QOTD: Did You Ever Fry Your PC by Overclocking?
By - Source: Tom's Hardware US
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114 comments
Everyone wants to get the most for their money. This is no exception to Tom's Hardware readers.
Granted, a good number of Tom's Hardware readers also overclock their computers. From the CPU to GPU to RAM, they're all designed to operate normally within a certain frequency range. However, with the right cooling, and voltage, these components can easily be pushed higher.
In some cases however, bad things happen and something starts to smell bad. Hopefully, this hasn't happened to you, but...
The question of the day is: Did you every fry your CPU, GPU, memory or other things by overclocking?
If so, what were you doing and how far were you pushing your components?
Discuss
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I hope I don't have to experience one.
how would I claim warranty for burned processor?
Intel says 1.40 volts is safe, but i ran it 24/7 for a year at 3.91GHz with a voltage of 1.44 and now the max overclock i can get with that voltage is 3.8Ghz so damaged the CPU but not fried.
Once had it as high as 4.16GHz at that voltage but wont go back there anymore.
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=424242
Biostar P43
The usb controller on the board literally melted, no reason it shouldve but my friends insist it was because i had the voltage to the northbridge cranked up there too. Again, shouldn't have happened anyway. But Biostar was nice about an RMA even though i didn't have a receipt anymore. New version of that board has a Core 2 Duo running at 4.1GHz 24/7 with an intel safe 1.36 volts ( i've learned not to overvolt )
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=480253 E7400 @ 4.25
And I've fried a Northwood P4, which suffered the SNDS (Sudden Northwood Death Syndrome)by being stupid and fed 1.8V to it, died in less than a week.
However, other system's that I have overclocked didn't go bad so far. So I'd say, if you overclock too aggressively, it will damage the components, but if you overclock mildly, it shouldn't make much difference in the life of the CPU.
My original ASUS P5B-Deluxe/Wifi-App did it, now my Gigabyte EP35-DS3P is doing it but a touch more v's seems to help (chipset, fsb both +0.1v helps)
Video cards are easy to cook, AMD processors are also easy to cook, Intel's survive all sorts and survive.
The most dramatic burnout I ever had was a Rendition Vérité 1000 that was plugged into a mobo driving an 486DX-40 to 50Mhz - the overclock wasn't all that dramatic but there was no separation\multiplier between the CPU clock and IO bus on those systems and the additional load caused the GPU (or whatever the render chip on the Vérité should be called) to literally pop its lid and I was left with the equivelent of a $1K card with a smoking hole right in the center of the Rendition chip and little bits of blackened ceramic spread across the inside of the PC. The CPU was fine once I replace the video card but the greatest loss was the fact that I was no longer able to enjoy the very first Lara Croft in all her hardware accelerated glory, Those were the days. Yeah - I know if I had real overclocking cojones I should have been trying to push Pentiums past 133Mhz by then but I was a bit strapped for cash and all I could afford were the 486's.
The only thing in this message that's useless trash is your typing.