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Degradation: Would you buy a second hand wolfdale ?

Devious

Devious

Devious

Soldato
Joined
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I'm reading more and more posts on a few forums of people reporting clock degradation on their Wolfdale chips after they have put high volts through them. They usually follow on to say they are going to flog them quick while the price is high a get a new one.

I cant remember seing so many degradation clams about a chip, Ive can only recall ever seeing a couple of claims ever before.


I was thinking of trying a second hand wolfy but I dont think I would touch one now.

Would you ?
 
So do they still run reliably at stock or are they fubar-ed?

I've not read the threads but with 45nm fabrication and 1.25(?) being the max voltages for them then pumping 1.6 through them as with the 65nm part is probably what's causing the probs.
 
I think they probably will still run at stock, or you would hope so if they are selling them. Whether they continue detiriorate from then on I dont know.

Ive read a few people reporting the chips would do 4Ghz with 1.25v/1.3v when new. They have then tested to see how high the chip would go with 1.5/1.6 but when trying to go back to 4ghz for 24/7 it needed 1.35/1.4.
 
Devious said:
I was thinking of trying a second hand wolfy but I dont think I would touch one now.

Would you ?
Click to expand...

nope, not yet at any rate, there's too much of a question mark over the chip to my mind. tho i have no qualms about buying any other chip s/h. & i certainly didn't think twice about selling my 8500 :p
 
TBH, I wouldn't be surprised if the clocks were previously unstable and that such instability was only beginning to manifest itself.

Such instability may only become obvious after a few days or weeks but in the end the Windows kernel can only take so many RAM/HD errors.

Make sure your chips are overclocked properly: test them as far as you can.
 
[ZiiP]carrot;11180063 said:
Why can't people just be happy with 3.6ghz on an e8400 on stock volts? From a P4 3.4ghz, thats fast enough for me :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Because people want to push there CPU's..

I was talking to some guy and he's flogged his E8400, he had it at 4Ghz 1.47V but eventually it became unstable even at 3.8Ghz. Its got me wondering, for some reason after installing windows the boot starts to get slower and slower, now I know my E6600 at 3.4 is not stable at all in TAT and gets very hot, yet its 8 hours orthos, so wonder if the CPU is getting errors and messing up windows?
 
Devious said:
I think they probably will still run at stock, or you would hope so if they are selling them. Whether they continue detiriorate from then on I dont know.

Ive read a few people reporting the chips would do 4Ghz with 1.25v/1.3v when new. They have then tested to see how high the chip would go with 1.5/1.6 but when trying to go back to 4ghz for 24/7 it needed 1.35/1.4.
Click to expand...

Yes they will run fine at stock. It's exactly what happened to my 8500. I had it running at 4Ghz with stock volatges and it was prime stable for 16 hours. Went for 4.2Ghz with 1.375V and that was also prime stable for 16 hours. Went for 4.4Ghz with 1.45v and was prime stable for 4 hours or so before falling over. Went up to 1.5v to get it stable for 12 hours. Went to 1.52v for 4.5Ghz and things started to go wrong. Kept failing on one core after a couple of hours. Went back to 4.4 Ghz and could'nt get stable at all. Same core kept failing. Went back to 4.2Ghz and exactly the same. Tried 4Ghz at stock and it would'nt even boot. It needed 1.375v for 4Ghz then. After that i got fed up with the damn thing and stuck it on the bay. Actually made £20 quid on it as i got it really cheap in the first place. The guy that bought it was doing exactly the same thing as this was his 4th 8500 and he had already had 5 8400's. Since then i have been following the threads over at XS and one guy had a 8400 die after only 1.52v and degredation seems to start from 1.42v onwards. If you have one of these do not go over the VID on the box or you will have problems. Supposedly there is a new batch being released in 3-4 weeks and i will be waiting to see what peoples experiences are with those before buying a E8400. At the moment my main pc has no cpu so i can't play Crysis or any of my modern games which is doing my head in.

So would i buy a second hand Wolfdale? Not a chance!! You really do not know what you are getting. If someones selling one it's usually because it has problems.
 
Devious said:
I'm reading more and more posts on a few forums of people reporting clock degradation on their Wolfdale chips after they have put high volts through them. They usually follow on to say they are going to flog them quick while the price is high a get a new one.

I cant remember seing so many degradation clams about a chip, Ive can only recall ever seeing a couple of claims ever before.


I was thinking of trying a second hand wolfy but I dont think I would touch one now.

Would you ?
Click to expand...


Absolutely not.
 
pastymuncher said:
...If someones selling one it's usually because it has problems.
Click to expand...

What cobblers?!

Do people just make this stuff up or what? There is no way you could know that.

Let me get this straight. A few people have put way too much volts through their CPU, and are now crying it's 'broken'?

They may be the latest and greatest from Intel these 45nm chips, but like any CPU they're not indestructible.

Buying any CPU 2nd hand is a risk at the end of the day, but I don't see why it's any more risky than buying any other chip.
 
Nope, this is the reason I didn't go stupid with the volts and stuck at 4Ghz with a low voltage. :)

This was always in the back of my mind, no one knew at the start when degradation would have started but now we know I know not to ever touch the volts :)
 
So what's the limit then?. 1.42v but lets say 1.4v to be safe? (just a rough estimate is all I want to know).
 
Mine has been running flat out folding at 1.53V (measured with a voltmeter) for the last 4 weeks at 4.35GHz. It is water cooled and hasn't missed a beat. If it drops off, then I'll either RMA it (if it doesn't run stock) or sell it (if it runs stock).

What this thread seems to be about is driving down the second-hand value of Wolfdales, and there's only one reason you'd want to do that...
 
I thought the protection circuits in the 45nm build made them nigh on indestructible - the only real danger is if you remove the buffer you gain from vdroop? I'll have to dig about again - there was a fascinating article about this about 4 months ago.
 
J.D said:
So what's the limit then?. 1.42v but lets say 1.4v to be safe? (just a rough estimate is all I want to know).
Click to expand...

Would also be interested in what people think are the safe max voltages, contemplating getting either an 8400 or a 9450

Naud
 
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