plenty of disclaimers about how as
> soon as you overclock, your manufacturer's warranty is voided. We've got
> legalese warnings even on the amature 'how to' sites.
>
> My question: How on earth would the manufacturer know that a particular
> piece of hardware had been overclocked? I mean, other than the obvious,
> sending back a lump of charred metal and plastic, etc. If a piece of
> equipment is OC'd to a fairly low degree, then it seems like you should
> still be able to take advantage of the warranty.
>
> Anyone have any experience returning OC'd components?
>
> -Franco
>

isnt the clock settings set in the BIOS and not the processor? if you clear
CMOS if your sending a full system back the BIOS will auto set the FSB on
some boards but some require individual setting (MSI boards mostly) even so
msi boards revert back to standard 100mhz fsb and low multiplier.

 

[Rich]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

Don't forget that the manuals for some boards encourage us by providing
OC'ing utilities that are sometimes available with the driver software.
(Gigabyte w/easytune & QDI w/stepeasy.)
ABIT used to be known as having the best overclocking features available. I
don't know if oc'ing is even a danger to modern boards anymore. If you push
it too much, it usually just doesn't boot until you completely cut the power
off to the source and then turn it back on. Newer cpus rarely ever go up in
smoke. If they run too hot, the system shuts off or it throttles down.

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco" <franco@francisco.com> wrote in message
news:SuednU2AArmvlkPcRVn-pA@adelphia.com...
> Everything related to overclocking has plenty of disclaimers about how as
> soon as you overclock, your manufacturer's warranty is voided. We've got
> legalese warnings even on the amature 'how to' sites.
>
> My question: How on earth would the manufacturer know that a particular
> piece of hardware had been overclocked? I mean, other than the obvious,
> sending back a lump of charred metal and plastic, etc. If a piece of
> equipment is OC'd to a fairly low degree, then it seems like you should
> still be able to take advantage of the warranty.
>
> Anyone have any experience returning OC'd components?
>
> -Franco
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking (More info?)

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco" <franco@francisco.com> wrote in message
news:SuednU2AArmvlkPcRVn-pA@adelphia.com...
> Everything related to overclocking has plenty of disclaimers about how as
> soon as you overclock, your manufacturer's warranty is voided. We've got
> legalese warnings even on the amature 'how to' sites.
>
> My question: How on earth would the manufacturer know that a particular
> piece of hardware had been overclocked? I mean, other than the obvious,
> sending back a lump of charred metal and plastic, etc. If a piece of
> equipment is OC'd to a fairly low degree, then it seems like you should
> still be able to take advantage of the warranty.
>
> Anyone have any experience returning OC'd components?
>
> -Franco
>
They have no way to tell the frequency you ran it at. Warranty replacement
is a very very small volume business, and they don't really care about it.
It costs less to just accept claims than it would cost to investigate beyond
quick "does it work" and "has it been smashed with a hammer" type testing. I
had a slot1 cpu replaced after frying it - the stock heatsink had been
removed and replaced... this is easily seen as the original heat pad was
replaced with goop. Not a problem. I don't know about AMD.