How long can you keep an overclocked pc on?

khearts

khearts

khearts

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Hey, I saw somewhere you shouldnt keep an overclocked pc on for long.

My brother and I are both getting Q6600 pc's. He's aircooling his with something called freezer whatnot and Im watercooling it.

We both have our pc's on a lot, sometimes overnight for downloads and so.

Will this be ok?

He wont overclock his q6600 more then 3.0ghz and I wont overclock mine more then 3.4 with the watercooler.

Thanks guys
 
A few people here keep their pc's on overclocked 24/7 with stable clocks.

It's only if you're really pushing it (say if you were trying to hit 4ghz or higher) that you'd only keep it clocked that high for a few minutes while you benchmark it.

I kept my e6600 machine at 3.4ghz on 24/7 doing folding @ home for a while :)
 
You need to bench longer than a few mins to prove an OC stable.

I can do 4.5GHZ but my cooling is not extreme as its quiet.

But none the less I dont need 4.5GHZ daily to surf etc, If was going to game or encode I would probably boot back up to 4GHZ and game or encode for as long as I wanted.

I certainly would not loose any sleep over it running with fans at 100% (normally Im at 50%).
 
Oh I know, But I meant people who try extreme clocks and only clock it and leave it there to run pi or 3d mark and then clock it down again.

By stable I meant say 8-9 hours of orthos stable. :p
 
My Q6600 has been at 3.6GHz on air for six months continuously now. That's a relatively short-lived one: once I get the maximum stable overclock it normally stays on pretty much continuously for at least two years doing BOINC/SETI. Longest continuous serious overclock was probably my old P4 1.6A which ran 24/7 at 2.4GHz or higher for nearly four years (the drop from 2.72GHz was due to failing motherboard, not chip). Last seen running another eight months in a colleague's machine at 2.3GHz.

Don't worry about it - the chip will be massively obsolete before it breaks.


M
 
when i get my pc (q6600) i was planning to overclock it to 3ghz, and then leave it there permanently, this should be fine right? (with good cooling)
 
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As long as your temps are ok, then running 24/7 overclocks is fine.

I have my E2180 & E8400 running overclocked 24/7 (F@H)
The E2180 @ 3.2GHZ (stock cooler) & E8400 4.2GHZ (XP-120)
Neither of them exceed 60c @ load.
 
Yes but that effect wouldn't really effect an overclock, such as mine @ 1.45v for at least a year, maybe 2, and even then, it would only result in the clock speed slowing, but not breaking it. I think..
 
krooton said:
But doesn't that only really have bad effects long after most of us would have upgraded our chips?
Click to expand...

For me yes, but its a fact it still happens and the more volts you use the faster it happens.

And it does "break" your overclock as the above peep put it.

You may never hit the same clock as before.

Cooling does help keep CPU alive longer when OC'd but cant stop Electromigration.
 
Overclocking certainly shortens the life of your componenets due to the fact that you are forcing the chip to switch fasster than it is rated to, the faster this happens the more voltage required which means more heat which means more stress on the compents to work therefore shortening the life of the compnents! thats cuting a long story short
 
Pop into any Folding@Home or SETI forum and they will be able to tell you that they've been running overclocked CPU's at 100% load 24/7 for years at a time.
 
yea i agree, well know from first hand experience that you can run heavilly overclocked pc's for years, just to say that overclocking does and will shorten life of components, quality of components dependent (you mostly will already of upgraded by the time they fail which will still be in years to come what with the quality of products on the market at this curent time)
 
depends largely on components, partly on luck.

even not overclocked systems suffer EM - its just the rate thats changed with oc.

arround the time of the early P4 nothwoods.
many were running 1.6a at crazy speeds like 3ghz with huge volts, and suddenly they were giving up in their hundreds (sudden northwood death syndrome), but people are still using old Thunderbirds from the same time that got treated to much more voltage - TODAY without them showing ill effect, a lot of these chips have spent most of their time in cheap "family" boxes running at least 60c. (my dads pc for example has an old XP1600+ in it, it started life at 2v ~1.7ghz on air, moved to water at 2.3v @ 1.9ish, then less powerfull water 2.2 @ 1.8ghz now runing air at 1.6ghz stock volts)
 
khearts said:
Hey, I saw somewhere you shouldnt keep an overclocked pc on for long.

My brother and I are both getting Q6600 pc's. He's aircooling his with something called freezer whatnot and Im watercooling it.

We both have our pc's on a lot, sometimes overnight for downloads and so.

Will this be ok?

He wont overclock his q6600 more then 3.0ghz and I wont overclock mine more then 3.4 with the watercooler.

Thanks guys
Click to expand...

As long as it's 100% stable then I don't see a problem. Run some overnight Orthos etc :)
 
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