Does overclocking reduce the life of the system?
- Thread starter tom_gr7
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tom_gr7
Life Serving
Gorman
Author Level
Generally speaking yes it will shortent the life of a CPU.
But you are talking about two unknown values here so its kind of an impossible question. The original life of that particular CPU and the amount of time you are taking off it.
Usually a CPU would be long gone and replaced before it actually falls over and dies.
The main thing about overclocked systems is that you are taking them out of the recommended operating speeds and introducing instability to the system.
But you are talking about two unknown values here so its kind of an impossible question. The original life of that particular CPU and the amount of time you are taking off it.
Usually a CPU would be long gone and replaced before it actually falls over and dies.
The main thing about overclocked systems is that you are taking them out of the recommended operating speeds and introducing instability to the system.
tom_gr7
Life Serving
ok, thanks for the advice
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samx300
Enthusiast
Hey Gorman,
Thanks for the advice. I know this may seem out of the blue and there may not be a definite answer, but: Will a Core i7-2600K (OC'd @4.7Ghz) last for at least 3-4 years?
Cheers
Fear
Prolific Poster
You can never guarantee any component will last for any certain period of time out of a batch you may get 6008 that run for 8 years and 1 that dies after 2 months
I have pretty much always overclocked my (self built) pc desktop systems, including cpu, fsb, and gfx cards.
I generally own my desktop pcs for about three years each, then I tend to dismantle and sell of the parts and build a new pc (although I'm switching to laptops now though).
I have never had a pc failure due to overclocking. If you are sensible about it and do not push the envelope too much the pc will last a good length of time without faults.
I have never been an "extreme" overclocker. As in my view there are two types of overclocker.
The first type merely wants to gain some extra speed for free, and is willing to experiment with a few settings for that performance gain. Generally they buy low cost or mid range parts and try to gain a small speed advantage. I would classify myself in this category.
The second type is the person who wants to see how fast he can make his pc go, to push it to the absolute limit. This person will typically buy the latest, fastest hardware, and will tweak every setting possible, trawl the forums for info, monitor every aspect of their pcs performance, temperatures, clock speeds, memory settings, voltage settings, bios settings, etc, and try to top all the popular overclocking tables for speed. Every tiny increase in performance is logged and then tried to be improved upon. I would class this person as extreme.
Generally I would find a reasonabe level of overclock and test it for about 24 hours, and if all was, go back one setting to make sure it was ok for general use.
Whereas the extreme overclocker would find the stable setting, test it, then deliberately go one step further (even if the pc BSOD's after a few minutes), just so they can record that they achieved that extereme speed (albeit only for a few minutes).
I generally own my desktop pcs for about three years each, then I tend to dismantle and sell of the parts and build a new pc (although I'm switching to laptops now though).
I have never had a pc failure due to overclocking. If you are sensible about it and do not push the envelope too much the pc will last a good length of time without faults.
I have never been an "extreme" overclocker. As in my view there are two types of overclocker.
The first type merely wants to gain some extra speed for free, and is willing to experiment with a few settings for that performance gain. Generally they buy low cost or mid range parts and try to gain a small speed advantage. I would classify myself in this category.
The second type is the person who wants to see how fast he can make his pc go, to push it to the absolute limit. This person will typically buy the latest, fastest hardware, and will tweak every setting possible, trawl the forums for info, monitor every aspect of their pcs performance, temperatures, clock speeds, memory settings, voltage settings, bios settings, etc, and try to top all the popular overclocking tables for speed. Every tiny increase in performance is logged and then tried to be improved upon. I would class this person as extreme.
Generally I would find a reasonabe level of overclock and test it for about 24 hours, and if all was, go back one setting to make sure it was ok for general use.
Whereas the extreme overclocker would find the stable setting, test it, then deliberately go one step further (even if the pc BSOD's after a few minutes), just so they can record that they achieved that extereme speed (albeit only for a few minutes).
samx300
Enthusiast
Good point - I believe that if one were to OC a Core i7 @4.6GHz, then not do any intense tasks, the clocks should remain relatively low (probably around 1.6GHz) - thus not making any change to life of the original stock (Non-OC) CPU ?
My PC hovers at 1.6GHz or so almost all the time (1648.3 at the moment ). However, when running The Witcher 2 last night it was up to over 4.2GHz. My old Q6600 was overclocked to about 3.2GHz at one point and you could here it whining away. Turned it down to 3GHz in the end, but that must have been a lot of strain after 4 years of constant use at that speed.
). However, when running The Witcher 2 last night it was up to over 4.2GHz. My old Q6600 was overclocked to about 3.2GHz at one point and you could here it whining away. Turned it down to 3GHz in the end, but that must have been a lot of strain after 4 years of constant use at that speed.
BAD SANTA
Well-known member
Overclocking if stable and if your temps are within reasonable limits will be fine and outdated before it packs up unless you have a bad CPU which would die anyway even without oc.
What I mean is if you oc to 6ghz and your temps are like 90 then it's going to die soon but if you oc to say 4.2ghz for an i7 950 and your temps don't go over 75 then it will most likley be well outdated before it packs up, however like previous posts have explained you could just be unlucky and buy a chip that you don't oc and it would die in two months.
I have my 950 oc'd to 4.2 and I would expect it to last at least 3-4 years but I will probably upgrade well before then.
Another thing is that if you notice temps rising and your still looking after your cooling ie cleaning fans etc on a regular basis then just downclock it back to factory clocks.
So many people oc without major problems you just have to know what your doing and be realistic.
Hope this helps.
What I mean is if you oc to 6ghz and your temps are like 90 then it's going to die soon but if you oc to say 4.2ghz for an i7 950 and your temps don't go over 75 then it will most likley be well outdated before it packs up, however like previous posts have explained you could just be unlucky and buy a chip that you don't oc and it would die in two months.
I have my 950 oc'd to 4.2 and I would expect it to last at least 3-4 years but I will probably upgrade well before then.
Another thing is that if you notice temps rising and your still looking after your cooling ie cleaning fans etc on a regular basis then just downclock it back to factory clocks.
So many people oc without major problems you just have to know what your doing and be realistic.
Hope this helps.
Tracker
Enthusiast
need to be careful because in overclocking theres really two key things to take note of (as of sandy bridge anyway).
1) The multiplier speed, obviously higher speeds draw more power and exude more heat, but not usually by a massive amount.
2) The voltage running through the chip, to make the chip run faster it'll draw more power, thus you need to compensate by raising the voltage in order for it to remain stable, it's this that causes the huge jump in power draw and heat production, and it's this which kills off chips.
if you've got your processor configured to run at 4.6~4.8ghz then chances are the voltage has been tweaked, thus it's already generating more heat and using more power up, so you're wearing it out, even if you don't go all the way to the top multipliers. (a chip with raised voltage will be hotter and wear out faster than a chip with standard voltage but running same tasks/speeds/multipliers).
Voltage is what kills off chips, voltage is what causes the exponential heat raising, but without supplying higher than default voltage to your chip it'll run out of juice, if you're not making use of the chip beyond its stock multipliers ( e.g, 3ghz - 3.4ghz) then you'd be better off using the default settings on it, (not just locking the multipliers) and switching on the oc when you need it.