Long term effect of Overclocking?

experience · 6 Feb 2007 at 10:07

"Apart from the fact that you shorten the lifetime of your hardware when you push your E6600 by 50% a LOT."

a quote from someone on medieval 2 forums, a tech mod actually. is this true?

what are the long term effects, do you shorten its lifespan?

z0mbi3 · 6 Feb 2007 at 10:12

Theoretically, yes. In reality it won't actually happen before the CPU is extremley obsolete.

joeyjojo · 6 Feb 2007 at 10:14

None in my experience.

Shoseki · 6 Feb 2007 at 10:14

Makes you wonder sometimes what the point of overclocking is, because even the measly increase is nothing compared to the next gen hardware upgrade, and you tend to do things like void the warranty and damage the hardware whilst learning.

For the "famous" threads where OCUK was the centre of the graphics card unlocking mechanism, serious respect, but its a bit like "Matrix Revisited", its not a real sequel, its just the original with some knobs on.

Saying that, the matrix sequels were pants

hp7909 · 6 Feb 2007 at 10:23

experience said:
{snip}what are the long term effects, do you shorten its lifespan?

Definitely, you're running it out of spec. Though some components like CPU, if you cool it well it might last as long as one run @ stock.

That said, who here (OcUK forums) keeps any PC part for more than 2-years anymore

z0mbi3 · 6 Feb 2007 at 10:27

You have to remember that people saying it'll reduce your cpu life by "A LOT" are really just making assumptions.

To have any idea of how much it would decrease the life of a CPU by you'd have to know how long it lived without clocking, how long it lived when consistantly overclocked and then take the difference between the two. Aside from needing a time machine to do this you'd also have to prove overclocking was the cause of death.

The point is modern CPU's last so long anyway that even if you did cut a few years off its life you'd never know as you'd be well into your next gen(s) hardware before getting any where near it.

edit: Compensating the extra heat from clocking with approriate cooling can return the life expectancy to something like it's norm. This is really easy if you consider what stock temps usually are with a stock heatsink and thermal gunk.

hardc0re_tid · 6 Feb 2007 at 12:16

hp7909 said:
That said, who here (OcUK forums) keeps any PC part for more than 2-years anymore

me! i still have a 5700le bought back in 2002/2003 which is going into my media pc along with a asrock k7s41gx bought in 2002 and a 2700xp bought in 2000

my current system, cpu/mobo and HDDs will be kept aswell as optical drives, monitor, audigy 2 bought in 2000 is still being used in my current system.

go ahead and call me cheapskate :cool:

Starfall · 6 Feb 2007 at 12:23

I used to have an AXIA Thunderbird, i ran it for about 2 years at 2.1v on air, then a further year at 2.2v on water. In benchmarks i ran it up to 2.35v, temps never went above 45c through its whole life.

About 18 months ago i sold a system to a friend, i used that CPU but brought down to stock frequency and stock voltage. Last i heard it was still running fine.

Your friend is simple, there's more things involved

Raise the question - With massive overclocks you might shorten the physical lifetime but you increase the usefull lifetime. A stock XP1800 is obsolete, an XP1800 at 250MHz x 11 is still fairly powerful

Junk · 6 Feb 2007 at 12:36

i have been overclocking for over ten years and, touch wood, have never seen these so called ill effects. as long as you are cooling well and not being daft with voltages you should be fine.

w3bbo · 6 Feb 2007 at 12:57

If a cpu loses half its life through heavy overclocking then it would still likely be going strong after five years of this heavy use. By that time the cpu would be worthless anyway and could be replaced for pennies. Consider this :

E6300 to be clocked to 2.4 (E6600) speeds is apx 600 mhz overclock. The difference between the two at retail is apx £100. It wouldn't cost £100 to replace the e6600 IF it suddenly died after 5 or so years use. It would be more likely the case that you would have upgraded long before the cpu died in any case.

Captain Fizz · 6 Feb 2007 at 13:25

Yep, the 'lifespan' of CPU's is somewhere in the region (don't quote me.

) of 20~25 years.

You overclock, it may come down to 15~20 years.
Extreme overclocking... Maybe 10~15 years.

By that time - Will you still be using that CPU?

Same goes for GFX cards.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous tool" is very apt to overclocking.
I've never killed any component due to overclocking.
I know people who have, but these are also the type of people who install thermal sensors IN BETWEEN the CPU core and the heatsink. :rolleyes:

So as long as you do research on it first - It is simple free performance.

experience · 6 Feb 2007 at 14:57

Yeh, ive clocked my e6600 to about 3.4 ghz, artic freezer 7 going in tomorrow. Currently stock.

hoping it last me minimum 2 years, by that time i dont care.

james.miller · 6 Feb 2007 at 15:01

"Apart from the fact that you shorten the lifetime of your hardware when you push your E6600 by 50% a LOT."

many variables you have to consider there. increasing speed alone while keeping the temperatures under control wont decrease the life by any measurable amount. if that were the case people would be telling you to avoid top of the line cpu's because they only last 10 minutes. rubbish.

temperature and voltage are what kills cpu's but both in moderation are nothing to be worried about.

hardc0re_tid · 6 Feb 2007 at 15:20

experience said:
Yeh, ive clocked my e6600 to about 3.4 ghz, artic freezer 7 going in tomorrow. Currently stock.

hoping it last me minimum 2 years, by that time i dont care.

seconded, but i would end up using my old kit in another rig somwhere

ghgh · 6 Feb 2007 at 15:33

Ive only had one failure due to overclocking, never a processor, just a motherboard - epox 8rda that went bang as lots of its capacitors failed running at just 185fsb from the stock 166 :S

Never had any CPUs fail due to overclocking itself but Ive managed to fry a Duron 800 from attempting to cut bridges to raise the voltage for a mobo that didn't allow the vcore to be changed...bearing in mind I used to have 20 PC's + running SETI@home 24/7, the majority being overclocked to their limit on air it isn't bad going.

All in all I dont think overclocking will shortern a systems life, as long as sensible voltages are used and the temperatures are sane, motherboard, cpu and graphics card temperatures that is.

ghgh · 6 Feb 2007 at 15:36

james.miller said:
many variables you have to consider there. increasing speed alone while keeping the temperatures under control wont decrease the life by any measurable amount. if that were the case people would be telling you to avoid top of the line cpu's because they only last 10 minutes. rubbish.

temperature and voltage are what kills cpu's but both in moderation are nothing to be worried about.

Yep...really hate the people who are totally against overclocking even though they don't have a clue about it's effects....they just automatically assume it kills components for no good reason when the components only generally fail if an extreme voltage is put through them or they are ran at extremely hot temperatures for a long period, or even a breif period of time if above 85c or something daft (Talking about old Athlons) not sure what X2s and C2Ds can take without frying.

Starfall · 6 Feb 2007 at 15:48

Ive only had one failure due to overclocking, never a processor, just a motherboard - epox 8rda that went bang as lots of its capacitors failed running at just 185fsb from the stock 166

The capacitors on that board would have failed anyway, may have taken a little while longer but most of the first 8RDA/+'s died within 2 years. Bad capacitors

ghgh · 6 Feb 2007 at 16:49

Oh right, this board I bought off some guy called CARMAN who used to visit these forums...worked superbly for half a year then one night I woke up hearing a loud bang, checked inside it and there was capacitor gook everywhere in the case and all but 2/3 of the caps had gone bang. I had an 8rda e though and that worked fine for 2 years and thats when I sold it - maybe lucky I sold it when I did lol.

FatRakoon · 7 Feb 2007 at 05:40

I still got a couple of XP17 CPUs in NF7S Boards.

Still use those PCs and Im clockin the hell out of them both...

They can still play all *** latest software they still do everythign that my best CPU can do.

If they exploded today, I would not really give two hoots.

z0mbi3 · 7 Feb 2007 at 08:27

FatRakoon said:
I still got a couple of XP17 CPUs in NF7S Boards.

Still use those PCs and Im clockin the hell out of them both...

They can still play all *** latest software they still do everythign that my best CPU can do.

If they exploded today, I would not really give two hoots.

lies lies lies I tell ya