Overclocking & PC life span

[Guest_Jim_*]

Drawing the line is not always so easy. What constitutes a "balls to the wall" overclock versus a reasonable one?

The only reason I don't consider mine to be that extreme is that I used to have it a little higher, but if I up the RAM at all, the system won't boot. I'm pretty sure it's the motherboard that's holding me back, and with a different/better one I'd probably have pushed it much higher. Still, I'm happy with where it is, and it is stable.

I will say this though, technically one could say mine is extreme just because I've unlocked the fourth core and am running 0.6GHz above stock on all the cores. I just know it can, in theory, go higher, so I don't think it's that big. But that's just my opinion.

[Speedway]

if you put your computer balls to the wall than it's going to die within a day or so. this why setting world records is a pain. heat and they kill $1000 chips in minutes.

 

otherwise running it somewhat above stock speeds won't have any effect at all, even better if you just match to the highest retail cpu because than you are just saving money getting your cpu up to the same speed.

 

 

The i7 930 stock is 2.8GHz. I have been running mine over 4.5GHz @ 1.45v for at least 6 months. I think a 60% OC should be considered balls to the wall, at least IMO it is I haven't had a single problem yet. But, I do have a 120.3 taking care of the heat! Bottom line on everything with PC components, heat is the killer. Someone else might only have a mild OC on their i7, and can easily have higher temps than my extreme OC due to the cooling solutions used. So, if you know what you are doing, you can go balls to the wall and be fine

[ir_cow]

i stand corrected i would be sure 1.45v would kill an i7

[Guest_Jim_*]

My BIOS has the voltage at 1.46*** or something like that but I never see it go above 1.42 in any monitoring software I have (AOD, CPU-z, and some utilities that came with my ASUS motherboard). Right now while it's folding with the CPU (4 cores and 85% usage) and two GPU's (GPU2 and GPU3 cores) with Thunderbird and Firefox 6.0 running, CPU-z is only reporting 1.392V at the highest. This is part of the reason I figure the motherboard is holding me back because if I set the voltage any lower, it doesn't boot, even though it's not pulling near what I have it set to use. Works for me though, since if it is that much lower, the part will last longer and save me some electricity

[Waco]

i stand corrected i would be sure 1.45v would kill an i7

Nah. That's kinda high but not "kill" voltage.

[Speedway]

i stand corrected i would be sure 1.45v would kill an i7

Nah. That's kinda high but not "kill" voltage.

 

I have had it as high as 1.5v trying to really push it. But I do admit, I was uncomfortable about it

[wevsspot]

What constitutes a "balls to the wall" overclock versus a reasonable one?

When my balls are sweating and wiping paint off the walls

That's my definition of balls to the wall........................

[medbor]

heat is not directly an issue, its the smaller manufacturing with heat that is dangerous, i had my P4 overclocked, and it sometimes reached 80-90C but it kept on going strong for many years. A thing that definitely is dangerous is the powersaving features (at least on P4 and SB) since they switch between 150W and 0.1W sometimes every millisecond. That kills the caps and power regulation on motherboards. Also CPUs don't really die, motherboards do.

[Guest_Jim_*]

Also the small manufacturing and the voltage can kill, as the more voltage means the more distance electricity can arc. With the connections being so much closer to each other the high voltages means you could have arcing within the CPU itself. That's not good and can definitely kill a CPU if it's enough electricity going through the circuitry.

[Waco]

Also the small manufacturing and the voltage can kill, as the more voltage means the more distance electricity can arc. With the connections being so much closer to each other the high voltages means you could have arcing within the CPU itself. That's not good and can definitely kill a CPU if it's enough electricity going through the circuitry.

What you're talking about is electron migration - it's not quite the same thing as arcing (which is electricity jumping across open air). It's definitely bad though.

[wevsspot]

What you're talking about is electron migration

And I thought we only had a migration problem in the United States. Glad to hear that CPUs are having that problem too

[Black64]

I keep the heat down in my systems. I have never had a GPU or CPU or MOBO fail because of OCing.