underclocking increase life?

[Giraffe]

every1 knows that o/c will reduce a components life by a bit.

so here is the stupid question.
will underclocking a graphics card thus lowering the temps increase the life of a card.

 

[Doughbuy]

Yes, it would, although I'm not sure how much of an extension it would grant you. Heat is never good for your processor or any electrical components, thus underclocking would reduce heat and should expand life expectancy. However... how many times have you had a processor die on you? I've rarely heard of processors dieing, and theoretically, by the time your processor reaches its lifespan, it would be long obsolete.

 

[rodney_ws]

Makes sense to me... but if a card is designed to last 10 years and you underclock it so it'll last 15 years... the question is... do you really want to use the same video card that long?

Now if you're asking about a manufacturer OC'd card... your question might be a little more valid as some people are reporting a high failure rate for pre-OC'd 7900 GTs. Or even if you're asking about a mobile system such as a laptop... that would definitely help your battery life if you've got a high-end video card.

Me personally... I think underclocking a component just sets you up to have every OTHER component fail first... I just don't see the point in it.

 

[Giraffe]

yeah i know the component would be prehistoric by the time it should break but i was more curious than wanting 2 do it.

also does o/c'ing then going to stock speeds then o/c again ect. put strain on the component(say a gpu)

 

[rodney_ws]

I'm not sure what to say exactly... I have some ideas, but I'm hoping someone else will post a more intelligent reply based on factual knowledge.

 

[Doughbuy]

I'm not too sure either. The major strain on electronic components all deal with heat, which is pretty much dependent on the amount of voltage you shove into it. Oc'ing would decrease life, but just changing the settings from OC to stock to OC shouldn't cause any undue strain thats not there from the OC'ing itself. But don't quote me on this. I haven't graduated with my EE degree yet. Gimme another year =)

 

[allhell]

Believe it or not only extreme overclocking really put your components under severe stress even with proper cooling.
Mild overclocking does absolutely nothing to components.
One should only worry when the voltage has to be increased significantly to provide an extreme overclock.
That said I had a 754 1mb cache 3200+ running at 2.0V & 2.6 GHz for nearly a year & its still running now but only at 2.5GHz because it was not stable @ 2.6. At full load the temps would reach 66deg c. & consume 221 watts by Sandra's measurements & would reboot on me when crunching thousands of mp3 files.

 

[Doughbuy]

That I would believe, since it is how much voltage runs through that causes most of the trouble. Most transistors can only handle so much voltage, otherwise bad things start happening...

Either way, I'm planning on OC'ing my computer no matter what anyone says. But always be respectful of temperature. Heat is the enemy...

 

[allhell]

A word about overclocking.
Even though I do it a lot, I do it within a certain financial boundry,, not because I cant afford better but I dont believe I should spend thousands on a cooling system just to get a few more mhz.
I have some Arctic Cooling HS ass from Newegg that cost 11.00 $ us & I get 1/4" thick copper bars from Small Parts & Accessories then lap the surfaces & put some 5.00$ 130 CFM fans from All Electronics & I get very good results.
I have a 939 3200+ @ 2.8GHz stable with 1 such assembly,,, it was a tad loud but the fan was hacked to reduce some of the noise.

 

[blunc]

Remember that many factories and manufacturers like to really get their moneys worth out of equipment, especially if they're not leasing it. I run equipment that has a pentium 166 host computer running win98 first edition, it runs pretty much 24/7. It's been here longer than six years, I'm glad it wasn't made on a friday or a monday because replacement parts will be impossible to find now without having to upgrade and reconfigure the machine.

 

[Thuban]

I found this article http://www.legitreviews.com/article/375/1/ dealing with undervolting a CPU. I have to say undervolting makes a lot of sense, especially in the summer where brownouts and higher prices may be a concern (that and, of course, reducing heat output). I'd rather have a chip operating at full speed but with less juice and heat running through it. LegitReviews saved 11watts @ idle / 28watts @ full load while still operating at default clockspeed. (This was done with an AMD X2 4200+.)

Underclocking/undervolting doesn't make much sense for the purpose solely to extend the processors life. I've never heard of a processor burning itself out at stock voltage (the old Tom's Hardware video of an AMD Thunderbird w/o heatsink excepted).