Does overclocking void warranty?

Baldbloke

Baldbloke

Baldbloke

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I suspect the simple answer is clearly "Yes" if we are talking about processors.

But motherboards? Presumably they offer the manufacturer warranty regardless of clocking.

The reason I ask is, I'm considering buying a Sandybridge overclocked bundle from Ocuk.

£450 gets me this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-063-OE&groupid=43&catid=339&subcat= with a 12 month warranty from Ocuk. Very tempted.

But buying CPU and mobo separately means I get a 3 year warranty from the manufacturers.

Question is: do I immediately lose warranty rights if I attempt CPU overclock?

It seems reasonable that Ocuk charge a small fee for guaranteed overclocking speed and still supply 12 month CPU warranty. It would certainly save me from frying the CPU whilst experimenting. But I would also then forfeit a 3 year mobo warranty for a 1 year warranty.

Actually, whilst typing my thoughts on this, I think I've answered my own question. I reckon I'll plump for the bundle from Ocuk. I'll post this anyway. It may help others in the same boat decide.

Opinions welcomed, please.
 
Thanks for replying, folks.

Another reason I decided on the pre o'clocked bundle was that I was not confident of my own ability or patience in order to do my own overclocking. But in the last hour I have been doing a bit of googling on how to overclock the 2500K. It seems even an overclocking noob like myself shouldn't have too much trouble at all.

Link here: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/01/03/intel_sandy_bridge_2600k_2500k_processors_review/2



So, maybe I will have a go. Save some cash and get the satisfaction of a diy overclock..
Hmmm...
 
If you buy the bundle, I'm pretty sure you still get the three years manufacturers warranty. Asus & Gigabyte both actively encourage overclocking, but their motherboards will kill a cpu without worrying about it. This is why auto is normally a bad idea when overclocking. Intel are very anti-overclocking, and I suspect are able to tell if a chip has been overclocked if they wish to. Whether it's worth their time to do so economically is another matter, I'm fairly sure it's so much cheaper to replace cpus that they wouldn't test.

Assuming you don't leave everything on auto, and stick to what this community recommends, the only thing that'll kill your hardware is severe bad luck. That is, components which were considerably below par to begin with but scraped through quality control. If you go by xtreme system's guidelines but don't have the same cooling they do, and you want the chip to last for years rather than weeks, then yes it can do damage you'll notice.

It helps a lot if the chip is cooler, i.e. overclocking with the stock heatsink is a bad idea.

Processors are remarkably resilient things, it's hard to kill one. Ram is much more fragile, and motherboards somewhere inbetween. However rma support for ram is excellent, motherboards alright and cpu's crap (the tech you speak to is likely to flatly refuse to believe that the processor is dead, as it happens so rarely). It balances out.
 
Ive been overclocking for a few years now, still a noob at it tbh, ive never killed a component by overclocking it. Im sure i maybe shortened the lifespan of my old q6600 by ramming 1.512 vcore through it at 3.8 ghz, but probably wouldnt be noticed in the cpu's lifespan, even a chip run at stock will degrade over time, but lets face it, who's gonna have a chip that long to notice it.

EDIT: Avoid auto voltages on asus boards, theyre notorious for overvolting on auto, p5q series being a great example, tested with a multimetre to confirm it on a deluxe.
 
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