How many years of a computer's life does overclocking kill?

[miecz]

How many years of a computer's life does overclocking kill? I heard someone say it kills about 5 years of a computer's life of 10. Another person said only a week. Of course, I presume that there is a good water cooling kit and fan setup in the computer. If you have a good link, pleae post.

 

[Giraffe]

i dont hav a link but it would depend on how much u overclock it/how hot it runs.
every cpu will be different but the average cpu life is about 10 years(i think)(it might be 15) so it might take 3-5 years maybe.
i dont know much about overclockin though

 

[Pain]

There is no answer, but if you have to ask then you shouldn't do it.

Many things can effect it, most notibly how much voltage is used.

 

[jamesgoddard]

Intel quote a failure rate of 1 in 100 during the first 10 years of life, after that they give no guarantee / advice... I guess the damage you do to a CPU is more related to how hot you let it get, and a little bit of random luck...

 

[Guest]

As stated, I think its primarly a heat issue and them comes the fact that the gates are switching faster than they ought to.

My northwood has been oced for close to 4 years now, but its running at 35-40 at full load, hardly hot, so I dont expect to have it die on me. On the other hand my 865 motherboard is starting to feel old, I think the northbridge is getting tired of operating at this speed...

Bottom line is if you OC without raising the vCore or at least not raising it too much, many other parts should die before the CPU and your CPu will probably be obsolote by the time it dies anyway!

 

[BaronMatrix]

How many years of a computer's life does overclocking kill? I heard someone say it kills about 5 years of a computer's life of 10. Another person said only a week. Of course, I presume that there is a good water cooling kit and fan setup in the computer. If you have a good link, pleae post.

if you run it out of spec (heat) it will shorten the life. if you keep it cool it shouldn't be aproblem.

 

[danizaken]

overclocking an amd 64 0.2Ghz without changing the default voltage and causing a temp difference of only 1-2C won't shorten a minute of it's life.

 

[Lord-Ilpolazzo]

In reality, as long as it doesent get too (definitions of too depending on the particular max thermal limits of the cpu in question) hot, its life wont be shortened enough for it to matter, since most ppl are unlikely to keep the same machine long enough for the processor to fail, even if its heavily overclocked, and if it is heavily overclocked people would likely have some bizarre cooling system anyway, and the kind of people that do that are the kind of people whoe frequently buy new computers, which further proves the point that it doesnt matter.

 

[Pain]

Read the old, yet still informational, THG article on overclocking.. Or, just search the web for 'electro migration', which will occur with or without overclocking, but is hastened by increasing the speed and/or voltage on the chip. It's not necessarily heat, though that will also speed up the process.

 

[jaguarskx]

As long as you do not do extreme overclocking and as long as you keep the CPU relatively cool, it should be fine. Chances are that you will upgrade before the CPU fails People usually do a major upgrade every 4 years or so.

 

[mesarectifier]

Chances are that 99% of people who overclock (i.e. enthusiasts) are going to buy a new system before their crimes against CPUs have caught up with them

 

[mpjesse]

How many years of a computer's life does overclocking kill? I heard someone say it kills about 5 years of a computer's life of 10. Another person said only a week. Of course, I presume that there is a good water cooling kit and fan setup in the computer. If you have a good link, pleae post.

where the f*uck do u get your information? high school kids?

 

[MasterLee]

I doubt if anyone here has kept the same computer for 10 years. If you kept one for 10 years what would run on it now ?
NOTHING

 

[miecz]

Can you changing the clock speed anytime you have the computer, or, say you buy a computer and later on getting a cooling system, can you then clock it again?

 

[mpjesse]

Well... generally speaking you cannot overclock OEM systems. However, there are free utilities out there than can change the bus speed within windows.

So the answer is no. But only if you have an OEM system. Custom built & self built systems can generally be overclocked at any time.

 

[liquidpaper007]

im using a pentium one laptop right now. i just use internet and listen to music with aim firefox and winamp. ehehhehehehe
i also am using a dlink wireless card. this thing is faster than a lot of peoples spyware infected computers. 166mhz 16mb ram w00t pwns

 

[Sammy_TicTac]

There is no answer, but if you have to ask then you shouldn't do it.

A lot of people say that but I don't really get why. If you're going into overclocking you would want to get a vague idea on what happens.

A couple here have said it depends purely on heat, but I'm pretty sure, even running the cpu at 0C wouldnt extend the life if you were running it at 1.65v.

I found a detailed thread about it somewhere on another forum - I'll try and find that but I'm pretty sure it concluded:

Due to electromigration, voltage shortens a processers life more than Heat which shortens a processers life more than frequency.

Maybe in the coming years, someone should try and construct a database of how long cpus take to die, or how often, if they have been overclocked carefully (that doesn't mean putting high voltages thorough the cpu, it means not making mistakes.)

I'm not sure I've read of any, 'my cpu just randomly died', with the answer being 'thats the risk of overclocking'.

Its always a psu malfunction, or dodgy thermal paste. ..or something

A lot of what Ive said is probably misguided. . .but my 2 cent anyway

 

[Grimmy]

How many years of a computer's life does overclocking kill? I heard someone say it kills about 5 years of a computer's life of 10. Another person said only a week. Of course, I presume that there is a good water cooling kit and fan setup in the computer. If you have a good link, pleae post.

where the f*uck do u get your information? high school kids?

:lol: . o O (Can someone please tell me where the Pet Cemetary is? My CPU died and I thought I'd try to bring it back to life, and yes... I know I need to bury my own)

 

[Pain]

There is no answer, but if you have to ask then you shouldn't do it.

A lot of people say that but I don't really get why. If you're going into overclocking you would want to get a vague idea on what happens.



It's my personal opinion that one could get more than a vague idea of what might happen by simply reading and searching the internet, and therefore I do think often times people need know more about things technically than what they might gleen from a few posts on an internet forum. That's not to say to not read internet forums, but don't accept everything posted as the truth, including what I post, cause I lie.

I'm not sure I've read of any, 'my cpu just randomly died', with the answer being 'thats the risk of overclocking'.

Its always a psu malfunction, or dodgy thermal paste. ..or something

Exactly why I think much of what one might read on an internet forum should be taken with a huge grain of salt, because a lot of it is from those parroting back wrong information they've heard from a friend of a friend.

 

[mpjesse]

because a lot of it is from those parroting back wrong information they've heard from a friend of a friend.

More likely, information that someone just made up. ;-)

 

[MasterLee]

I stand corrected, there is stuff you can run, but one man's laptop is another man's paperweight lol. I'd get tired of waiting for it to boot.

 

[miecz]

Why do you have 2 power systems in your rig?

 

[MasterLee]

The 145 Watt runs the fans on my water cooler radiator, hard drive, power regulator system. My cooling system is independent of the power system for the computer, the water and cooling system powers on first, then 5 seconds later the computer boots. That way I can make sure that there is circulation before power up.
My video card has a chamber built around it also to cool the memory, the GPU is watercooled but the memory isn't. I push air into it, then another fan pulls it out across the memory heatsink and regulator circut. I can run the video memory up over 1200 MHz, but the returns are minimal at best.
All the bugs are out of this system for over a year and I will be transferrering this cooling over to my new system when I decide on what hardware I'm going to use.

 

[fainis]

it`s not just the temperature my friend .... it simply forces the original design to work at same other level......higher voltages are applied etc......

no matter how you put it overclocking, whether it shortens the life or not, it`s an out of warranty issue, it`s unproper used device......

good luck

 

[namralaks]

I doubt if anyone here has kept the same computer for 10 years. If you kept one for 10 years what would run on it now ?
NOTHING

so true